Coordinates	38°53′51.61″N77°2′11.58″N
Area
Population	3,879,000,000 (1st)
Density	87/km2 (225/sq mi)
Demonym	Asian
Countries	48
List countries	List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia
Dependencies
Unrecognized
Languages	List of languages
Time	UTC+2 to UTC+12
Internet	.asia
Cities	List of cities }}

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area) and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled.

Asia is defined according to similar definitions presented by the Encyclopedia Britannica and the National Geographic Society as 4/5 of the landmass of Eurasia — with the western portion of the latter occupied by Europe — located to the east of the Suez Canal, east of the Ural Mountains and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma-Manych Depression) and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Given its size and diversity, Asia — a toponym dating back to classical antiquity — "is more a cultural concept" incorporating diverse regions and peoples than a homogeneous physical entity Asia differs very widely among and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties and government systems.

Definition and boundaries

Three-continent system of the Greek geographers

The original distinction between Europe and Asia was made by the ancient Greeks. They used the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, and the Sea of Azov as the border between Asia and Europe. The Nile was often used as the border between Asia and Africa (then called Libya), although some Greek geographers suggested the Red Sea would form a better boundary. Darius' canal between the Nile and the Red Sea introduced considerable variation in opinion. Under the Roman Empire, the Don River emptying into the Black Sea was the western border of Asia. It was the northernmost navigable point of the European shore.

The Europe-Asia boundary

The Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, as well as armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721. The major geographical theorist of the empire was actually a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, and was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book.

At home in Sweden again, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia. The Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography as well as other cultural heritage. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th-century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. In the maps of the period, Transcaucasia was counted as Asian. The incorporation of most of that region into the Soviet Union tended to push views of the border to the south.

The Oceania-Asia boundary

The border between Asia and Oceania is placed somewhere in the Malay archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. Oceania has never been Asia, whatever it may have been defined to be. The chief factor in determining what islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." Currently Malaysia and Indonesia with the western half of New Guinea are in Southeast Asia (although the New Guinea territory of Indonesia is being disputed by the natives).

The ongoing process of definition

Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. In contrast to Europe, Asia is the largest and most culturally diverse of the continents in the seven-continent system. It does not exactly correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents.

In addition to its general inherited geographical meaning, to which the entire literate world subscribes, Asia has any number of agency-specific meanings organizationally and operationally of use in more restricted fields of interest. For example, the World University Service of Canada is a volunteer organization dedicated to bringing educational, health and other services to nations that need them the most. The regional divisions most convenient to its operations include, among others, the Middle East and Europe, and South and Southeast Asia, termed just "Asia." Its administrative Asia is substantially different from the overall geographic and the same may be said of many hundreds more agencies across the globe that operate in Asia from headquarters elsewhere. Some of the most innovative and perhaps the most transitory uses of "Asia" have been promulgated by the news media reporting on current events. Their classifications must be the most suitable for the news and the sources of it. For example, the BBC News has an Asia-Pacific section, which acquires news from anywhere in Australasia, Oceania or the Pacific side of the Americas.

Supercontinent

From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe, the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of the continent of Asia." Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass — or of Afro-Eurasia; geologically, Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass (except for the Suez Canal) and share a common continental shelf. Almost all of Europe and most of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate, adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with the easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Cherskiy Range) on the North American Plate.

Etymology

The place name, Asia, in various forms in a large number of modern languages is of unknown ultimate provenience. Its etymology and language of origin are uncertain. It appears to be one of the most ancient of recorded names. A number of theories have been published. English Asia can be traced through the formation of English literature to Latin literature, where it has the same form, Asia. Whether all uses and all forms of the name derive also from the Latin of the Roman Empire is much less certain.

"Asia" in classical antiquity

Latin Asia and Greek Ἀσία appear to be the same word. Roman authors translated Ἀσία as Asia. The Romans named a province Asia, which was in the location of the then Asia. There was an Asia Minor and an Asia Maior (Iraq), of which the name of Minor survived. As the earliest evidence of the name is Greek, it is likely circumstantially that Asia came from Ἀσία, but ancient transitions, due to the lack of literary contexts, are difficult to catch in the act. The most likely vehicles were the ancient geographers and historians, such as Herodotus, who were all Greek. Roman civilization Hellenized extensively. Ancient Greek certainly evidences early and rich uses of the name.

