Prophesied by the historic Buddha approximately about 2,000 years before his birth, Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) was a child prodigy who went on to establish and inspire Tibet’s most powerful monastic sect. Dissatisfied by the ill discipline – intellectual, religious and monastic – of contemporary orders, he reined his disciples and followers into a strict new order. […]
The first contacts between adherents of Buddhism and the Chinese people took place along the Silk and Fur roads during the Eastern Han dynasty (8-220AD). Over subsequent centuries these central caravan routes, with Chang’an (near Xi’an) at their eastern terminus continued to serve as the principle avenue by which Buddhism entered China. So significant did […]
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 […]
The Three Gorges were so named from the late Han dynastic period (23 – 220 AD). This nomenclature groups into a set of three the numerous shoals and gorges of the Yangzi river between Wanxian and Yichang. The Three Gorges are the Qutang Gorge (8km long), the Wuxia Gorge (45km long) and the Xilong (66km […]
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 […]
