Life and Afterlife in Ancient China

The three millennia up to the establishment of the first imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC cemented many of the distinctive elements of Chinese civilization still in place today: an extraordinarily challenging geography and environment; formidable infrastructure; a society based on the strict hierarchy of the family; a shared written script of characters; a cuisine founded on rice and millet; a material culture of ceramics, bronze, silk, and jade; and a unique concept of the universe, in which ance