The first continental use of Asia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BC), not because he innovated it, but because his ''Histories'' are the earliest surviving prose to describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully, mentioning the previous geographers whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By it he means Anatolia and the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt. Herodotus comments that he is puzzled as to why three women's names were "given to a tract which is in reality one" (Europa, Asia, and Libya, referring to Africa), stating that most Greeks assumed that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus (i.e. Hesione), but that the Lydians say it was named after Asies, son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis. In Greek mythology, "Asia" (''Ἀσία'') or "Asie" (''Ἀσίη'') was the name of a "Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia."

Herodotus' geographical puzzlement was perhaps only a form of disagreement, as, having read the earlier Greek poetry along with everyone else literate, he would have known perfectly well why places received female names. Athens, Mycenae, Thebes and many other locations in fact had them. In ancient Greek religion, places were under the care of female divinities, parallel to guardian angels. The poets detailed their doings and generations in allegoric language salted with entertaining stories, which subsequently playwrights transformed into classical Greek drama and became "Greek mythology."

For example, Hesiod mentions the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, among whom are a "holy company", "who with the Lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping." Many of these are geographic: Doris, Rhodea, Europa, Asia. Hesiod explains:

"For there are three-thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters."

The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer) mentions two Phrygians (the tribe that replaced the Luvians in Lydia) in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian"); and also a marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος.

"Asia" in the Bronze Age

Before Greek poetry, the Aegean Sea area was in a Greek Dark Age, at the beginning of which syllabic writing was lost and alphabetic writing had not begun. Prior to then in the Bronze Age the records of the Assyrian Empire, the Hittite Empire and the various Mycenaean states of Greece mention a region undoubtedly Asia, certainly in Anatolia, including if not identical to Lydia. These records are administrative and do not include poetry.

The Mycenaean states were destroyed about 1200 BC by unknown agents although one school of thought assigns the Dorian invasion to this time. The burning of the palaces baked clay diurnal administrative records written in a Greek syllabic script called Linear B, deciphered by a number of interested parties, most notably by a young World War II cryptographer, Michael Ventris, subsequently assisted by the scholar, John Chadwick. A major cache discovered by Carl Blegen at the site of ancient Pylos included hundreds of male and female names formed by different methods.

Some of these are of women held in servitude (as study of the society implied by the content reveals). They were used in trades, such as cloth-making, and usually came with children. The epithet, lawiaiai, "captives," associated with some of them identifies their origin. Some are ethnic names. One in particular, aswiai, identifies "women of Asia." Perhaps they were captured in Asia, but some others, Milatiai, appear to have been of Miletus, a Greek colony, which would not have been raided for slaves by Greeks. Chadwick suggests that the names record the locations where these foreign women were purchased. The name is also in the singular, Aswia, which refers both to the name of a country and to a female of it. There is a masculine form, aswios. This Aswia appears to have been a remnant of a region known to the Hittites as Assuwa, centered on Lydia, or "Roman Asia."

Alternatively, the etymology of the term may be from the Akkadian word '''', which means 'to go outside' or 'to ascend', referring to the direction of the sun at sunrise in the Middle East and also likely connected with the Phoenician word ''asa'' meaning east. This may be contrasted to a similar etymology proposed for ''Europe'', as being from Akkadian ''erēbu(m)'' 'to enter' or 'set' (of the sun).

T.R. Reid supports this alternative etymology, noting that the ancient Greek name must have derived from ''asu'', meaning 'east' in Assyrian (''ereb'' for ''Europe'' meaning 'west'). The ideas of ''Occidental'' (form Latin ''Occidens'' 'setting') and ''Oriental'' (from Latin ''Oriens'' for 'rising') are also European invention, synonymous with ''Western'' and ''Eastern''. Reid further emphasizes that it explains the Western point of view of placing all the peoples and cultures of Asia into a single classification, almost as if there were a need for setting the distinction between Western and Eastern civilizations on the Eurasian continent. Ogura Kazuo and Tenshin Okakura are two outspoken Japanese figures on the subject.

