Handmade Matzoh In its earliest beginnings, which could go back to the Stone Age, Passover was a Jewish spring festival. It celebrated the first barley harvest after the winter. All winter there had not really been enough to eat. Now in March or so there was finally some fresh new barley bread to eat! People were [...]
Chinese painting of kite-flying The earliest kites were probably invented in China about 800 BC, during the Zhou Dynasty. People made these early kites out of bamboo and silk. Chinese people flew kites for fun, and also used kites in war to carry messages, to signal people far away, and to carry explosives into [...]
Along the River During Qingming Festival (Song Dynasty, 1100s AD) Like Chinese New Year, Qingming Jie is a Chinese spring festival marking the beginning of spring plowing and planting. By the end of the Han Dynasty, about 200 AD, people celebrated Qingming as the Cold Food festival. To start the new spring planting [...]
Ancient China religion: Han dynasty animal sacrifice (ca. 200 BC-200 AD) China's ancestor worship In the Shang Dynasty (about 2000 BC), the earliest period we know much about, people in China worshipped a lot of different gods - weather gods and sky gods, and also a higher god who ruled over the other gods, [...]
Early Chinese women: A Chinese woman playing polo (T'ang Dynasty, 700s AD) China has always been influenced by the cultures to its south - India and Southeast Asia - where women have little power, status, or freedom. But China has also been influenced by the cultures to its north and west in Central [...]
Tuan Cheng-Shih wrote a version of the Cinderella story during the T'ang Dynasty, about 700 AD. It may be a retelling of an earlier Indian version from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. In 700 AD, many Chinese Buddhists were traveling to India for their education, and they may have heard this story there. In this [...]
