The Context

In 1971, Zhang Fengxiang, a farmer in the Ongniud Banner in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region happened to dig out an “iron hook” while planting trees near his home. He immediately gave it to his four-year-old brother to play with. The child tied a rope to the artifact and dragged it along the ground for fun. Eventually, the “rust” on its surface chipped off to reveal the shiny and translucent j...

For more than 13-hundred years, this treacherous and winding path that meanders through the mountains and valleys of southwest China has been trod by human feet and horse hoofs helping to bridge the Chinese hinterland with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Along this unpaved and rugged commercial passage, livestock and commodities flowed back and forth: tea, salt and sugar flowed into Tibet, while horses...

For more than 13-hundred years, this treacherous and winding path that meanders through the mountains and valleys of southwest China has been trod by human feet and horse hoofs helping to bridge the Chinese hinterland with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Along this unpaved and rugged commercial passage, livestock and commodities flowed back and forth: tea, salt and sugar flowed into Tibet, while horses...

Today, we’re going to talk about how a small seal from the Western Jin Dynasty has born witness to the ups and downs of the Qiang people and the gradual integration of northwestern minorities that helped to build the great Chinese nation of today. 

The 40-episode costume drama series A Dream of Splendor , starring A-list actress Liu Yifei, has gathered hundreds of millions of views since it began streaming in June. Today, we’re going to talk about how a popular TV drama highlights the tea contests that emerged during the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Song and helped inspire tea culture in Japan.

China is home to a long-established and flourishing tea culture. In many ways, Japanese culture is fundamentally influenced by China. In its earliest form, Japanese tea practice was no more than a duplicate of Chinese tea culture, but over time, it gradually took on its own features, leading to the formation of the uniquely Japanese “way of tea”. Today we will introduce how the Japanese tea ceremo...

Few would have imagined that visitors would throng to a museum to partake of the beauty of a mural, despite it being a replica, at an exhibition on Chinese civilization earlier this year at the Palace Museum, or popularly known the Forbidden City, in Beijing. The mural or its replica is not beautiful in the visual sense. A mural from the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, northwest China’s Gansu Province...

After the Qing Dynasty established its rule over the heartland of China, the region known as Zhongyuan  in the lower and middle reaches of the Yellow River centered on the region between Luoyang and Kaifeng in Henan Province, the Manchus fully controlled the country. Although setting up a unified dynasty, there were fewer people and Manchu culture was less developed than in Zhongyuan, which was pe...

In the recent cultural relics exhibition titled “The Making of Zhongguo – Origins, Developments and Achievements of Chinese Civilization” at China’s Palace Museum, otherwise known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing, there were two sets of bronzes. One is the Bronze Chime Bells of Zheng State (806-375 BCE), usually housed at Henan Museum in Zhengzhou, one of the largest sets of chime bells ever unea...

Luodian bronze mirrors represent the pinnacle of the art of Chinese bronze mirrors. This is largely because of Emperor Taizong’s (599-649 CE) “historiographical thinking” – exemplified by his famous quote about needing a mirror to correct one’s appearance, understand the rise and fall of a state, and distinguish right from wrong. Today we continue to discuss how the decorated bronze mirrors from t...

Famed Chinese Emperor Taizong, second emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) who laid the foundations of the dynasty, has a meaningful statement about the success of governance, recorded in the Old Book of Tang , a history of the dynasty compiled in 945 after it had fallen. “When one uses a bronze mirror, one can adjust the attire. When one uses history as a mirror, one comprehends the rise and fal...

In the Stone Age, jade represented wealth because of its scarcity and the advanced techniques required to shape it. Among various kinds of recovered jade wares, ritual vessels were the most valuable and symbolized higher social status. Each kind had distinct purposes. Bi (disc), for example, were used in heaven worship rites. Cong (tube), with their taotie motifs, suggest a supreme religious autho...

More than 100 priceless relics were displayed at the exhibition “The Making of Zhongguo – Origins, Developments and Achievements of Chinese Civilization” at China’s Palace Museum. Among the treasured objects, two stand out as representative of their kind – jade cong , a tube-like vessel with a square outer section around a circular inner part. One is the Liangzhu jade cong  from the Zhejiang Provi...

