China

In Republican China, amid the chaos of dynastic collapse and war, opium became a rare stable currency, yielding huge riches for those who knew how to work the system.

Hong Kong’s ‘one country, two systems’ policy was boldly pragmatic, but it was not the first time such an idea had been tried – nor the first time that it failed.

In the 1930s several prominent Black intellectuals visited Shanghai, bringing politics, culture and anti-colonial fervour with them. 

The elixir of life, a mythical substance from ancient Chinese literature, underpins an enormous industry in modern China. 

Flowers formed from pith paper captured the imagination of British society in the 19th century, sparking a search for the elusive ‘rice paper’ plant.

A tale of two translators, caught between civilisations.

Mao Zedong once said that Taiwan should be independent, but the Chinese Communist Party has since changed its mind on the ‘renegade province’. How Chinese is Taiwan?

Realising the world was changing around them, the Qing government began sending students abroad.

Believing language would unify their struggling nation, Chinese officials began a project to create a national language and define what it meant to speak Chinese. 

Chinese history is dominated by a nationalist interpretation that owes much to British ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries.