GARY BROOKER DIED RECENTLY. Most people won’t know that name. But huge numbers of people around the world would recognize the 1967 tune he wrote with his bandmate Matthew Fisher: which became a worldwide hit song called A Whiter Shade of Pale.
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Culture
Imagine a late-night scene: Restaurants, bars, revellers, and a lit-up sign advertising a hostelry. Is this modern Shanghai? Hong Kong? Vancouver? Las Vegas? Actually, such scenes were already taking place a thousand years earlier. Emily Zhou reports.
AN ANCIENT PIECE OF ART shows a lightbox advertising a hotel: perhaps the earliest evidence of a light-powered…
ENJOYED A NICE trendy cup of foam-topped matcha-flavored lactose-free caffeine recently? Well, guess who invented that drink? Starbucks? Maybe a Japanese branch of Starbucks?
No. The Chinese did, a thousand years ago. It has become almost a cliché for historians to search for things that we think are modern, and then locate ancient Chinese versions.…
From a single ancient scroll painting, shown in part below, historians discovered three items of food history the Chinese may have pioneered: the three-meals-a-day tradition, the hot food delivery service, and the drive-in cafe. Emily Zhou reports.
THE CHINESE HABIT of painting large, hyper-detailed landscapes on giant scrolls has been a boon for historians. And…
SOME OF THE GREATEST classic art in the region came from the Tang Dynasty -- extraordinary murals, capturing life more than a thousand years ago. Click here to join a virtual journey which takes you back in time into the heart of Chang’an, the biggest city in the world at that time.
The video…
An Englishman's visit to a Guangdong village brickmaker led to the creation of a piece of art about China's people and the future of the world
For years considered a cultural desert, Hong Kong now aims to be a world leader in appreciation of the arts
Having overtaken London as an art investment hub, the…
Image above shows Kazakh horse meat sausage. Image by Marco Verch/ ccnull
YOU THINK YOU KNOW Chinese food? Adventurous young Chinese foodies are heading into the cold, remote highlands of the western region to find delicious new flavors. The bad news is that sometimes you have to decide which of your four-legged friends is…
When the civil war of China ended in 1949, Tibetans carried bags of silver dollars on a long journey along a thousand-year old path through the mountains on an important mission: to ensure their tea supply. Emily Zhou reports
THE PEOPLE OF TIBET and the surrounding high-plateau lands had a problem.
They needed tea.…
CHINA’S NATIONAL DRINK, tea, is the most popular drink in the world. More of it consumed than all the cappuccinos, lattes and espressos in the world. At least one study says more tea is drunk than all other drinks put together -- coffee, fizzy drinks, wine, beer, juice and everything else.
The daily number of…
IN APRIL OF 1977, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was taken on a visit to one of the many legendary classical Chinese gardens of Suzhou. The one chosen for her was called The Garden of the Futility of Politics. The extraordinary name surely stuck in the British leader's mind--particularly as she would go on to…
