To walk in the filthy air on the streets of Beijing today seems like a walk into hell. Yet, to be in a shop of Chinese antiques is as to cause you to walk quietly, in serene admiration of such elegance, from so far away, and created so long before it was known in the west. From Roman times, it was known that Rome’s eastern city of Damascus was actually on the western edge of a silk route to the vast Orient, beyond mighty mountains. The Romans knew Sumer was to the east, and Persia, and beyond were the spices of the Indies.
But only on the far northern route up over the hump of Asia could one come down into the lush green lands of China, whose range was from tropical south to polar north. The Chinese city of Harbin near Siberia has amazing and massive ice carvings each winter that draws millions. China was a civilization like none other on earth, and one in which Rome only received, as had Egypt before, this mysterious raw silk, which for 7,000 years has been woven into Damask in Damascus, the oldest city on earth continually settled.
Quite nearby Damascus is 10,000 year old Jericho, on a higher plateau with winters. And as in China, to have a range that brought you in security foods from the tropics to northern oats was to have it all. My daughter studied China and we looked up many interesting matters on the net. I learned that the mighty Yangtze River which enters the sea near Shanghai, happens to divide north and south produce. As the river generally runs west to east into the China sea: wheat is grown north of the river, rice to the south.
Yet for protection, the capital city always needed to be up north, near the Great Wall, always on the alert for Mongols to the north. Shanghai, in the middle of China on the coast is the city of the future as the cranes keep building higher.And as more factories are built, the air grows more dirty each day. And as Charles Dickens saw London in it’s polluted industrial expansion worst, so we are seeing China go through this now. So, as societies evolve, this too may pass. And as the technology now exists, and is being tested, patented, agreement rights, price, availability all get us no where yet.
But still China creates one new dirty coal burning plants each week in their plunge into dark riches, and those CO2 filled clouds pass over and rain onto us on the west coast of America now. Dickens London did not manage that. We know that Pocahantas caught her death of plague when she visited London, and is buried in Cornwall as she died before the ship taking her home to die made it past Land’s End. This summer, some elite athletes will skip the Olympics in Beijing with that fear in mind.
But we should have faith that the once and again becoming glorious China will soon desire to again see the light, and the blue sky. China is achieving massive progress, but surely could lighten up a lot on a, but we think China is so proud it will soon decide to show us, buy one hundred million high power filters, and show us who can ensure blue skies. When we see that competitive spirit from China being applied in a more, shall we say, civilized way, we will applaud. Perhaps even visit China to marvel. But not this Olympics.
Oh, that filthy air. So while modern China bulldozes it’s exquisite past to fill in valleys with hydro water, any Chinese antiques you can find at a bargain on any net site will be going, going and gone. When they lose fascination with their new cell phones and gadgets, they will get richer, and one day wonder who bought up the family heirlooms while they worked in the smog factory selling junk to the west, that did not need, but it was so cheap, they did buy, until their 1950’s era house had to be upgraded for the junk.
If so, China will hold the mortgage on the loan to put more of their lead lined modern replicas into your home. Who has the diamonds for brains, who the coal? Check into several Chinese Antiques sites, while they are on their way to get so rich they will play you way too much to buy it back. Just when you need back surgery, plan now, golden cow. Ming and Buddha on your mantle are here for you, unless Senator Wong bids more. Encore. You score. But these Chinese Antiques are about as good a bargain now; you wait, you will see. And no back pain and more joy to you, and to me.
The Ming vase original plant may soon be under water, and the dirty factory built on that sacred soil soon fuming dark gaseous CO2 clouds pumping furiously out at us. but if there are any Chinese antiques still available, you might want to put one on the mantle, and watch it create a retirement legacy for you. Not likely coming out of the factory replacing it, over building cement plants into the air to you. You might feel it wise to check out pure blue Ming that created in England the high nosed phrase Bone China.
There are still many, but increasingly, fewer fine pieces. Now, more often, China is creating the factory that will send discount store Ming copies to you. So while you can, you could look in and see, if an original is still there to you and to me. Time, gentlemen, originals of Chinese antiques are leaving the warehouse shelves, and being replaced by replicas. Which you carry into your inheritance, you choose.
Derek Dashwood enjoys noticing positive ways we progress, the combining of science into the humanities to measure politics, wise use and mis use of power and protective love at http://www.chineseantiquesshop.com Chinese Antiques
Article Source: Chinese Antiques, Filthy Modern China – Oliver's Deathly London?