China

If you play a portable musical instrument, carry it as meticulously as your passport if you travel in China.   Strangers often sat with me to listen.

  People in ancient China typically thought of musical notes in more holistic ways than Westerners have. The five notes (C, D, E, G, and

Westerners have often assumed that language is mainly about meanings of words and statements. But other cultures have assumed that language has other functions.  

The Shang Dynasty’s royals used bronze ritual vessels to commune with their ancestors and help keep the state in order.: Their designs became increasingly dramatic

One of the best history buzzes I got in China was walking on the ancient walls of the great ancient city Zhengzhou. The wall in

Chinese have traditionally seen themselves as rooted in the Shang Dynasty. So you can’t get more foundational than the Shang and its roots. We’ll get

Beijing’s thriving modern art scene converged in a big old ugly factory that East Germans built. Artists found it to be a cheap and private

  Agricultural ways of life, which China’s Confucian tradition has honored, became common along the great rivers during the Yangshao period around 5000 BCE–4,500 years before

The concept de had a wide range of meanings in ancient China, which together encouraged assumptions of a highly resonant universe which was conducive to

You can see a lot of intellectual depth in traditional Chinese architecture.   It’s one of the world’s most prevalent art forms, so it’s easy