Category: Chinese Technology

As the birthplace of paper and printing, ancient China developed the whole range of bookbinding techniques, from Policy Briefing (简策) during pre-paper age, Scroll (卷轴) with paper and silk, Sutra (经折), Butterfly (蝴蝶), Amalgamation (和合), Back-cover (包背), Wire-bound (线装) to Dragon Scale (龙鳞). Among all bookbinding styles, Dragon Scale is one of the most fascinating. The final product of the […]

Toothbrushes These are the handles of toothbrushes used by ancient Chinese 1,000 years ago during the Song Dynasty (960 -1279). The handles are made of tiger bones while the brushes were produced from horse-tail hairs. Apart from animal bones, horns, bamboo and wood were also common materials for toothbrush handles in ancient China. This is part of a 4×10 metre […]

This underground mansion in Horse Village, of Shanxi Province, is a tomb dating back to the Song Dynasty about 800 years ago. The burial chamber is heavily decorated with carved bricks. The bricks were carved into the shapes of wooden brackets and tiled roofs. The brick sculptures not only emulate timber brackets, roofs, windows and front gate but as well as […]

In the middle of 2017, Chinese engineers have completed a near-space flight test for a drone that has reached 20-100 km above ground. The UFO (Unmanned Flying Object) performs both like aircraft and satellite. The solar-powered drone can fly non-stop for months or even years and is expected to mainly perform disaster relief and anti-terrorist tasks. More details at: Chinadaily.com.cn […]

A 4,500-Year-Old Black Ceramic Wine Cup A 4,500-year-old ultra-thin “egg-shell” black ceramic wine cup, unearthed from Rizhao, Shandong province. Tang Dynasty (618-907) Porcelain The heyday of glazed ceramics was the Tang Dynasty between the 7the and the 10th centuries. The articles were usually coated with three colours, such as green, yellow and white, or blue, red and brown, etc., which […]

The Exploitation of the Works of Nature (天工开物) is an encyclopedia on ancient Chinese technology, compiled by Song Yingxing (宋应星), a Ming Dynasty scholar and engineer, published in May 1637, but destroyed by Manchus who originated in Tunguska and entered China’s northeast via Korean peninsula. After more than 200 years of Manchu reign, Chinese became rather ignorant of most ancient […]

Chinese scientists have established a quantum entanglement between particles 1200 kilometres apart, smashing the previous world record of 143 kilometres. In early 2016, China announced a successful transmission of “entangled” photon pairs from space to the Earth, which proves that quantum entanglement exists at a large distance. The result is a stepping stone to ultrasecure communication networks and, eventually, a […]

Twilight in Wuxi, an ancient city by the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the longest and the oldest surviving manmade river in the world. The Grand Canal was constructed during the Sui Dynasty (581 – 618) by connecting numerous ancient waterways between the South Song capital and the second Ming capital via Nanjing, Suzhou and Shanghai. Until the 20th century, about 70 per […]