A Window into the Daily Life in the Wei-Jin Period

(魏晋墓砖画的生活写照) 4 min read   In the vast desert 20 kilometers northeast of the city of Jiayuguan (嘉峪关)—which shares its name with the western terminus of the Great Wall—lies a complex of more than 1,400 underground tombs decorated with painted bricks from the Wei and Jin Dynasties (魏晋), dating from the 3rd to the 5th […]

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Timeless Treasures of the Yongle Palace

(永乐宫传世之宝) 4 min read   Construction of the Yongle Palace (永乐宫), a Daoist temple (道观), started in 1247 during the early Yuan Dynasty to worship Lü Dongbin (吕洞宾, born 796), one of Daosim’s Eight Immortals (八仙). The construction, including the creation of the murals inside the temple, took a total of 110 years and the

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Post Template Ver 2

(中西合璧的香港美食) 5 min read   Hong Kong—a British colony between 1842 and 1997—has retained its international image since it was handed back to China. Given the city’s multicultural influence, it is no surprise that some of its foods, even dishes that seem indigenous, are actually a fusion between east and west. At the center of

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Flavors From the Silk Road

(丝路上的美食) Reading Time: 5 minutes  The ancient Silk Road—a network of routes that connected China to the Central Asia and finally Europe—started from Chang’an (长安), the modern-day Xi’an (西安). Through the Silk Road, merchants in camel and horse caravans from the west and south brought their musical instruments, rugs, horses, camels, and spices to China and

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Chinese Dumplings, from North to South

(通行南北的饺子) Reading Time: 4 minutes   Every Saturday, I join a group of friends in a decades-old ritual—a dim-sum lunch that includes a plethora of small Cantonese dishes of dumplings, buns, meat balls, pastries, crepe rolls, and fritters. Dim sum (点心) is literally “touch the heart”, but this lunch—reminiscent of our years in Hong Kong where

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Dunhuang—the Crown Jewel of Buddhist Art

(佛教艺术的宝库—敦煌) Reading Time: 6 minutes  From the 4th to 14th centuries CE, the city of Dunhuang (敦煌), in northwest China, was a key intersection in the ancient Silk Road—a network of trade routes that connected China with Central and West Asia. To Dunhuang’s east, the Silk Road led to China’s ancient capital Chang’an (长安, today’s Xi’an

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