Demand for trade gave rise to the great geographical exploration and the first wave of globalization. However, disputes and conflicts in cross-border trade soon followed. The tea trade not only played a crucial role in many historic events, it also shaped the development of modern civilization. Tea trade between China and Britain began in the 17th century. In fact, although the Netherlands and Ind...

Today we continue to discuss the Ten-Thousand-Mile Tea Road by looking at the competition between Russian and British tea merchants as they vied for supremacy in the China market, how the tea road, after a more than two centuries of prosperity, faded into history, and the modern initiatives that hark back to the cultural exchanges of the past.

It was a humble leaf that helped connect the Eurasian continent and opened the door to commercial trade and cultural exchanges between civilizations. This is the tale of the Ten-Thousand-Mile Tea Road. With an entire span of over 13,000 kilometers, the Ten-Thousand-Mile Tea Road stretches all the way from Wuyi Mountain in southeast China’s Fujian Province, via Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia, to...

Less glamorous than jade, gold or silver ware, pottery gets less attention at museum exhibitions. Archaeologists, however, argue that pottery is the most important cultural relic for understanding human prehistory. Unlike gold or jade, most ceramics are practical and designed for daily use. Pottery thus can offer a well-rounded view of the era it came from. In the recent Palace Museum exhibition “...

Today we discuss how the Chinese characters for “China”, Zhongguo, literally meaning Middle Kingdom, appears for the first time more than 3,000 years ago. He Zun, the most eye-catching and prominent example of bronzeware from the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BCE) holds the key to the question.  In 1963, a farmer in the city of Baoji, Shaanxi Province, discovered the vessel at a cliff near his ho...

Polished black pottery is the trademark pottery ware of the Longshan culture, which differs from the previous colored pottery of the Neolithic Yangshao culture from 5,000 to 3,000 BCE. It has also learnt its name – Black Pottery Culture – as an alternative to Longshan as an identifier.  The eggshell pottery items they produced are exquisite, dark and bright in appearance, with slender stems and ha...

From ancient hunters hitting the slopes to skating soldiers and alcohol-fueled sledding sessions, China’s north has hosted centuries of snow and ice sport. Today, skating, skiing and ice sledding are not only popular in China’s cold north, but across the country. The modern Olympics has taken inspiration from depictions of the Qing Dynasty ice games for the design of the central garden of the Olym...

Today we discuss how unfettered imperial seigniorage broke economies and even dynasties in ancient China Inflation is a big concern for consumers and policymakers in major economies today. In the US, the consumer price index rose by 6.8 percent in 2021, the highest in nearly 40 years. In China, although the consumer price index, an indicator of inflation, only saw a mild increase of 0.9 percent in...

We are once again reminded of the great importance and value of coal, petroleum and electricity by the recent energy shortage. Just like the air, they seem invisible and therefore neglected, but they have been an indispensable part of our daily life since ancient times.  In the country with the world’s largest coal reserves, it is thought that people started using   coal over 7,000 years ago in Ch...

According to the General Administration of Customs of China, the private sector in China posted 28 percent of year-on-year growth of foreign-trade in the first 10 months of 2021, generating 48.3 percent of China’s total imports and exports. Its growth rate and share both outperformed those of foreign funded enterprises and State-owned enterprises. In 2019, China’s private companies contributed mor...

The torrential rainfall in early October in Shanxi Province put the spotlight on the less-developed region in China’s northwest. People rediscovered Shanxi. An important outcome was the realization that Shanxi is home to so many precious ancient buildings and many are not under national or provincial protection. Those with no or insufficient protection are at risk of collapse.    The historical va...

Since the end of 2020, some Chinese companies have been involved in a series of high-profile cases involving breaches of regulations. The public attitude toward these tech giants has also changed in the past two years.  All this contrasts with the image of business people for more than four decades since China adopted its reform and opening-up policy in the late 1970s. Going into business was a ve...