Also, ''Assuwa'' has been suggested as the origin for the name of the continent "Asia". The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia, defeated by the Hittites under Tudhaliya I around 1400 BC.

History

The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes.

The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Huanghe shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands.

The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated.

The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.

The Islamic Caliphate took over the Middle East and Central Asia during the Muslim conquests of the 7th century. The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe.

Geography

Geography is the study of the major divisions of a specified region, here Asia. Most anciently it described the major geopolitical subdivisions, but more recently includes other bases, such as geology.

Economy

Asia has the second largest nominal GDP of all continents, after Europe, but the largest when measured in PPP. As of 2010, the largest economies in Asia are the People's Republic of China, Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of top 5 were in Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London and Shanghai. Around 68 percent of international firms have office in Hong Kong.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of the PRC and India have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very high growth nations in Asia include Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Cyprus and the Philippines, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history, until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid 19th century. Japan has had for only several decades after WW2 the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1986 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of the USA as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen/dollar. Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim, known as the Asian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.

It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2020. In terms of GDP per capita, both nominal and PPP-adjusted, South Korea will become the second wealthiest country in Asia by 2025, overtaking Germany, the United Kingdom and France. According to IMF statistics for the year 2010, the mostly unrecognized Republic of China PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, at USD 34,743, is already higher than that of Finland, France, or Japan. By 2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world. Several trade blocs exist, with the most developed being the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum, forests, fish, water, rice, copper and silver. Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, Philippines and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in the area of multinational corporations, but increasingly mainland China and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure.

According to Citigroup 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Asia has four main financial centres: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Call centres and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centres. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become a major hub for outsourcing.

In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million of millionaires and slightly below North America with 3.4 million of millionaires. Last year Asia had toppled Europe. Millionaires means have worth at least $1 million, excluding their homes.

Demographics

East Asia had by far the strongest overall HDI improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the Report’s analysis of health, education and income data. PR China, the second highest achiever in the world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the “Top 10 Movers” list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region’s top performers in improving school enrolment and life expectancy. Nepal, a South Asian country, emerges as one of the world’s fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than 1970's.; more than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago. Japan and South Korea ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 11 and 12 in the world, which are in the “very high human development” category), followed by Hong Kong (SAR)(21) and Singapore (27). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed.

Languages

Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates. Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue, more than 600 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 800 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in the Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces.

Mythology

Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Christians in the Old Testament, is first found in Mesopotamian mythology, in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. Hindu mythology tells about an Avatar of the God Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. In ancient Chinese mythology, Shan Hai Jing, the Chinese ruler Da Yu, had to spend 10 years to control a deluge which swept out most of ancient China and was aided by the goddess Nüwa who literally fixed the broken sky through which huge rains were pouring.

Religions

Almost all Asian religions have philosophical character and Asian philosophical traditions cover a large spectrum of philosophical thoughts and writings. Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. They include elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of material world. Christianity is also present in most Asian countries.

Abrahamic

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Baha'i Faith originated in West Asia. Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, is practiced primarily in Israel (which has the world's largest Jewish population), though small communities exist in other countries, such as the Bene Israel in India. In the Philippines and East Timor, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion; it was introduced by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, respectively. In Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia and Russia, Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion. Various Christian denominations have adherents in portions of the Middle East, as well as China and India. The world's largest Muslim community (within the bounds of one nation) is in Indonesia. South Asia (mainly Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) holds 30% of Muslims. There are also significant Muslim populations in China, Iran, Malaysia, southern Philippines (Mindanao), Russia and most of West Asia and Central Asia. The Bahá'í Faith originated in Asia, in Iran (Persia), and spread from there to the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and Burma during the lifetime of Bahá'u'lláh. Since the middle of the 20th Century, growth has particularly occurred in other Asian countries, because the Bahá'í Faith's activities in many Muslim countries has been severely suppressed by authorities.

Dharmic and Taoist

The religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, South Asia. In East Asia, particularly in China and Japan, Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism took shape.

