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 “The Making of Zhongguo – Origins, Developments and Achievements of Chinese Civilization,” a ceramic ...
Jul 01, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 65
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 home on a rainy evening. The artifact, about one cubic meter in volume, was sticking out from the soil....
Jun 12, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 64
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 handles. The pottery is highly polished and thin-walled, like an eggshell. The average thickness of an ...
May 04, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 63
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 Olympic and Paralympic villages in Beijing, bringing the ancient right up to date.
Mar 08, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 62
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 2021, the producer price index rose by 8.1 percent. This rising cost of manufacturers may get passe...
Jan 27, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 61
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 China. It was the use of coal that changed Chinese history. Besides smelting, it burns at the high temper...
Dec 24, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 60
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 more to foreign trade than foreign-funded businesses for the first time. From 2000 to 2018, more than 4...
Nov 26, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 59
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 value of Shanxi is not only embedded in the ancient buildings on its land. It takes another intangible red...
Nov 17, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 58
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 very popular choice for a majority of the people. In the 1990s, many civil servants quit to go into bus...
Nov 10, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 57
A world where the widowed, disabled and anyone in need are all cared for was an ideal envisioned by Confucian scholars during the Warring States period from the fifth to third century BCE. Their writings make up the earliest recorded ideas about charity in China’s history. Government-sponsored charity mainly included disaster relief. This falls far short of modern Western charity, a virtue that has roots in Christian ethics. Buddhist temples provided alms to the poor. This marked the beginning o...
Nov 03, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Our previous podcast discussed some of the ancient hermits that feature in the Palace Museum’s Figure Paintings Across the Ages exhibition. They gave up political pursuits right from the start and never wavered. But unlike them, most hermit scholars depicted in the exhibition were deeply involved in politics in some way. For Jiang Ziya and the four old men, they lived in seclusion just to wait for the right time to realize their political ambitions. In Jiang Ziya’s case, the lifestyle was even u...
Oct 25, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 55
At the Palace Museum exhibition, a total of 76 paintings include portraits of the most famous hermit-scholars in China’s history. It is the second in a series of four ancient portrait exhibitions by the Palace Museum. Unlike this group of hermits, the other three exhibitions feature figures who either actively sought to make their name in the world, or tried to enjoy life. While paintings of religious figures were similarly used In the West to educate people, there is no such genre of art that f...
Oct 17, 2021•11 min•Season 1Ep. 54
“Globally, around 14 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17 percent of total global food production is wasted,” according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Food supply is not just an agricultural issue. On September 23, the first UN Food Systems Summit was held in New York. More than 150 countries made a joint commitment on transforming their food system to tackle hunger, poverty, gender equality, biodiversity and climate change....
Oct 08, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 53
On August 21, the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC celebrated the first birthday of panda cub Xiao Qi Ji, which translates to Little Miracle. The zoo had held an online contest where the public could vote on a list of names. He “shared not one but two delicious fruitsicle cakes with his mother, Mei Xiang,” the zoo said on its website. The cub’s birth definitely comes as a little miracle during the Covid-19 pandemic and tensions between China and the US. The first pair of pandas, Ling...
Sep 28, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Today we discuss how a ferocious, exotic beast, lion, has become an auspicious, cute cultural icon in ancient China. The lion originally came from Africa. It trekked from Egypt into Europe and Asia Minor from the Mediterranean, and into the Iranian Plateau and India. There was no human intervention in their migration. There are two sub-spices of Asian lions: Persian lions and Indian lions. When the Silk Road developed in the late 2nd century, lions were imported to China through the Silk Road as...
Sep 21, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 51
On August 30, China announced a policy that restricts the time minors can play online games to three hours a week. The new rules limit those under 18 access to online gaming platforms to one hour from 8 to 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and on official holidays. However, on Saturday 8pm that week, many complained they could not log on their accounts for Arena of Valor, a popular game by Tencent. Two hours later, Tencent said that its servers were down and it had already fixed the problem...
Sep 13, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 50
If Wuhan was the place in China that received most attention in 2020, Henan Province has certainly captured its share of attention this year. Henan in history is repeatedly referred to as the “zhongyuan,” or “central plain.” It is the thousands of years of its history as the “zhongyuan” that has created and shaped the land as the symbol of the most glorious – and the most painful memories of China. So where and what is the “zhongyuan?” Geographically, “zhongyuan” in a broad sense includes today’...
Sep 06, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Even if we trace archaeology back to da Vinci and Raphael, there is another related discipline that began much earlier. Epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions, was first developed in ancient China. Unlike archaeology, it aimed to challenge and verify interpretations of classical Confucianism texts. A movement similar to the Renaissance blossomed in China during the 9th and 11th century. Leaders of the movement sought inspiration from ancient traditions. Part of their efforts was research o...
