Have you ever seen such an image and wondered why a young man is holding a shoe and kneeling down in front of an old man? Is there any historical event relating to the shoe and such scene? Read on to see how Dr Yibin Ni deciphers the figures and s...

Mr Henk B. Nieuwenhuys from the Netherlands is the first foreigner who has kindly donated his art collection to China. Here are short video clips from a documentary made for this special event, in which Dr Yibin Ni was invited to introduce Nieuwen...

Wang Zhaojun (王昭君, c.52 – c.15 BCE) was one of the court ladies in the harem of Emperor Yuan of the Western Han dynasty (汉元帝, 206 BCE – 8 CE). It was not possible for the emperor to meet every one of the three-thousand concubines, so he had a court painter paint their pictures to facilitate his selection proc...

With strategic plans to restore the war-torn country back to order, the talented scholar Li Jing (李靖) was paying a visit to the powerful Lord Yang Su (杨素), who enjoyed luxurious ways of living and female company around him. To Li Jing’s disappointment, Lord Yang did not take his plans seriously. However, Red Fly Whisk (红...

After Zhang Liang (张良, d. 189 BCE) failed to assassinate the first emperor of China, he changed his name and went into hiding. One day, he ran into Lord Yellowstone (黄石公), a guru strategist by the Yi Bridge (圯桥). The old man could see Zhang’s great potential but he wanted to put him through a series of tests before takin...

These set of images portray the last moment of the life of Qu Yuan 屈原 (340-278 BCE), an important Chinese poet and politician, who was in exile in the wilderness because of his unsuitable political stance in court. He was talking with a fisherman on the bank of the Miluo River (汨罗江) in Hunan province before he threw hims...