China Guide 2008

Silk was first cultivated in China around 2600 BC, but it would take two and a half millennia for it to spread west. The Romans first encountered the material while battling the Parthians in 53 BC and were told it came from a mysterious tribe in the east. Roman agents were dispatched, commodities bartered and the “Silk Road” established.

The Chinese had known about trade routes going west across the Taklamakan Desert for centuries, however these routes only became important when Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty formed alliances with western tribes against the northern nomads, China’s old enemy. (more…)

China’s Grand Canal certainly lives up to its moniker, stretching over 1,700km, it’s ten times longer than the Suez Canal and twenty times that of the Panama Canal.

It took several dynasties to build the massive canal network. Work began as early as 506 BC during the Spring and Autumn period lead by King Wu, who led his people to dig the first canals in a big to control central China. Since most of China’s major rivers flow from west to east, building a water link from north to south to connect the rivers would greatly facilitate transportation and this became the dream of many emperors. (more…)

The giant panda is an endangered animal found only in western China, because of human encroachment, the panda’s habitat is now reduced to six isolated patches mainly in Sichuan. Pandas are related to bears, though they are significantly different in many ways.

Bamboo is the main source of food for pandas and they spend at least 12 hours a day eating. Bamboo is a poor source of nutrition for (more…)

In traditional Chinese culture 12 is an important number when calculating time. There are 12 full moons in a year, the length of time between the full moons are relatively constant. They also observed the day could be divided into 12 equal parts. These observations led to the development of the 12 month lunar year and the 12 watch day.

The Chinese began grouping years into a twelve year cycle, assigning each year an animal symbol. Legend has it that Buddha called a meeting of all the world’s animals to determine how to restore order to the world, but only 12 heeded his call and they came to represent the 12-year-cycle, with each presiding over a year in the order they arrived at the meeting. The strong ox was in the lead and only had a river to cross to come in first, but little did he know, the cunning rat hitched a ride on his back and became the first to arrive.

The twelve animals are: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The 12 animals associated with the years can be used to judge a person’s character by their birth year. A person born in the year of a particular animal is said to have the traits of that animal. (more…)

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM 中医 zhōngyī) has developed over thousands of years of practical experience and observation. Unlike Western medicine, which aims at curing a specific illness, TCM aims at healing the body as a whole. Records on medical studies date back over 2,000 years to the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. During the Han dynasty there were further advances in medical studies and during the Three Kingdoms period, Hua Tuo, a famous doctor, made breath-taking discoveries in the field.

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It’s easy to be a cheap to get drunk in China and it is an opportunity worth taking. Cultural barriers disappear under the revelry and camaraderie a shared drink. For every tale of Chinese history and tradition that are read through stodgy books, there are a thousand more fascinating stories about the country and its people that are told over the fifth glass of baijiu (白酒).

Inebriates often eulogize the inventor of alcohol, but in China it’s unclear to whom the praise is due. Some say it was Yi Di, a daughter of one of the rulers of the Xia dynasty. According to legend, after one taste, dad immediately banned the fiery liquid fearing that a future ruler would overindulge himself and lose the throne. Others say it was a man named Du Kang, also from the Xia or while some date it even earlier to the mythic Huang Emperor. For some, alcoholic drinking occurred in harmony with the creation of the universe.

Less speculatively, 5,000-year-old alcohol-drinking vessels were discovered in Shandong Province in 1987. An early milk-based drink called lilou was superceded by liquor distilled from cereals. Those who first drank this liquor must have thoroughly enjoyed themselves because records are incomplete and scientists can’t decide whether it was pioneered in the Eastern Han, Song, Tang or Yuan dynasties. The cereal based concoctions have evolved into modern Chinese spirits called baijiu (white alcohol). (more…)

It’s easy to tell tea is China’s national drink, tea is consumed in restaurants, at home and carried around all day in transparent thermos flasks. It’s a serious habit, and one that hasn’t been broken by the introduction of coffee or the machinations of sugary soda companies.

Over 4,000 years ago, a legendary ruler of China named Shen Nong insisted his drinking water be boiled, while sitting under a tree a single leaf dropped into his cup and turn his purified water brown. When he braved a sip, he found the new drink refreshing and thus began the cultivation of the tea plant. (more…)

The Naxi tribe is one of China’s most interesting ethnic minorities. Scattered mainly around Yunnan Province, with small settlements in Sichuan and Tibet, they were first visited by Western ethnologists in the early part of the 20th century and have been studied and written about ever since. There are about 280,000 Naxi and most live in Lijiang Autonomous County in northwest Yunnan.

The Naxi have a culture that’s rich and diverse with their own music, art and most unique of all, their thousand-year-old pictographic writing system which is similar to hieroglyphics. The Naxi language is also the only remaining pictographic written language in use. (more…)

Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian characters were invented over 5,000 years ago and have gone through golden ages of development and use, but only the ancient Chinese characters have survived the test of time and continue to be used.

Ancient Chinese people used simple pictographs to record events or record notes before the Chinese characters were invented. Over time, the pictographs became simplified to a basic outline and developed designs and meanings; this led to the beginning of pictographic characters. By the BC14th century a mature system of characters called jiaguwen (jiǎgŭwén 甲骨文) had developed. About 6,000 characters have been found inscribed on bones and tortoise shells, recording in detail the activities of sacrificial ceremonies and divinations. Most of these characters are pictographs, but the beginning of ideographs and phonographs can be seen. Ideographs and phonographs are more advanced than simple pictographs as they represent abstract ideas and sounds. (more…)