In the worldwide religious Buddhist tradition, regardless of its directions and schools, it has long been customary to exchange gifts as a sign of respect and good intentions. Important symbolic gifts exchanged, when establishing relations between Buddhist communities or organizations, both at the official level and at the level of personal contacts, are often objects of art, religious attributes – bowls, lamps, incense and censers, sweets, tea and vegetarian dishes, mandalas and Buddhist figurines. In this context, traditional checkers and chess games are considered as unique types of diplomatic gifts in East Asia. Diving briefly into the history of how Asian board games developed, the close connection of chess games with fortune-telling and religious activities is considered. It is appropriate to consider the features of chess games against the background of the activities of Buddhist temples, which served as ideological and cultural centres, largely preserving their educational and spiritual status to this day. The Buddhist symbolism of the main chess pieces and combinations is analyzed in the context of the development of the idea of the mutability and frailty of the world, where each decision can lead to a new reality. Chess games can act as a valuable diplomatic gift, since they are an elegant way to create a dialogue of mutual interest between the parties through culture and traditions.

The effectiveness of using new media to promote traditional art forms, particularly opera, is now beyond doubt among specialists. Furthermore, the declining interest in opera, especially among young people, has led theaters to turn to new media practices. In 2023, the audience for new media in China exceeds 1 billion people. Research shows that modern viewers prefer short texts over lengthy ones and videos over printed works. Chinese theaters are leveraging these characteristics in their approach to traditional art forms. The article illustrates how the Shaoxing opera “Yueju” is being popularized through the performance “The Hotel New Dragon Gates”. To promote the show, internet resources were utilized, particularly platforms like Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and TikTok. Short videos featuring excerpts from the performance and behind-the-scenes life were created, and interactive engagement on social media was organized, including discussions, contests, and more. The leading actors of the performance actively participated in the talk show, which also influenced the audience’s attention to the opera. The article presents digital data showing a 50% increase in audience numbers on TikTok during 2023 alone. At the same time, it highlights the risks associated with using social media to promote traditional opera. Among these risks are a decline in audience interest in traditional performance formats and an excessive focus on recording videos by actors at the expense of rehearsals. Meanwhile, the government is striving to preserve and popularize traditional Chinese culture and plans to create a digital database of works of art by 2035. This project aims to meet the needs of the Chinese audience, which prefers using digital technologies to obtain information, including cultural content

In e-commerce live streaming, businesses are increasingly turning to “TikTok short video + live streaming”, which features as a key marketing method. This study attempts to investigate how persuasive discourse is constructed in this genre through metadiscourse practices. By drawing on Hyland’s (2005) interactional models of metadiscourse and Verschueren’s (1999) metapragmatic awareness theory, this study examines the pragmatic functions of persuasive discourse and the metapragmatic awareness of the streamers reflected on TikTok. This research provides streamers with insights on how to achieve their marketing goals more effectively by enhancing their own metapragmatic awareness and using appropriate practices of persuasive discourse.

This article is devoted to the study of the metaphorization of the city as a cultural and semiotic space on the example of Shanghai in Wang Anyi’s novel “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (王安忆。《长恨歌》, 1995). The purpose of the work is to analyze the potential of figurative and cognitive urbanistic transfers in the process of metaphor formation in artistic discourse based on the example of a particular city and to determine the internal form of a metaphor in its structural and stylistic design. The relevance of the chosen problem is determined by the fact that metaphors act as a discursive emotive-evaluative tool that has a significant impact on the perception of a literary text. Such basic artistic and metaphorical models as “city – painting”, “city – music”, “city – architecture”, “city – woman”, “city – text”, “garden city”, “city – machine (mechanism)”, “city – smell”, “beehive city/anthill”, and so on. A metaphor as a stylistic and discursive component of the text in all analyzed models acts as an objectified form of nomination of the phenomenon of the city, due to which it is possible to know and understand the essence of its existence in human culture. It has been proven that the cognitive metaphor is able to translate the mental structures of a particular ethnoculture and can also act as a productive tool and technique for the intermediate poetics of artistic discourse and style, using the sign systems of various types of art, synthetically processing them and verbalizing them in the text. The role of cognitive-urban metaphor in the novel is considered as modeling historical, social and cultural identity at the artistic level, as well as performing an explanatory function of an important period for Chinese history to the reader.

This article discusses the metaphorical concepts that underlie the formation of phraseological units of the Chinese language, their systematization and determination of their activity in the language system and cinematic discourse. Since the boundaries of the volume of phraseology in the Chinese language are blurred, one of the objectives of the study is to clarify the classification of the phraseological fund of the Chinese language, as well as the principles of the selection of stable phrases, which serve as the basis for the differentiation of phraseological units in the Chinese linguistic tradition. The research proves that Chinese linguists strive to combine the structural and semantic bases of phraseological classification. An attempt is made to analyze the models of metaphorization and the most frequent metaphorical concepts forming phraseological images in the Chinese language. One of the important results of this study is the conclusion that the directions of metaphorization registered in the cinematic discourse are significantly more diverse than the metaphorical bases of phraseological images of Chinese phraseological units, which are the most frequent according to lexicographic sources. At the same time, it was revealed that phraseological units are more often implemented in the cinematic discourse, the imagery of which is based on the activation of two (or even more) metaphorical concepts acting together. The data obtained allowed the authors to formulate a hypothesis that the activity of metaphorical concepts, on the basis of which imagery is formed in Chinese cinematic discourse, may be related to the genre of cinematic discourse.

