Yin and yang a hill" in Huayin 華陰, which is north of Mount Hua 華山 in Shaanxi province. In Japan, the characters are used in western Honshu to delineate the north-side San'in region 山陰 from the south-side San'yō region 山陽, separated by the Chugoku mountain range 中国山地. English "yin", "yang", and "yin-yang" are familiar loanwords of Chinese origin. The "Oxford English Dictionary" defines: yin (jɪn) Also Yin, Yn. [Chinese "yīn" shade, feminine; the moon.] a. In Chinese philosophy, the feminine or negative principle (characterized by dark, wetness, cold, passivity, disintegration, etc.) of the two opposing cosmic forces into which creative energy divides and
Zhou Dunyi that "the many are ultimately one and the one is ultimate." This was the first 11th-century Chinese text to argue for the inseparability of metaphysics or cosmology and ethics, as well as the first major Chinese text to explore the concept of the taijitu or "yin-yang symbol". It contained his theory of creation, which can be summarized in the following paraphrase of its first section: "In the beginning, there was t'ai chi (taiji) (the great ultimate of being), which was fundamentally identical with wu chi (wuji) (the ultimate of non-being). Because of the abundance of energy within t'ai chi, it