China

White glazed bowl, Shunzhi-Kangxi period, Qing dynasty, 1650–70

The perils of porcelain – and the pleasures of Edmund de Waal

19 September 2015 8:00 am

A.S. Byatt on the dark, deadly secrets lurking beneath a calm, white surface

The good economic news that we forgot in the China panic

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…

Sorry, but I can’t join in the China panic (especially not while I’m on a cruise)

29 August 2015 9:00 am

 MS Queen Victoria, 38°N 19°E I’ll do my best, but I’ve got to be honest: being surrounded by shining Ionian…

Chairman Mao: monster of misrule

22 August 2015 9:00 am

Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…

Ai Weiwei: the perfect Asian artist for lazy western curators

22 August 2015 9:00 am

In September, the Royal Academy of Arts will present a solo exhibition of works by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.…

Portrait of the week

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Home The Metropolitan Police encouraged people to celebrate VJ Day despite reports in the Mail on Sunday (picked up from…

Forget Greece: China's economic slowdown is the biggest story of the year

15 August 2015 9:00 am

China’s long boom may finally be ending. The consequences for the world will be profound

The edge of the Gobi desert, some 100km northwest of Beijing (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty)

The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…

Rabdentse, near Pelling, the ruined former capital of Sikkim, with Mount Kanchenjunga in the distance

The story of Sikkim’s last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…

Joanna Lumley is ‘thrilled’ by everything, even being spanked by a Mongolian shaman, in her new Trans-Siberian Adventure

18 July 2015 9:00 am

For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…

Portrait generally thought to be of Ghenghis Khan

Was Genghis Khan the cruellest man who ever lived?

27 June 2015 9:00 am

From the unpromising and desperately unforgiving background that forged his iron will and boundless ambition, Temujin (as Genghis Khan was…

The long shadow over China’s only children

13 June 2015 9:00 am

This book starts with a Chinese boy so privileged and pampered that, at 21, he can’t open his own suitcase,…

New ways to destroy the world

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…

Amazing. Thatcherite propaganda at the Young Vic

30 May 2015 9:00 am

St James Theatre hosts a new play about Alexander McQueen (real name Lee), whose star flashed briefly across the fashion…

Letter from Kathmandu: China's beating India in the aid wars

23 May 2015 9:00 am

After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later,…

Why American psychoanalysts are an endangered species

25 April 2015 9:00 am

America’s psychoanalysts are becoming an endangered species

Whose hair are you buying?

25 April 2015 9:00 am

British people buy £43 million worth of human hair a year. So who’s selling?

Carl Jung meets David Icke (and writes a book of bonkers business-speak)

25 April 2015 9:00 am

What do you get if you cross renegade psychoanalyst Carl Jung with lizard-men conspiracist David Icke? It is a question…

‘Combs, Hair Highway’, 2014, by Studio Swine

Luxury isn’t the opposite of poverty but the opposite of vulgarity - but don’t tell the V&A

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…

Gyalo Thondup (right) pictured with the Dalai Lama on their arrival in India in 1959

From diplomacy to disillusion with the Dalai Lama’s big brother

18 April 2015 9:00 am

Can there ever have been another book in which one of the authors (Anne Thurston in this case) so effectively…

How Labour’s 50p tax trick has ended up helping George Osborne

28 February 2015 9:00 am

Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…

What’s good about austerity (whatever the Greeks think)

31 January 2015 9:00 am

The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’…

Peking, c. 1290 (private collection), from ‘The Book of Ser Marco Polo’, edited by Henry Yule, 1903

The real mystery is how it got published

24 January 2015 9:00 am

As a boy I spent quite a lot of my free time trying to fake up ancient-looking documents. This hopeless…

The eurozone is strong enough to kick out Greece if Syriza wins

10 January 2015 9:00 am

Ever since European Central Bank president Mario Draghi declared himself ready, in July 2012, ‘to do whatever it takes to…