Culture
The Eight Cuisines Are Really Four
The standard list of Chinese regional cuisines — Lu, Chuan, Yue, Huai, Min, Zhe, Xiang, Hui — has eight entries and roughly four actual cuisines.
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History
The Rites Controversy Broke Beijing and Rome
For two hundred years, the Catholic Church and the Chinese imperial court argued about whether Chinese Christians could continue to honour Confucius and the ancestors.
Culture
Buddhism Came as a Foreign Religion and Stayed Chinese
Buddhism entered China as a foreign religion from India in the early centuries CE — the first documented Buddhist community in Luoyang dates to 65 CE — and was transformed over the next thousand years into the Chan, Pure Land, and Tiantai schools that are now recognisably Chinese.
People
Kong Xiangdong Was the Last Honorary Confucian
For two thousand years, the Kong family at Qufu supplied the Chinese empire with its Sicheng — the Worshipping Sage priest, the hereditary custodian of the Confucius temple.
Culture
Porcelain Was a State Secret for Five Dynasties
For five dynasties and roughly seven hundred years, the Chinese imperial court classified the formula for true porcelain — the blue-and-white ware of Jingdezhen — as a state secret.
Science & Tech
The Compass Did Not Point North at First
The Chinese compass was not a navigation instrument for the first thousand years of its existence.
Science & Tech
Bi Sheng Beat Gutenberg by Centuries
Bi Sheng — a Northern Song artisan working in Bianjing — invented the world’s first movable-type printing press around 1040, four centuries before Gutenberg’s 1450 metal press.
Economy
Paper Money Crashed the First Time
The world’s first state-backed paper money appeared in Sichuan around 1024, and the world’s first state-backed paper-money crash followed within seventy years.
History
Silk Smuggling Was a Capital Crime
The Roman Empire paid for Chinese silk in gold, and the trade was so expensive to the Roman treasury that the Senate repeatedly tried to ban the import.
People
The Tank Commander Who Crossed the Yalu
When the United Nations advance up the Korean peninsula forced the question of whether China would permit the unification of Korea under Syngman Rhee, the People’s Volunteers crossed the Yalu River on 19 October 1950 and committed the largest ground campaign by an Asian army since 1945.
History
The Two Weeks That Drove Vietnam Off China
In February 1979 China and Vietnam fought a short, brutal war along their shared border.
History
The Sino-French War Cost France Tonkin
Between 1884 and 1885 France and the Qing dynasty fought a war in Indochina that France effectively won on land and lost politically at the table.