Over 80% of the populations of both India and Nepal adhere to Hinduism, alongside significant communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bali. Many overseas Indians in countries such as Burma, Singapore and Malaysia also adhere to Hinduism.

Buddhism has a great following in mainland Southeast Asia and East Asia. Buddhism is the religion of the majority of the populations of Cambodia (98%), Thailand (95%), Burma (89%), Japan (84-96%), Bhutan (75%), Sri Lanka (69%), Laos (67%-98%) and Mongolia (50%). Large Buddhist populations also exist in Singapore (42.5%), Taiwan (35.1%-93%), South Korea (23.2%), Malaysia(19.2%), Nepal (10.7%), Vietnam (9.3-80%), People's Republic of China(8-80%), North Korea (4.5%-60%), Indonesia (<2%); and small communities in India and Bangladesh. In many Chinese communities, Mahayana Buddhism is easily syncretized with Taoism, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated. The Communist-governed countries of China, Vietnam and North Korea are officially atheist, thus the number of Buddhists and other religious adherents may be under-reported.

Jainism is found mainly in India and in oversea Indian communities such as India and Malaysia. Sikhism is found in Northern India and amongst overseas Indian communities in other parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia. Confucianism is found predominantly in Mainland China, South Korea, Taiwan and in overseas Chinese populations. Taoism is found mainly in Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Taoism is easily syncretized with Mahayana Buddhism for many Chinese, thus exact religious statistics is difficult to obtain and may be understated or overstated.

Culture

Nobel prizes

The polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali Indian poet, dramatist, and writer from Santiniketan, now in West Bengal, India, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas. He is also the writer of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India.

Tagore is said to have named another Bengali Indian Nobel prize winner, the 1998 laureate in Economics, Amartya Sen. Sen's work has centered on global issues including famine, welfare, and third-world development. Amartya Sen was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK, from 1998 to 2004, becoming the first Asian to head an 'Oxbridge' College.

Other Asian writers who won Nobel Prizes include Yasunari Kawabata (Japan, 1966), Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan, 1994), Gao Xingjian (People's Republic of China, 2000) and Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006).

Also, Mother Teresa of India and Shirin Ebadi of Iran were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. Ebadi is the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Another Nobel Peace Prize winner is Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship in Burma. She is a nonviolent pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma(Myanmar) and a noted prisoner of conscience. She is a Buddhist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Most recently, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China.

Sir C.V.Raman is the first Asian to get a Nobel prize in Sciences. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him".

Other Asian Nobel Prize winners include Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Abdus Salam, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Robert Aumann, Menachem Begin, Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Daniel Kahneman, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ada Yonath, Yaser Arafat, Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Timor Leste, Kim Dae-jung, and 13 Japanese scientists. Most of the said awardees are from Japan and Israel except for Chandrasekhar and Raman (India), Salam (Pakistan), Arafat (Palestinian Territories) Kim (South Korea), Horta and Belo (Timor Leste).

In 2006, Dr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the establishment of Grameen Bank, a community development bank that lends money to poor people, especially women in Bangladesh. Dr. Yunus received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University, United States. He is internationally known for the concept of micro credit which allows poor and destitutes with little or no collateral to borrow money. The borrowers typically pay back money within the specified period and the incidence of default is very low.

The Dalai Lama has received approximately eighty-four awards over his spiritual and political career. On 22 June 2006, he became one of only four people ever to be recognized with Honorary Citizenship by the Governor General of Canada. On 28 May 2005, he received the Christmas Humphreys Award from the Buddhist Society in the United Kingdom. Most notable was the Nobel Peace Prize, presented in Oslo, Norway on 10 December 1989.

See also

References to articles:

Subregions of Asia

Special topics:

Asian Century

Asian cuisine

Asian furniture

Asian Games

Asian Monetary Unit

Asian people

Eastern world

Far East

Fauna of Asia

Flags of Asia

Middle East

* Eastern Mediterranean

* Levant

* Near East

Pan-Asianism

Lists:

List of cities in Asia

List of metropolitan areas in Asia by population

List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia

References

Bibliography

Further reading

Higham, Charles. ''Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations''. Facts on File library of world history. New York: Facts On File, 2004.

