Video: What the Ancients Knew

I'm not sure what the legalities of this are, but someone's posted 6 episodes of the show What the Ancients Knew. A friend pointed me to episode 2, China.

I’ve only seen the one episode so far but it was fascinating. I learned a lot from it. While I knew the Chinese discovered gunpowder quite early and used it for fireworks, I didn’t realize they had rocket arrows (with a pocket of gunpowder to propel them further). Nor did I realize they used the North Pole as an axis point when examining the heavens and created armillary spheres significantly earlier than European scientists. They also had a mechanical waterclock, crossbows, steel… Very interesting video. Can’t wait to watch the rest of this series.

There is a scene where an old Chinese emperor examines a cob of corn, which is anachronistic. I’m really confused over why they did that. But that reenactment scene aside, the show seemed quite accurate.

Video: Ice City

The city of Harbin in Northern China hosts an ice festival every winter in which giant sculptures of buildings are built and lit up.  The video below, by Paul Tauger, shows activities that go on during the day and night.  The whole thing's pretty interesting, but if you only want to see the night shots jump to the 2:40 mark or check out some photos on Trip Adviser.



One thing I really liked about the video is the snapshot of how people in China celebrate winter.  The ice chairs(?) people were skating with, for example, and the different foods at the booths were cool to see.

I've been thinking lately how festivals were (and still are) a big part of life, and yet a lot of fantasy (and other) books fail to account for this.  Even if the festivals aren't shown, they'd still be talked about and anticipated by the people.  Perhaps they'd even be used as motivation for working hard.