HISTORY OF MARCO POLO

A preliminary journey: AD 1261-1268

Two brothers, Niccolo and Matteo Polo, are Venetian merchants with interests in Constantinople and in Sudak, a Venetian colony on the coast of the Crimea. In 1261 they travel through the Black Sea to Sudak and then continue on to the Volga, where they visit Sarai Berke, the capital city of the Golden Horde. They…

HISTORY OF MAPS

The geographers of Miletus: 6th century BC

Nothing is known of the map of the world supposedly produced in Miletus by Anaximander in the mid-6th century BC. But by the end of the century, also in Miletus, another geographer writes a book of which sufficient details survive for his ideas to be reconstructed. He is Hecataeus.

Like most early mapmakers, Hecataeus…

China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet

The researcher clicked on the card to open it. Within minutes, secretly implanted computer code enabled an unnamed foreign intelligence agency to tap into the databases of the institute in the city of Luoyang in central China and spirit away top-secret information on Chinese submarines.

So reported Global Times, a Communist Party-backed newspaper with a nationalist bent, in…

Zhang Ziyi Biography (1979-)

Actress.  Zhang Ziyi was born to a working-class family on February 9, 1979, in Beijing, China.

Early on Zhang pursued interests in dance and gymnastics. At age 11, she was accepted into a secondary school affiliated with the prestigious Beijing Dancing College. While she picked up some awards, she became frustrated with the pressures.

At 15, Zhang opted to become an…

HISTORY OF CREATION STORIES

In the beginning

All human societies, including our own, tell stories of how the world began. Such stories are almost infinitely varied in detail, but they tend to include some basic themes.

Many accounts begin with earth, or with earth retrieved from water. In some of them gods and people and animals emerge from the earth (just as plants…

HISTORY OF CHINA

China’s unbroken story: from 500,000 years ago

Northern China, in the plains around the Huang Ho (or Yellow River), bears evidence of more continuous human development than any other region on earth.

500,000 years ago Peking man lives in the caves at Zhoukoudian, about 30 miles (48km) southwest of the modern city of Beijing. This is the…

Scaling the Digital Wall in China

Just as Mongol invaders could not be stopped by the Great Wall, Chinese citizens have found ways to circumvent the sophisticated Internet censorship systems designed to restrict them.

They are using a variety of tools to evade government filters and to reach the wide-open Web that the Chinese government deems dangerous — sites like YouTube, Facebook and, if Google makes…

China’s High-Speed-Rail Revolution

China has begun operating what is, by several measures, the world’s fastest rail line: a dedicated 968-kilometer line linking Wuhan, in the heart of central China, to Guangzhou, on the southeastern coast. In trials, the “WuGuang” line trains (locally built variants of Japan’s Shinkansen and Germany’s InterCity Express high-speed trains) clocked peak speeds of up to 394 kilometers per…