Aug 30, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 48
By August 2, at least 302 people had died and some 50 were registered as missing due to the catastrophic floods that swept through parts of central China’s Henan Province after days of torrential downpours in mid-July. By 7am on August 9, nearly 15 million people in Henan had been affected by the floods. In Europe, about 200 people died in the flood which hit Germany and Belgium also in mid-July. For thousands of years, China suffered from severe floods. Ancient Chinese people dealt with the pro...
Aug 23, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 47
At one time, archaeology was not a place for outsiders. But in recent years, it has captured the public imagination in China with movie blockbusters about tomb raiding like The Lost Tomb and the mysterious new findings of the Sanxingdui excavations. There is even a popular toy that lets children play archaeologist: a box containing a Terracotta warrior replica buried in dirt and tiny excavation tools. You have to clean it with the tools to discover what kind of Terracotta warrior you got. It cou...
Aug 15, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Humans in prehistory period relied on hunting and gathering to survive. When agriculture was developed, hunting became an important sport and entertainment for elites. It often carried military and political significance.
Aug 08, 2021•14 min
The construction of the Hangou canal began in 486 BCE, 1,090 years before Emperor Yang launched his canal project. It became the earliest part of what became the Sui Grand Canal. Its initiator was a ruler who was as ambitious and ill-fated as Emperor Yang. Cities along the Grand Canal also were affected as the length and contour of the canal changed. At 1,800 kilometers long, the Yuan canal is about 800 kilometers shorter than the previous canal. Suzhou and Hangzhou earned the name “paradises on...
Aug 01, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 44
“The same water either supports or overturns boats on it,” Li Shimin, the second emperor of the Tang in the 7th century, often cited these Confucius’ remarks which compared water to the people and boats to sovereigns. He did this to repeatedly remind himself of the lessons he learned from the fall of the Sui. He founded a golden age in China's history. The Grand Canal witnessed and even underwrote the rise and fall of power and wealth of dynasties, cities and people for thousands of years in anc...
Jul 26, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 43
There were 200 million skilled workers in China at the end of 2020, only 26 percent of the country’s total workforce. Given this, vocational education has drawn unprecedented attention among policymakers in China, the world’s largest manufacturer. But parents, particularly those in urban areas, are against sending their children to vocational high schools or colleges. The problem is that blue collar jobs are still regarded as beneath white collar jobs because they offer less prospects for promot...
Jul 18, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Zhang Xifeng, a 17-year-old student at Hengshui High School of Hebei Province, went viral. In his speech on Anhui TV program Super Speaker, Zhang compared himself to a humble “country pig” and shared his ambition to “grab a city cabbage.” While he did not specify what “city cabbage” is, for a young man from a small town, the metaphor likely refers to a well-paid job and a wife from a middle-class family in a larger city. The Hengshui High School he recently graduated from is known for high rate ...
Jul 18, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 40
One day, more than 2,000 years ago, Emperor Yuan of China’s Western Han dynasty and his concubines were watching animal baiting. Suddenly a black bear jumped out of the enclosure and attacked the spectators. The emperor and his concubines were scared and ran away. But one of the concubines, Feng Yuan did not. She stood right in front of the bear, while two guards tried to stop the bear with their long spears. She later explained to the emperor that she did this to defend him, because fierce beas...
Jul 11, 2021•13 min
A Chinese woman living in German-occupied Belgium in the 1940s finally succeeded in her mission: an audience with the top Nazi leader in Belgium, General Alexander von Falkenhausen. It was not the first time that Qian Xiuling had met the general, and she was counting on their prior connection to aid her. She told Falkenhausen that 96 people were being held hostage in the Belgian city of Écaussinnes and they would be killed in a few hours by Nazi soldiers in reprisal for a resistance attack on SS...
Jun 27, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 39
On May 31, China announced a further relaxation in its family planning policy, allowing couples to have up to three children. Supportive measures will be formulated to encourage couples to have more children. The announcement came right after the release of the seventh national population census which shows the population is aging and the birth rate is falling. Ancient Chinese dynasties used different ways to boost the fertility rate to ensure they had enough taxes and soldiers. Families also be...
Jun 20, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 38
In a recent TV series, the two mothers even seem paranoid sometimes, while the two fathers seem normal. This is because they are less involved in their children’s education. There is an ancient Chinese saying that goes, “it’s a father’s fault if he just feeds but does not teach his children.” So this raises the question: did fathers in ancient China take part in their children’s education?
Jun 14, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In 2020, nearly 376 million Chinese people did not live in the cities where they had registered their household information, up by more than 154 million in the 2010 census. This sounds a bit odd when it’s compared to the Chinese tradition of emotionally being attached to one’s homeland where one is born and lives on the land that you farm. In world history, flows of people, either in peaceful or violent ways, have always been both a big factor and a result of fundamental social changes. For exam...
Jun 06, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 36