Kamal, Niraj. "Arise Asia: Respond to White Peril". New Delhi:Wordsmith,2002, ISBN 978-81-87412-08-3

Kapadia, Feroz, and Mandira Mukherjee. ''Encyclopaedia of Asian Culture and Society.'' New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1999.

Levinson, David, and Karen Christensen. ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002.

External links

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Zhang Xiaogang (; born 1958) is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. Paintings in his ''Bloodline'' series are often monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 60s.

Life and career

Zhang was born in the city of Kunming in China's Yunnan province in 1958. He came of age during the 1960s and 70s political upheavals known as the Cultural Revolution, which exerted a certain influence on his painting. In 1982, he graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in the city of Chongqing in Sichuan province, then joined a young group of young avant-garde painters who came to prominence during the 1980s. Like Wang Guangyi, Xu Beihong and Wu Guanzhong, Zhang Xiaogang is a best-selling contemporary Chinese artist and a favorite of foreign collectors. His paintings feature prominently in the 2005 film Sunflower.

In 2007, a canvas of his sold for US$6 million at Sotheby's while in April 2011 his 1988 triptych oil work ''Forever Lasting Love'', of half-naked figures in an arid landscape suffused with mystical symbols, sold for HK$79 million (US$10.1 million), a record auction price for a contemporary artwork from China, in Hong Kong.

He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York/Beijing and Beijing Commune in Beijing for his prints.

Influences

Western painters including Richter, Picasso and Dali are influences. Zhang said: "I read in a book once a few words by British experimental artist Eduardo Paolozzi, which were very influential for me: 'a person can very easily have the right idea, but choose the wrong means to express it. Or he can have the right means, but lack a clear idea.'" Zhang also cites his discovery of photos of his mother as a young, attractive woman as a key inspiration for the ''Bloodline'' series.

Analysis

Referring to the ''Bloodline'' paintings, Zhang noted that old photographs "are a particular visual language" and says: "I am seeking to create an effect of 'false photographs' — to re-embellish already 'embellished' histories and lives." He said: "On the surface the faces in these portraits appear as calm as still water, but underneath there is great emotional turbulence. Within this state of conflict the propagation of obscure and ambiguous destinies is carried on from generation to generation."

Regarding the influences of China's political upheavals on his paintings, Zhang said, "For me, the Cultural Revolution is a psychological state, not a historical fact. It has a very strict connection with my childhood, and I think there are many things linking the psychology of the Chinese people today with the psychology of the Chinese people back then."

Regarding the portrait-like format of the works, he noted, "Posing for a photograph, people already display a certain formality. It is already something artificial. What I do is increase this artificiality and this sense of formalism."

Asked about the full title of the Bloodline series. ''Bloodline: the Big Family'', Zhang said:

We all live 'in a big family'. The first lesson we have to learn is how to protect ourselves and keep our experiences locked up in an inner chamber away from the prying eyes of others, while at the same time living in harmony as a member of this big family. In this sense, the "family" is a unit for the continuity of life and an idealized mechanism for procreation. It embodies power, hope, life, envy, lies, duty and love. The 'family' becomes the standard model and the focus for the contradictions of life experiences. We interact and depend on each other for support and assurance.

The ''Bloodline'' paintings often feature small patches of colour, which are open to a variety of interpretations.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

1989: Lost in the Dreams Gallery of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing, China

1997: Bloodline: The Big Family-1997 Gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

1998: Bloodline: The Big Family-1998 Hanart Taibei Gallery, Taiwan

1999: Les Camarades Gallery De France, Paris

2000: Zhang xiaogang 2000, Gallery of Max Potetch, New York

2004: Umbilical Cord of History: Paintings by Zhang Xiaogang, Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong

2006: Home, Beijing Commune, Beijing

2007: Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland

2008: Revision PaceWildenstein, New York

2009: Zhang Xiaogang: The Records, Pace Beijing, Beijing, China

2009: Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the Soul, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia

Selected group exhibitions

1989: China Avant-Garde National Art Gallery, Beijing

1991: "I Don't Want to Play Cards with Cezanne" and Other Works: Selections from the Chinese "New Wave" and "Avant-Garde" Art of the Eighties Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California

