Search Results

As evolutionary biologists have always been concerned with the genetic basis for the emergence of complex phenotypes, advances in genomics and systems biology are facilitating a paradigm shift of molecular evolutionary biology toward a better understanding of the relationship of genotypes and phenotypes. From an evolutionary perspective, the central question is whether natural selection is a necessary and/or sufficient force to explain the emergence of genomic and cellular features that underlie the building of complex organisms. Lynch has criticized the adaptive hypothesis for the origins of organismal complexity, claiming that nothing in evolution makes sense in light of population genetics that takes the effects of mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection into account. The importance of mutation types and genetic drifts on the phenotype evolution has also been emphasized by Nei and his associates. One plausible approach to resolving these fundamental issues is to model the features of biological complexity as parameters instead of emerged properties, under the principle of population genetics and molecular evolution. This chapter discusses some recent results in this trend.

This chapter discusses the introduction of the concept of the cemetery garden and its evolution in Hong Kong. In 1845, after Hong Kong was subjected to British rule, the Royal Engineers headed by Lieutenant T. B. Collinson sketched and established a cemetery in Wong Nei Chung which would later become Happy Valley. These once paddy field before the British invasion, the areas surrounding the flat lands of Happy Valley, became a place for the dead. In addition to discussing the introduction of the cemetery garden, the chapter addresses the issues of how Western cemetery design principles were applied in the British colony of Hong Kong, in particular with the creation and design of the Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley. By the turn of the 1890s, the Hong Kong Cemetery had taken on a number of “Loudonesque” features. Although not as grand as its European city cemeteries, the Hong Kong Cemetery was in every aspect “Loudonesque.” While the Hong Kong Cemetery flourished as a cemetery garden, setting the role model for subsequent cemeteries particularly the local cemetery garden design, the Hong Kong Cemetery started to decline in the 1900s. The fall of the Hong Kong Cemetery was due to the increasing notion of cultural identity among Chinese nationals, the unfair allocation of cemetery space, the ravages of war, and the increasing urbanism, natural deterioration, and human error.

The original eastern section of the Imperial City Wall ran along Bei He Yan Avenue and Nan He Yan Avenue. A small sliver of the red wall with its yellow glazed tiles still stands near the intersection with Di An Men Avenue. This chapter makes a pleasant addition to expand the scope of this tour to include some sights that were actually in the section of the Eastern Tartar City that abutted the Imperial City. It begins with the corner of Dong Dan Avenue and Jian Guo Men Nei Avenue. The immediate cause for the end of the Ming dynasty was Li Zi Cheng, the one-eyed bandit who raised the standard of rebellion from the south. Li goes on to say that Deng Xiao Ping, the old stoat, was nurtured back to health by a buxom nurse from Si Chuan whom he somehow managed to knock up despite the impediment of a plastered leg hanging in the air.

In the early twentieth century, Peking had another walled district that was not built on the initiative of Yong Le or his successors. It enclosed a rectangular area running along the east side of Tian An Men Square and in an easterly direction along Chang An Avenue. At the intersection with Chong Wen Men Nei Avenue, the wall turned south. The old Tartar City wall served as the southern boundary. Within these walls, a wholly foreign city came into existence, only to disappear with the rise of the PRC. No traces remain of the wall of the former Legation District, though there are a few buildings scattered in this neighborhood that call to mind a long dead world. In the Ming era, this area was known by the main street that ran along the north of the Tartar wall, the East Alley For Rice Exchange. Beyond the gates of the Legation District, the Boxer Movement gained momentum. During the Boxer Debacle, the British and Japanese legations were the northern barricades. As each year goes by, more and more of the sights in the former Legation District disappear.

This chapter focuses on the various views of the scholars on the association of the Nei jing with Huang Di. One of the scholars, Long Bojian, explains the association of the Nei jing with Huang Di with two arguments. First, the Nei jing emphasizes the yin–yang and the five-agents doctrines, which, according to the Shi ji, had been introduced by Zou Yan. Second, Long Bojian quotes a passage from the Huai nan zi of the second century b.c. that the ordinary people often venerate the old and despise the new. Bojian states that those who set up the Way are forced to do so under the names of Shen nong and Huang Di, and it is only then that they may enter the discourse. Wang Shuhe's equation of the Western Han Huang Di nei jing with the Su wen and the Zhen jing on the basis of an identical number of juan, eighteen, may not have been justified after all given the change in the meaning of juan between the Han and Jin dynasties.

Follows the second generation of “mainlanders,” the children of those who escaped from the mainland, their haunted lives as they attempt to establish a new identity for themselves out of the cursed fate they believe they inherited from their parents. The chapter also follows two members of the third generation, one who was exposed to her grandfather's stories about greatness on the mainland and who developed a sense of self, the other who chose to embrace her aborigine identity, promoted by the opposition, DPP, party as a way to enhance their prestige.

This chapter investigates the Neogene faunal succession and biochronology of central Nei Mongol in Inner Mongolia. Neogene land mammals in the Nei Mongol Autonomous Region (or Chinese Inner Mongolia) are among the earliest in Asia described by pioneering explorers in the beginning of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, vertebrate paleontology in Nei Mongol played some of the key roles in the establishment of a continental biochronological record in Asia. In addition to reviewing the main framework of Neogene mammal faunal succession in central Nei Mongol based on current studies, this chapter updates the biochronologic definition and characterization of faunas in the region through the analysis of assemblages. It also integrates the faunal evidence with isotopic ages and magnetostratigraphy.