Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Sinosphere
Summary
The Sinosphere, also known as the East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that historically were heavily influenced by Chinese culture, norms and traditions. According to academic consensus, the Sinosphere comprises four entities: Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Other definitions may include Mongoliaand Singapore, largely due to limited historical Chinese influences or increasing modern-day Chinese diaspora. The Sinosphere is not to be confused with Sinophone, which indicates countries where a Chinese-speaking population is dominant.
Imperial China was a major regional power in Eastern Asia and had exerted influence on tributary states and neighboring states, among which were Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. These interactions brought ideological and cultural influences rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. During classical history, the four cultures shared a common imperial system under respective emperors. Chinese inventions influenced, and were in turn influenced by, innovations of the other cultures in governance, philosophy, science, and the arts. Written Classical Chinese became the regional lingua franca for literary and scientific exchange, and Chinese characters (Hanzi) became locally adapted in Japan as Kanji, Korea as Hanja, and Vietnam as chữ Hán.
In late classical history, the literary importance of classical Chinese diminished as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam each adopted their own literary device. Japan developed the Katakana and Hiragana scripts, Korea created Hangul, and Vietnam developed chữ Nôm (which is now rarely used; the modern Vietnamese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet). Classical literature written in Chinese characters nonetheless remains an important legacy of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures. In the 21st century, ideological and cultural influences of Confucianism and Buddhism remain visible in high culture and social doctrines.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.