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Mao, Jiang Qing and two daughters (deliberately given surname Li rather than Mao so they stand out less at schools etc); the boy is his nephew Yuanxin, whose father was executed by anti communists and he was raised by his uncle. photos taken with visiting relatives family at leisure a somewhat formal portrait, apparently the [...]

A very late “Happy Chinese New Year” from seechina team. A big thank you to all our good-hearted readers!

Fang Zhouzi and Julian Assange have much in common. First, they are both very famous. Assange was given the most votes by Time Magazine web readers  in its online poll on who should be the 2010 Man of the Year (though the award committee gave the honour to Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook who was [...]

On 6 November 2009 Obama gave a speech in Shanghai During the speech, TV and newspaper cameras showed a girl wearing a black dress sitting close behind his lecturn an earlier photo shows that before the talk started she wore a red jacket, under which was the black dress whose collars protruded Not a big deal right? [...]

Nuo 傩 was an ancient ceremony held in the palace on New Year Eve to expel demons from the royal premises.  A procession led by a stout man with military bearings wearing a bear skin on his back and a four-eyed mask on his face, would tour through the palace chanting rhymes to persuade evil [...]

The economic opening up of China also provided room for a certain level of artistic freedom, and authors have gradually taken advantage of it; one early genus was recounting of cultural revolution experiences e.g. blog.bcchinese.net/bcblog/archive/2004/01/18/212.aspx www.boxun.com/hero/zhangyihe which however generated only a limited amount of interest among today’s readers, busily occupied by ecoomic and career issues; a second [...]

A vertical eye on the forehead is the familiar characteristic of the Hindu god Siva, which has a Chinese version Yang Jian 杨戬, also known as Second Son God 二郎神，presumably because he is the younger brother of some more important divine. Like Siva, Yang Kan is skilled in wielding his weapon  Yang Jian appears to [...]

The composite Fuxi Nuwa diagram, with one holding the compass and other the square, symbolizing round-heaven-square earth, was common in the Han dynasty, leaving numerous wall paintings and brick carvings for later discovery – a small number of silk paintings survived decay; in Xinjiang, however, the dry weather helped a large number of Tang era silk [...]

Archaeologists have found a small number of musical instruments from the Neolithic Hongshan era a clarinet or recorder made from an animal leg bone; it can actually be played we have also seen bone/jade flutes for comparison, some bone flutes of roughly the same antiquity from Henan  there was even a jade whistle, whose polish still looks [...]

Queen Sheba’s visit to the court of Solomon is a familiar story from the Old Testament; It is probably not so well known that Muslims in various parts of the Middle East have their own versions of the story, as did pre-islam Ethiopians. In some versions, the Queen is said to have hairy legs, or [...]