One Dream Thousands of Years

Have you noticed that Chinese people harbor a special fondness of jade jewelry? In mandarin Chinese, it is pronounced as "yu" and written as "玉“. The Chinese character "玉" looks very similar to the character "王" which means the king. In ancient times, "yu" is a symbol of royalty and power. If you wonder since when "yu" became so important to the Chinese, we probably have to go back to around 3300 B.C. to 2000 B.C. About one thousand years after Hemudu , another representative Neolithic culture, the Liangzhu Culture, emerged in the Yangtze River delta of China, almost around the same area as Hemudu. Like Hemudu, Liangzhu Culture is named after the place where the relics were first discovered. A large number of exquisite jade handicrafts were unearthed since excavations began in the 1930s. Archeologists were stunned not only by the large quantities of jade art crafts but also by the advancement of carving on the extremely tough tra...

The story of   Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (Butterfly Lovers)   originated in Jiang Nan of China. Where is Jiang Nan? "Jiang Nan" is neither a province nor a city. In Mandarin Chinese, "Jiang" means river and "Nan" means south. "Jiang Nan" refers to a geographic area in China that sits right on the Yangtze River delta. It centers around the Lake Tai and comprises cities of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Nanjing, Shaoxing, Zhenjiang, Wuxi, Huzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Changzhou, Jiaxing in a narrowly sense. From the earliest Hemudu Culture (around 5000 to 4000 BC) to the most prosperous region in today's China, we invite you to explore the history, culture, and art of "Jiang Nan" with our original illustrations through the first series of our blog. Top: Map of China (The area in the rectangle is Jiang Nan); Bottom: Map of Jiang Nan -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------...