Places
The Long History of Shanghai’s Bund
Stand on the riverside promenade in central Shanghai and you face two centuries at once.
华夏洞见 Topic Stream
Tag: China
Places
Places
How Shenzhen Was Built From Border Villages
In 1979 the place now called Shenzhen was an agricultural county on the border with British Hong Kong.
Places
How Pudong Was Built on Mud
Every evening crowds gather on the Bund to photograph the towers across the Huangpu.
Science & Tech
Shanghai’s Maglev and the Future That Stalled
Step off Line 2 of the Shanghai Metro at Longyang Road and you reach the platform of one of the strangest railways in the world. The train waiting there has no wheels touching a rail and no engine on board.
People
How Donnie Yen Fought His Way to Stardom
Donnie Yen spent more than two decades as a respected but not quite top-tier name in Hong Kong action cinema before a single role, Ip Man, made him one of the most recognisable faces in the Chinese-speaking world.
People
How Dennis To Became the Young Ip Man
Few actors have been as closely tied to one role as Dennis To Yu-hang (杜宇航). He won a world wushu title for Hong Kong at 18 and got into films with small parts in Donnie Yen’s Ip Man and Ip Man 2.
People
How Jackie Chan Turned Stunts Into Stardom
In the final minutes of Project A (1983), a man in a sailor’s uniform hangs from the hand of a clock tower, lets go and falls about eighteen metres, tearing through two cloth awnings before hitting the ground.
People
How Jet Li Took Wushu to the World
In the late 1970s the most admired athlete in Chinese wushu was a slight teenager from Beijing who had grown up without a father and had been winning national titles since the age of eleven or twelve.
People
The Real Ip Man Behind the Legend
In the autumn of 1972, a few weeks before he died, an elderly man in a Kowloon flat was filmed performing the forms of the martial art he had spent his life teaching.
History
From Jurchen Tribes to Manchu Emperors
In November 1635, the ruler of a rising state in what is now north-east China issued an order about a name. His people had long been called Jušen, known in Chinese as Nüzhen and in English as Jurchen.
History
The Long Making of the Han People
According to China’s seventh national census, carried out in 2020, 1,286,311,334 people in mainland China identified as Han, or 91.11% of the population.
Science & Tech
How China Built the World’s Largest Navy
Ask which country has the world’s largest navy and the answer depends on what you count. Count warships by hull, and the answer since roughly the late 2010s has been China.
History
How the People’s Liberation Army Shaped China
Every year on 1 August, Chinese television carries footage of soldiers in dress uniform, newspapers print editorials about loyalty, and buildings across the country display the characters 八一, “eight-one”, the date of Army Day.
Science & Tech
China’s Race to Put AI in Orbit
On 14 May 2025, a Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert at 12:12 Beijing time.
Science & Tech
How China Built Its Bullet Train Empire
On 1 August 2008, a week before the Beijing Olympics opened, a white train left Beijing South station for Tianjin. It covered roughly 120 km in about half an hour on a line designed for 350 km/h.
Economy
The Numbers Behind China’s EV Battery Dominance
In 2025 the world’s electric vehicles took on more than 1,000 gigawatt-hours of new battery capacity in a single year for the first time.
