Celestial Empire

Calque of Literary Chinese 天朝 (Tiāncháo).

the Celestial Empire

1. The Empire of China.

   Synonyms: Cathay, China, Empire of China

   • a. 1905, anonymous translator, The Adventures of a Special Correspondent Among the Various Races and Countries of Central Asia‎^[1], translation of Claudius Bombarnac by Jules Verne:

     It is true, there is Turkish of which I had picked up a few phrases, and there is Chinese of which I did not understand a single word. But I had no fear of remaining dumb in Turkestan and the Celestial Empire.

   • 1912, Arthur Henderson Smith, “Uplifting Leaders”, in The Uplift of China‎^[2], →OCLC, page 117:

     Had it not been for the casual discovery in the year 1625 of a deeply buried black marble tablet near Hsi-an containing nearly 1,700 Chinese characters, and a long list of names of priests in Syriac, the fact that such a sect rooted itself in the Celestial Empire would never have been believed, as indeed after the tablet was unearthed it was for a long time discredited.

   • 1991, Chris Mullin, The Year of the Fire Monkey‎^[3] (Fiction), London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 252:

     LIKE THE MANDARINS of old, the rulers of China live behind high walls. When they emerge, which they rarely do, they travel in cars with rear windows curtained like sedan chairs.
     They live in the Chung Nan Hai, a walled park adjacent to the Forbidden City from where ancient dynasties ruled the Celestial Empire.

   • 2025 September 4, Ross Douthat, quoting Dan Wang, “This Is Why America Is Losing to China”, in The New York Times‎^[4], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     […] Does China want to supplant the U.S. wholesale as the global superpower […] ? Or does it want to retreat and become the celestial empire once more, as the Qing dynasty once called itself—close the doors against all of the barbarians, seize Taiwan because it must[,] to fulfill the aims of Mao in the Civil War, and mostly dominate its near neighbors?

     (Can we archive this URL?)

• celestial (a person from the Celestial Empire)

• Celestial City