Art & Culture

Ethnic Minorities

Imperial
December 02, 2010

This article by Imperial Tours’ founder about the tribes of Guizhou is for cultural informational purposes only. Imperial Tours does not offer services to these destinations as luxury faciltiies are not available. By Guy Rubin As cranes and bulldozers proliferate like ants across China, depositing cities and highways in their hammering trail, now is the […]

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Bewitching Beijing Opera

Imperial
December 02, 2010

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 […]

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Silk Road – a Fascinating Journey Through History

Silk Road – a Fascinating Journey Through History

Imperial
December 02, 2010

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 […]

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Calligraphy

Imperial
December 02, 2010

According to ancient lore, when a Chinese man named Cangjie learned the divine secret of writing, the spirits were so angry that millet rained from heaven. Perhaps this was because one of the first applications of the Chinese pictograph system was in the practice of divination. This long-standing association between pictographs and the occultforces of nature helps […]

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History of Chinese Ceramics

Imperial
December 02, 2010

The history of Chinese ceramics began some eight thousand years ago with the crafting of hand-molded earthenware vessels. Soon after, in the late neolithic period, the potter’s wheel was invented facilitating the production of more uniform vessels. The sophistication of these early Chinese potters is best exemplified by the legion of terracotta warriors found in the tomb […]

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