Chinese food
Why would a tea have a lake in its name?
A March 2026 report from Hangzhou names a contemporary producer in Longjing village: Fu Xiaoting. Born in the 1990s, she spent three years learning tea…
Read the storyMy reading room
Browse every story or open your shelf of articles you’ve marked as read.
Places & Regions
Can you redesign an old city without erasing it?
People’s Architecture Office offers a documented example in Beijing’s Dashilar area: the Courtyard House Plugin programme, developed in 2013–2015. Instead…
Read the story
Chinese food
Would you go to a museum about dinner?
The Sichuan Cuisine Museum’s own exhibition page describes a collection of more than three thousand utensils in a display area of about 1,200 square metres.…
Read the story
Everyday China
Inside Qingdao’s underwater film studio
A heated six-metre-deep tank, underwater windows and hundreds of fixing points help Qingdao crews turn real water into controlled film scenes.
Read the story
History, Arts & Traditions
Why does an opera need so little scenery?
The music is not just a background added after the actors have finished telling the story. UNESCO describes its role in setting the pace, shaping the…
Read the story
History, Arts & Traditions
Can a tune remember a place far from home?
UNESCO names the dongxiao, a bamboo flute, and a pipa played horizontally, with a crooked neck, among Nanyin’s distinctive instruments. Knowing those…
Read the story
History, Arts & Traditions
Could a chessboard be a travel object?
One nineteenth-century Chinese chessboard at the Met is made of lacquered wood. Games have material histories too.
Read the story
History, Arts & Traditions
Why put a dragon on a fan?
A seventeenth-century fan at the Met joins a practical object to festival imagery.
Read the story
Stories & proverbs
Ye Xian and the golden shoe
A girl, a secret fish and a lost golden shoe: an original retelling of the Chinese tale recorded by Duan Chengshi in the ninth century.
Read the story
History, Arts & Traditions
What can a fastening tell you about a dress?
A Shanghai-made qipao at the V&A rewards a close look at its bamboo embroidery and knotted fastenings.
Read the story
Everyday China
How can a bamboo basket become a sweater?
A designer born in Fujian reworked bamboo-weaving structures into contemporary clothing.
Read the story
Everyday China
Why was Chinese lacquer called “Coromandel”?
A trade name followed a shipping route, not necessarily the object’s place of making.
Read the story
Load more
There’s more to read.
Find your next read
A story you haven’t marked as read yet, chosen just for a little change of pace.
Surprise me