The Context

Today, we’ll talk about how UNESCO has honored the world’s first porcelain-centered industrial heritage site—keeping the traditional flame alive and allowing it to continue firing new stories for the world to enjoy.

Today, we’ll talk about a humble 20,000-year-old clay pot from Jiangxi that is helping archaeologists rethink the origins of pottery, agriculture, and humanity’s long journey from hunting and gathering to cultivating rice.

Today, we’ll talk about the Mawangdui Han Tombs, an extraordinary archaeological discovery that has preserved the life, art, beliefs, and remarkable story of an aristocratic family of ancient China going back more than 2,000 years.

Today, we’ll talk about Judge Bao Zheng, a legendary government official during the Northern Song Dynasty whose unwavering integrity has made him an enduring symbol of justice in China for nearly a thousand years.

Today, we’ll talk about one of the largest and most overlooked migrations in modern history, a movement of millions from China’s coast to Southeast Asia that lasted for centuries, driven by hunger, lured by colonial promises, and marked by unimaginable suffering as well as astonishing resilience.

Today, we’ll talk about Luoyang Bridge, a nearly thousand-year-old stone bridge in southeastern China whose ingenious use of oyster reefs, tidal forces, and innovative engineering helped it survive the ravages of the sea and become one of the world’s earliest and most remarkable coastal bridges.

Today, we’ll talk about a famed temple in Quanzhou, a thousand-year-old landmark where legend, maritime exchange, and cultural fusion converge to reveal the enduring openness of China’s ancient coastal civilization.

Today, we’ll talk about Tianyi Post Office, the pioneering remittance and postal agency that connected overseas Chinese communities across Southeast Asia with their families in China, creating a vital network of letters, money, and trust long before the advent of modern banking and communications.

Today, we’ll talk about the Yongle Encyclopedia, a monumental Chinese text dating from the Ming dynasty, and provide you with a fascinating narrative detailing its six-hundred-year journey, tragic dispersal, and ongoing global recovery.

Today, we’ll tell the bittersweet story of Pearl S. Buck, the American Nobel laureate who lived in China for the first half of her life at the turn of the last century and how the complications of a war-torn world made it impossible to return to the home she loved and vociferously advocated.