1992: The Guangzhou Biennial: Oil Paintings from the 90s Guangzhou, China, Documents of China Contemporary Art Show Travelling exhibition in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shenyang, Shanghai, Nanjing

1993: China's New Art Post-1989, Hong Kong Art Center, Hong Kong; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; Marlborough Fine Art, London, Mao Goes pop Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, China's Experience Exhibition, Sichuan Art Gallery, Chengdu, China

1994: Chinese Contemporary Art at São Paulo 22nd International Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil

1995: 46th Venice Biennial Venice, China New Arts Vancouver Art Museum, Vancouver, Canada, Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibition, In the Absence of Ideology, Kampnagel Halle-K3, Hamburg, Germany

1996–97: China! Zeitgenossische Malerei Bonn Art Museum, Bonn, Germany; Kuenstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Reckoning With the Past: Contemporary Chinese Paintings, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Great Britain, The 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art Queensland Art Museum, Australia, 4 Points de Rencotre, China, 1996 Galerie de France, Paris, Reality: Present and future International Art Palace, Beijing, The First Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art, China National Art Gallery, Beijing and Hong Kong Art Center, Hong Kong

1998: Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland.

2000: Kwangju Biennale 2000, Kwangju, Korea, A Hundred Years of Chinese Oil Painting, China National Art Gallery, Beijing

2001: group exhibition, Artist Centre, Oslo, Norway

2002: "Babel 2002" exhibition, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.

2008: "Bloodline exhibition", Saatchi Gallery, London

2009: "The China Project:, G.O.M.A (Gallery of Modern Art), Brisbane BRISBANE ROCKS(sponsored by Tristan Ellul)

Prizes and awards

Bronze Prize at the 22nd São Paulo Biennial Exhibition in Brazil in 1994.

Document Prize at the First Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art held at the China National Museum of Fine Arts and Hong Kong Art Centre in 1996.

Prize for Contemporary New Asian Artists granted by the British Court's International Art Fund in Hong Kong.

See also

Ai Weiwei

Wang Guangyi

Zhang Huan

Yang Jiechang

Zheng Guogu

Xu Bing

References

Lovelace, Carey. "Zhang Xiaogang at Max Protetch." Art in America 89, no. 3 (March 2001): 132.

Thomson, Jonathan. "Zhang Xiaogang, History’s Public Face." Asian Art News 14, no. 3 (May/June, 2004): 44–49.

Gao Minglu. Inside Out: New Chinese Art (San Francisco: SFMoMA, 1998)

Healy, Anthony. Gentle Reminders. World Art (Australia) no. 3 (1996): 16–19, 5 illus. (Feature Article on Zhang Xiaogang)

External links

Zhang Xiaogang at Beijing Commune

Zhang Xiaogang at 88MoCCA - The Museum of Chinese contemporary art on the web

Chinese Contemporary Gallery

Zhang Xiaogang at The Pace Gallery

Zhang Xiaogang – Saatchi Gallery

Xiaogang – Jaski Gallery

Zhang Xiaogang at Max Protetch

Zhang Xiaogang at Louis Lannoo Gallery

Zhang Xiaogang at Eli Klein Fine Art

Category:Chinese artists Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:People's Republic of China painters

fa:شانگ ژیائوگانگ fr:Zhang Xiaogang nl:Zhang Xiaogang pt:Zhang Xiaogang

Hou Hanru (born in 1963 in Guangzhou former Canton, China) is a Chinese art curator and critic who lives in United States since 2006.

He received degrees from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and moved from China in 1990. He lived 16 years in France before movening to America in 1990. He works at San Francisco Art Institute as Director of Exhibitions and Public Program and Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies. He has curated numerous exhibitions including "Cities On The Move" (1997 - 2000), Shanghai Biennale (2000), Gwangju Biennial (2002), Venice Biennale (French Pavilion, 1999, Z.O.U. -- Zone Of Urgency, 2003, Chinese Pavilion, 2007), Nuit Blanche (2004, Paris), the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005), the 2nd Tirana Biennial (2005), the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), "Global Multitude" (Luxembourg 2007), "Trans(cient)City" (Luxembourg 2007), EV+A 2008 (Limerick), etc.

