The Snake Pit: No Escape (‘The Shanghai Friendship Store’ — Chapter 3)

The following excerpt from The Snake Pit (Chapter 3), from the novel The Shanghai Friendship Store by Susan Ruel. It is the continuation of the previous articles, A Floating Life (Chapter 2) and A Chinese Eleanor Rigby (Chapter 1).  It chronicles the experiences of a small foreign community living in Shanghai in the 1980s (the heyday of Friendship Stores). These state-owned stores ...

Emma Lu

Wuzhen old city, Shanghai.

New Dinosaur Discovered In China Shows Dinosaurs Grew Up Differently From Birds

A new species of feathered dinosaur has been discovered in China and described by American and Chinese authors in the journal The Anatomical Record. The one-of-a-kind specimen offers a window into what the Earth was like 120 million years ago. The fossil preserves feathers and bones that provide new information about how dinosaurs grew and ...

Troy Oakes

A small fossilized dinosaur.

Is the Real Wonder Woman From Russia?

Researchers from Russia have uncovered an ancient tomb containing the remains of four Amazon females of different ages. The excavation was conducted by Don Archaeological Expedition from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Amazons have been popularized across the world through the DC comic character Wonder Woman, who is portrayed as ...

Raven Montmorency

'Battle of the Amazons,' by Peter Paul Rubens.

Chinese Idiom: ‘Where Water Flows, a Channel Will Form’

A popular Chinese idiom — ‘Where water flows, a channel will form’ — basically conveys the idea that success will come naturally when the conditions necessary for such success are fulfilled. There is an interesting story behind how this saying originated. The story behind the Chinese idiom Back during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), there lived a man ...

Emma Lu

Water flowing over rocks.

Upholding Integrity: We Are Family

Throughout Chinese history, every successive dynasty would treat the people and the royal families of the previous dynasty with courtesy and respect. This was done as a way of demonstrating scrupulous regard for the great emperors of the past and upholding integrity. To show respect to the people of the Shang Dynasty, King Wu of ...

Emma Lu

A square bronze ding.

The Art of Speaking

There is an ancient Chinese saying: “Sickness enters through the mouth; misfortune comes out of it.” The Chinese saying articulated the art of speaking — only speak meaningful words. Zeng Guofan was a Chinese statesman, military general, and Confucian scholar of the late Qing dynasty. He once said: “You should not act as you desire, ...

Helen London

Speaking to a group of people.

History and Myth Come Together in the City of Petra

Among all the ancient cities of the Middle East, Petra in Jordan is considered by many to be one of the crown jewels of human architecture. More than a million people visited this archaeological wonder last year, which has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985. The city Petra’s fame largely rests ...

Raven Montmorency

The ancient city of Petra.

Early Modern Humans Cooked Starchy Food 170,000 Years Ago

The discovery also points to food being shared and the use of wooden digging sticks to extract plants from the ground by early modern humans. Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI), said: “The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the ...

Troy Oakes

Border Cave.

Chinese Tradition: The Art of Papermaking

Paper is one of the most used items in society. Papermaking has its origins in China, where paper has been in use for almost 2,000 years. In the 8th century, the art of papermaking spread from China to the Middle East and later into Europe. Papermaking The earliest examples of papermaking can be seen during ...

Emma Lu

Papermaking comes from China.