Mr Tan Jinyong (谭锦镛) was a proud Chinese man because he was a kung-fu master and he was a diplomat. But Mr Tan decided to kill himself. Why? Two Colonies To start with, it was in the year 1903 when China was reigned by Manchus who established an apartheid system with invaded Manchus as the ruling class and native Chinese at […]
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This is not China’s 110 meter hurdler Liu Xiang (刘翔), an Olympic gold medalist and World Champion, but Liu Changchun (刘长春), China’s first Olympian, 74 years older than Xiu Xiang. China’s First Olympian Liu Changchun was born in 1909, two years before the Manchu Emperor was thrown out. However when he grew up, he once again lived under Manchu rule that was […]
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In spring 2002, Chinese local authorities in a remote park in Hunan province decided to build a 3 km long embankment to protect Liye Town from floods. The area affected by construction includes a section of the ancient city wall, so a Chinese archaeologist team led by Chai Huanbo (柴煥波) was sent to conduct a quick excavation before the commencement […]
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Ever since Chinese freed themselves from a second-class citizenhood and threw the alien Manchus out of Forbidden City in the early last century and started to communicate with the world, they have maintained they are the inheritors of a 5,000-year-old unbroken cultural tradition. Many in the West are not convinced though. Firstly – they say – Chinese civilisation did appear to have […]
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Soccer, one of the most popular sports games in the world, has a contemporary history that spans more than 100 years. Yet its roots can be traced so far back as the days before Jesus was born and before China became a unified kingdom. According to FIFA, the earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from […]
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There were hundreds of different types of cold weapons in ancient Chinese battlefields, with the most commonly used including bow (弓), crossbow (弩), sword (剑), broad knife (刀), spear (矛), speargun (枪), cudgel (棍) and dagger (戈).
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The Battle in Red Cliffs is a textbook case demonstrating how small kingdoms could defeat a superpower. During the 3rd century, the once strong empire Han Dynasty, which dominated the land of the Far East for nearly 400 years, was crumbling and torn apart. Cao Cao, the last prime minister of the dying dynasty with an ambition to replace the Han […]
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In the ancient city Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, 30 bronze Chinese chess pieces were recently unearthed from a tomb dating back to the period between Tang and Song dynasties about a thousand years ago. Chinese Chess is one of the two major traditional Chinese chess games, along with Go (Weiqi or Game of Siege), and usually has 32 pieces. The earliest […]
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In July 2012, a super storm lashed Beijing that saw part of the Chinese capital inundation with dozens of casualties recorded, but the Round City (Tuancheng) at the centre of the storm was not affected by the flood at all.
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Zheng He was the greatest Chinese navigator and admiral of the 14th century, and his fleets travelled half of the world to as far as east Africa. Zheng He the War Prisoner Zheng He was born into a Muslim family in Yunnan Province in 1371. When he was ten-year old, the tribe to which his family belonged raised armed rebellion […]
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For thousands of years, China had been a peasant society with commercial activities consciously suppressed, which shaped China’s business traditions. But it was not always the case. There was a time when China was a paradise for merchants, and the merchant paradise lasted for 600 years. It was Shang, a dynasty established in 1700BC by Chinese merchants. The Achievements of the Merchant […]
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In the Chinese business world, there is a word that used to be very popular and now starts to regain public attention. That is the word “rushing (儒商)”, meaning Confucius Merchants. Why It Is Confucius Merchant Not Confucius Entrepreneur? Some Chinese scholars prefer to translate “rushang” into English as “Confucius Entrepreneur”. This term may have a better echo to the contemporary […]
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