He has been consultant in many international institutions including Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art (Kumamoto, Japan), De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam) etc. and served in juries of many international awards including the Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim Museum), Chinese Contemporary Art Award (Beijing), Ars Fennica (Helsinki), etc.

He has also taught and lectured in various educational institutions including Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam), etc.

A selection of his writings was published as "On The Mid-Ground" by Timezone 8, 2002.

References

San Francisco Art Institute

http://www.iksv.org/bienal10/index.html

http://www.eva.ie/default2.asp?active_page_id=4

Archive of writing on ''Art Practical''

Category:Art curators Category:1963 births Category:People from Guangzhou Category:Living people Category:San Francisco Art Institute faculty Category:Chinese expatriates in the United States Category:China Central Academy of Fine Arts alumni

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Wang Du (, born 1956) is a contemporary Chinese artist who focuses on three-dimensional painted objects. Traditionally trained in Guangzhou, he now lives and has his studio in Paris. His works show strong influences of contemporary Western art and culture, and represent his own notions of modernity and development, and his personal relationship with both China and the West.

Biography

Born in Wuhan, in Hubei Province, the son of a factory manager, Wang sketched and painted from a very young age, beginning to work for the Cultural Revolution government at the age of sixteen. He produced posters and painted interiors while working in mines and a steel company, while exercising his creative skills and ideas privately. He had his first exhibition in 1976, at the age of 20, the year that Mao died. Moving to Guangzhou, Wang took the entrance exams for university and failed them in 1977, but succeeded in 1981 and enrolled at the Guangzhou Institute of Fine Arts.

Though offered a diverse program in both traditional Chinese and Western art, Wang desired to broaden his horizons further. His experience, like that of many artists, during the Cultural Revolution was one of copying and producing propaganda, not of expressing or exercising creativity, and this mode of artistic education was simply too traditional for him. As China continued to open to public expression and greater freedoms for artists, Wang left university in 1985, without graduating.

Amidst a growing, burgeoning artistic community, Wang founded a group called "Southern," along with a number of other artists and intellectuals, to share in one another's work, and to engage in intellectual discussion. Together, they organized performances, and a wide variety of other artistic and intellectual works. He also organized talks at the local library, inviting a variety of speakers to lecture on a monthly basis, until, in late 1987, an agent of the Ministry of the Interior who had been attending his lectures warned him to stop. He complied, fearing that if he did not, he could be imprisoned.

Two years later, after speaking out against corruption, he was arrested and imprisoned for nine months, after which he left for Paris, having married a French journalist he met in Guangzhou. He began to produce and exhibit art there, and gained a number of connections in the French art world through his wife. In 1992, at an exhibition in Switzerland, he was strongly influenced by the work of Jeffrey Deitch, and wrote about it in the first issue of a self-titled magazine, describing the intriguing notions Deitch's work evoked about humanity's artificial and rapid evolution, modern-day science having far more of an effect on society than history and traditional culture.

One of his major exhibitions which came shortly afterwards reflected his difficulties in adjusting to French (and European and Western) society and culture, and involved three-dimensional painted objects drawn from images of his daily life in Paris. The influence of Deitch's ''Post Human'' exhibition was revealed in an exhibition by Wang in 1997, which featured sculptures or statues of nude figures who represented, Wang said, the people of the future, who enjoy the ability, through biotechnology, to redesign their bodies as they choose.

Art

These would be the first of many similar pieces created by Wang, human figures which represent gender play, and a more general play with the human form as a whole. Some of his figures are genderless, some decidedly female with grossly enlarged breasts, or highly muscular male figures. Many, whether sitting on the ground or suspended in the air, are cut off at the legs, or at the torso. One of his more famous pieces, perhaps, is of a young Chinese boy, only his upper half, pulling back on a slingshot, his forward hand greatly enlarged so as to indicate a play with foreshortening and perspective.

Another exhibition, created in the same year and toured around the world, was called ''Cities on the Move''. In this, Wang experimented with concepts related to modern advertising and subliminal experiences. The exhibition included sculpture statues of prostitutes hidden around unexpected corners of the gallery, and watchtowers in the style of the Great Wall of China which emitted a myriad of background soundtracks, conversations and the like recorded by Wang in restaurants, karaoke bars, trains, and various other places around China.