This paper focuses on the study of internet “guanyongyu” (common expressions) based on metaphors in Chinese internet communication. The research problem lies in exploring how metaphorical concepts form these expressions and their implications for understanding Chinese culture and language. The objective is to investigate the metaphorization models and various metaphorical concepts in the formation of internet “guanyongyu”. The research materials consist of 89 common expressions collected from social media platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu. The method adopted is the classification of metaphor types proposed by A. P. Chudinov. This classification, which includes natural – form metaphors, artifact – based metaphors, anthropomorphic metaphors, and sociomorphic metaphors, offers a structured framework for dissecting the metaphorical nature of “guanyongyu”. Through this method, the paper analyzes these expressions from the perspectives of different conceptual metaphors. The main findings are as follows: zoomorphic metaphors are a primary means of forming “guanyongyu”, which indicates that Chinese people use it to vividly describe people’s emotions and behaviours. Expressions with “chi” (eat) and gastronomic components reflect the importance of food in Chinese culture. Additionally, expressions related to body parts also occupy a significant proportion, highlighting the special place of the human body in the Chinese worldview. This study makes a substantial contribution to resolving a big research problem, since, decoding these metaphor – based expressions, non – native speakers can gain a better grasp of Chinese cultural connotations and linguistic peculiarities. Moreover, it enriches the academic research on Chinese internet language, filling a gap in the exploration of the intersection between metaphor, language, and culture in the digital age.

This article is a detailed exposition and analysis of the chapter Shuori (Explanation of [Ideas about] the Sun) of the treatise Lunheng (Balanced Discussions) by the outstanding Early Chinese thinker Wang Chong (27–102?). It examines a number of problems of an astronomical and cosmological nature, in particular the views on the shape of the heaven, the nature of the movement of the sun and moon, the mechanism of solar eclipses, mythological ideas (ten suns and creatures supposedly living on the heavenly bodies), as well as the nature of the stars and the process of rain. The exposition is accompanied by the thorough study of the sources of statements criticized by Wang Chong, and his own views on the phenomena in question, as well as correction of some errors in the English translation by A. Forke. As a result, conclusions are drawn about the high value of the chapter as a source on ancient Chinese astronomical and cosmological ideas not covered in other texts, as well as about the specificity of his ideas about the structure of the universe, in which heaven is considered to be a flat disk rotating parallel to the Earth, along which the sun and moon move in the opposite direction, creating the illusion of rising and setting as they approach to and withdraw from the observer. 

This article is devoted to the source study of the chapter entitled “Guai shen” (怪神 “Monsters and Deities”) included in the treatise “Feng su tong yi” (風俗通義 “Penetrating into the Meaning of Traditions and Customs”, late 2nd century AD). This treatise was written by the Eastern Han (東漢, 25–220 AD) thinker and statesman Ying Shao 應劭 (d. before 204). Chapter “Guai shen” is a collection of anecdotal material about human encounters with the supernatural, sometimes accompanied by the author's brief assessments of the events and characters in it. The chapter touches on one of the themes that is little covered in other Old Chinese texts – local cults and beliefs of the Han period (漢, 202 BC – 220 AD), so its study may be relevant for understanding the origins of modern folk religious beliefs in China. This article makes an attempt to understand which sources were used by the author to compile this chapter. Several cases of indirect quotation and parallel passages in the text are also considered during the analysis. As a result, the article presents a classification of the chapter's stories and characterizes the main ways in which the author borrowed them from the other texts.

The article is devoted to the analysis of N. Ya. Bichurin’s early correspondence with Korean envoys in Beijing based on materials from the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Letters of the first quarter of the 19th century from representatives of the missions of the two countries are not found in modern published collections of documents. The purpose of this article is to analyze the content of the letters, to describe the relationship between the members of the missions, to determine the historical value of the early correspondence for the study of Sino-Russian-Korean relations on the eve of the new era, and to introduce the letters into scientific circulation. The content of the letters shows a deep mutual interest and the desire of both sides to gain valuable knowledge in various spheres. The novelty of the study becomes the fact that these manuscript materials, closely related to the great Russian sinologist N. Ya. Bichurin, have not been studied and published before. The relevance of the study is caused by the growing scientific interest in new manuscript materials on the history of Russian sinology and Russian-Korean relations.

