Shina (word) - Chinese

Chinese

Below is a Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907) poem titled Ti Fan Shu (literally "preface to a Sanskrit book") using the Chinese term Zhina (支那) to refer to China:

唐玄宗《題梵書》
毫立蛇形勢未休，
五天文字鬼神愁。
支那弟子無言語，
穿耳胡僧笑點頭。

At first, it was widely accepted that the term "Shina" or "Zhina" had no political connotations. In fact, even before the Republican era, the term "Shina" was one of the proposed names that was to be equivalent to the Western usage "China." Chinese revolutionaries, such as Sun Yat-sen, Sung Chiao-jen, and Liang Qichao, used the term extensively, and it was also used in literature as well as by ordinary Chinese.