Adeline Yen Mah

When he ascended the throne in 247 BC, China was divided into seven states long been at war with one another. The boy-king began his reign with three goals. One was to conquer the other six states and unite the country. Another was to be the most powerful ruler in China. The last was to erect the grandest tomb ever built. He succeeded in all three[...]

The man who became First Emperor, Qin Shi-huang, was just 13 years old when he became ruler of the Kingdom of Qin in central-west China. Although only a boy, he was determined to succeed and to make his mark in history.[...]

China’s written history goes back thousands of years but weʼll begin just 2200 years ago with the man who first united China. He began the Great Wall and built the biggest tomb in history for himself, complete with an army of 7000 clay soldiers. He said his Qin Dynasty would last 10,000 generations. It ended three years after his death[...]

Around 550AD, two visiting monks took the risk. They returned from China to the Byzantine Emperor Justin’s court with silkworm eggs hidden in their hollow bamboo walking sticks. That was the start of silk production in Constantinople (present day Istanbul)[...]

Because the silk trade was so valuable, Chinese methods of silk production were a closely guarded trade secret. Anyone smuggling silkworm eggs out of China was punished by death[...]