Studies on Sanxingdui ritual bronzes are hard to enumerate, even if only scientific articles are taken into account. Monographic publications devoted to this subject are so numerous that an overview of them all cannot be contained to one article. The subject of this overview are science and scientific-popular books printed in China in the first two decades after the publication of preliminary reports on the discovery of Sanxingdui ritual bronzes. In 1992, the first album, including Sanxingdui ritual bronzes was published. In 1991–1993, two collections of articles containing results of scientific conferences were published. One of them was devoted to Sanxingdui culture, and the other attempted to connect the site with a later Ba-Shu culture, spread in Sichuan province in the Eastern Zhou period. One year later, a colourized album containing much of Sanxingdui ritual bronzes was published. Scientific-popular literature appeared later. In 1999, a book report on the excavation of sacrificial pits at Sanxingdui with compete scientific descriptions of all artifacts found was published. In the first decade of the 21^st century, numerous scientific-popular books followed. Serious scientific monographs as well as paper collections resulting from scientific conferences were also published. In the second half of the decade, the writing of a continued edition “Sanxingdui Research” (“Sanxingdui yanjiu”) commenced. The research of Sanxingdui in the first decade of the 21^st century was summed up by a three volume complete collection of relics excavated at Sanxingdui site since its discovery in 1928. The first volume of this publication was devoted to ritual bronzes

The article presents a series of bimetallic swords and daggers from published materials and museum collections, including those obtained by the authors during scientific excursions with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (RSCF). Two representative groups of implements belonging to the ancient cultures/ethnos on the territory of North-Eastern (Fuyu State) and South-Western (Dian and Yelang states) regions of modern-day China were selected and compared with each other in the context of the phenomenon of bimetalism in the archaeology of Eurasia from Atlantic to the Pacific. It was established that they represented products that differed morphologically and technologically, which does not exclude the typological similarity of these groups both with each other and with other samples of bimetallic and related weapons in the Eurasian vastness, and the similarity may manifest itself not only in the general appearance, but also at the level of particular elements. Using the example of bimetallic swords and daggers, the composite nature of the set of weapons was established (in the South-West – in some extant more, in the North-East – slightly less) with wide chronological possibilities for comparisons, which become even more obvious when other categories of weapons and horse gear are added to the overview. The problem of chronology of the Dongbei sites with bimetallic swords is identified as a separate approach of research, since taking into account the entire complex of finds in some of the elite graves suggests significantly later dating.

The aim of the work is to analyze the main approaches to the study of Xichagou materials (primarily to establishing its ethnocultural affiliation), developed in the archaeological science of China and the Republic of Korea, and the results obtained in this area. The article provides a brief description of the materials of Xichagou cemetery (Xifeng County, Tieling City, Liaoning Province, China), dating back to the 2^nd – 1^st centuries BCE. The history of its discovery and exploration is presented. The cemetery was discovered in 1955, seriously damaged by looting, and subsequently the excavation report was published 66 years after the completion of the fieldwork, which complicated the interpretation of the materials. Since the discovery of the cemetery and up to the present time, the archaeological science of China has paid special attention to the issue of the ethnicity of the population that set up the cemetery. This problem is solved based on the data of written sources. At different times, hypotheses about the belonging of Xichagou cemetery to the Xiongnu, Wuhuan, Fuyu (Puyo) and Xianbei have been put forward. Currently, the “Wuhuan” version has become established in Chinese archaeology. In the Republic of Korea, the study of the materials of Xichagou cemetery began in the 1990s; these materials are used to reconstruct ethnocultural processes in East Asia, and are also used as analogies when solving specific problems in Korean and East Asian archeology. Among Korean archaeologists, the most common opinion is that Xichagou cemetery belongs to the Puyo.

The use of language is a comprehensive assessment, selection and decision-making process. A single and one-sided perspective cannot satisfactorily explain the sociopragmatic factors on which speakers rely when using the referential word “Renjia”. “Renjia” evolved from a noun to a pronoun and gradually gained the uses of general reference and specific reference. Influenced by social, psychological, cognitive and other multi-level factors, “Renjia” has a variety of referential, as well as perspective shifting possibilities, which testifies that “Renjia” becomes an important language item that foreign students frequently make errors in when learning Chinese. Along with the discussion of the referential usages of “Renjia”, this paper analyzes the sociopragmatic mechanism for the referential usage of “Renjia” from the perspectives of its rhetorical function, sociolinguistic factors, pragmatic factors, cognitive factors, among others, and points out that the speaker chooses to use “Renjia”, in line with their conversational intention, to achieve specific pragmatic communication purposes and certain rhetorical effects by taking into account the socio-psychological factors in communication in the actual context. Choosing to use “Renjia” is a conscious goal-oriented language manipulation. When it comes to Chinese language teaching, this paper suggests that students’ existing module knowledge should be fully explored and activated. Language communication activities should be designed according to students’ level and receptivity, so as to help them master its grammatical functions, commendatory and derogatory colours, stylistic colours, and so on. At the primary stage, rules should be explained in a concise manner, and students should be encouraged to practice as much as possible. In the middle and advanced stages, students should be exposed to learning and practice its self-referential usage