Over the past two thousand years, perceptions of distance and scale have been continually exploded by technological advances. We now take for granted: airplanes, trains and roads; distribution systems that furnish ice-cool “Perrier” in the midst of a vast, baking desert. Yet even now, Nature with a flick of her skirt belies our pretensions to mastery. When you’re in the middle of a scorching desert, there is only so much your air-conditioning unit can do.  » Read more »

  Dynasty Period Characteristics Xia & Shang 2200 – 1100 BC Mythological period * Eulogized agricultural society with attendant mythology * Evidence of early divination techniques Zhou 1100 – 221 BC Birth of Chinese philosophy * Seven socially and politically developed states compete for supremacy. * Birth of Confucianism, Daoism and competing ideologies of the "hundred schools". Qin 221 – 207 BC War * Infamous &  » Read more »

(Imperial Tours is grateful to Amir for permission to publish this excerpt from his Phd research. ) China -today the nation with the largest fleet of bicycles in the world- is surprisingly underrepresented in cycle history: we know nearly nothing about Chinese cycle history, cycle production, cycling habits or other aspects of the bicycle in China. This contribution presents first results from historical Chinese sources, which were collected for my doctoral thesis,  » Read more »

Though Western music is popular among China's younger generation, traditional Chinese music can often be heard in parks and back street tea-houses. There, to the delight of an enthusiastic audience, aficionados gather to sing their favorite operatic arias. Of China's various operatic schools, the most famous is that which developed in her capital city, referred to simply as Beijing opera. This grew from the comedic and balladic traditions of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127),  » Read more »

Why take home a taxi-load of anonymous self-assembly flat-pack furniture, when for much the same price you can fill your apartment with elegant traditional Chinese pieces? (This article is for information purposes only. Imperial Tours is not in involved in any capacity with the antique or reproduction furniture business. Our links page introduces various Chinese and western furniture websites. We have no business relationship with these websites,  » Read more »