Much of his work since then has focused on the relationship between the media and the public consciousness, and on the artificial controls and manipulation imposed by the media. He has been quoted as saying "I organize my projects just like the media do with reality." An exhibition called ''Disposable Reality'' and presented in 2000 features a number of his three-dimensional creations, derived directly out of magazine images also displayed in the gallery. These range from an American father and son at a shooting gallery to a nude blonde in front of a computer tuned to a porn website to snow leopards, Jacques Chirac, Jiang Zemin, and a Lebanese soldier bearing an AK-47.

His latest works have turned to large-scale sculptures representing crumpled up newspaper, either en masse in trash cans, buildings or other repositories, or individually, in giant exploded versions of ordinary, everyday trash.

Individual exhibitions (selection)

2001: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

2005: Vancouver Art Gallery

2005: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco)

2007: Kestnergesellschaft (Hannover)

2009: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing)

2010: Viersen sculpture collection

Group exhibitions (selection)

1998: MoMA PS1 (New York)

1999: Venice Biennale

2001: Kiasma (Helsinki)

2003: Kunsthalle Wien

2007: Musée National d'Art Moderne (Paris)

2008: Art Basel

2009: Grand Palais (Paris)

Secondary Literature

Uta Grosenick, Caspar Schübbe (Editor): ''China Art'' (English / German / Chinese). Dumont, Köln 2007, ISBN 3-8321-7769-8

Joachim Peter Kastner (Editor): ''Wang Du. China Daily, Services top task for Games''. Skulpturensammlung Viersen. Viersen 2010, ISBN 978-3-9813463-1-2

References

Nuridsany, Michel. China Art Now. Paris: Editions Flammarion, 2004. pp62–73.

External links

Wang Du at 88MoCCA - The Museum of Chinese contemporary art on the web

Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery">Wang Du, Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery

Category:Chinese artists Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:People from Wuhan

de:Wang Du fr:Wang Du ru:Ван Ду

Liu Xiaodong (; born 1963 in Liaoning, China) is a contemporary Chinese artist.

Education

Liu studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (中央美术学院) in Beijing and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in oil painting in 1988. In 1995 he was awarded a Masters of Fine Art in oil painting at the same university. From 1998. He continued his studies overseas at the Academy of Fine Arts at the Madrid Complutense University in Spain

Filmography

1990: Began participating with the Chinese Independent Film Movement, starting as the lead role in ''The Days'', which was named one of the top 100 most important international films of the past century by the BBC.

1993: Art director for movie: ''Beijing Bastards''.

2006: Starred in Documentary, ''Dong'' ("East",《东》), a documentary of the Three Gorges and Thailand painting project by director Jia Zhangke. This film was entered into the 2006 Venice Film Festival as a candidate for the Golden Lion Award.

Public Exhibitions

2010 Liu Xiaodong has a new exhibition of his paintings in Beijing starting 18 November 2010.

2009 Inaugural Exhibition, Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery, Beijing

2008

*Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

2006

*Biennale of Sydney 2006, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, NSW

*The Three Gorges Project - Paintings by Liu Xiaodong, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA

2005

*The Wall - Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

*Regeneration - Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the U.S., ASUART - Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ

*The Second Beijing International Art Biennale 2005, Beijing International Art Biennale, Beijing

*Mahjong - Chinesische Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern

2004

*Three Gorges, China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW), Beijing

*Regeneration - Contemporary Chinese Art, David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, RI

2003

*Alors, la Chine ?, Centre Pompidou - Musée National d´Art Moderne, Paris

2002

*The 1st Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, Guangdong

2001

*Liu Xiaodong, Galerie Loft, Paris

2000

*Photography as fine art, galerie skala, Cologne

*Portraits, figures, couples and groups, BizArt, Shanghai

References

External links

Xiaodong Studio

Interview with Liu Xiaodong at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery">Liu Xiaodong, Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:Chinese artists Category:People from Liaoning Category:People's Republic of China painters Category:China Central Academy of Fine Arts alumni

fr:Liu Xiaodong