• The earliest dynasties — the semi-legendary Xia and the Shang or Yin (from roughly 1700 BC to 1027 BC) — ruled only the Yellow River valley and had their capital near Anyang in Henan.
• The Zhou Dynasty, 1027-221 BC, had their first capital at Hao near modern Xi’an. After a military defeat in 771 BC, they continued as the Eastern Zhou with cpaital Luoyang.
• The Qin Dynasty, 221-206 BC, were the first to unite an area anything like all of China. Their capital was at Xianyang. Our word "China" probably comes from the Wade-Giles romanisation Ch'in.
• The Han Dynasty, 206 BC to 220 AD, had its capital at Xi’an. This was the period of the first Sil Road trade. Chinese still use Han as the name of their largest ethnic group.
• Then for a few hundred years, 220-618, China was not united. Capitals of various important states included Luoyang, Nanjing and Suzhou.
• The Tang Dynasty, 618-907, had its capital at Xi’an.
• The Song dynasty, 979-1279, had its capital at Hangzhou. Marco Polo, who was there a few years after the Mongols conquered the Song, describes it as one of the richest and most beautiful cities on Earth.
• The Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, 1279-1368, used the area that is now Beijing as their capital. Polo mentions it under the name Canbulac, the Khan's camp.
• The Ming dynasty, 1368-1644, initially had Nanjing as their capital then moved the capital to Beijing. They built most of the famous buildings in Beijing — Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and so on.
• The Qing (Manchu) dynasty, 1644-1911, used Beijing as the capital of China but they had their own Manchu capital at Shenyang.
• The Republic of China, who ruled China 1911-1949, moved the capital back to Nanjing. Today they control only Taiwan and Taipei is their "temporary capital". During the Second World War, Chongging was also a temporary capital.
• Beijing has been the capital of China since the Communist victory in the civil war, 1949.
  

• Porcelain with a long history of porcelain making, China still makes great porcelain today. Most visitors are familiar with blue and white, but the variety of glazes is much greater, including many lovely monochrome glazes which are worth seeking out. Specialist shops near hotels and the top floors of department stores are a good place to start, though not the cheapest. The "antique" markets are also a good place to find reproductions, though it can be hard to escape from attempts to convince you that the items are genuine antiques (with prices to match). Two of the most famous centers for porcelain are Jingdezhen and Quanzhou.

• Furniture in the last 15 years China has become a major source of antique furniture, mostly sourced from China's vast countryside. As the supply of old items dwindles many of the restorers are now turning to making new items. The quality of the new pieces is often excellent and some great bargains can still be had in new and old items. Furniture tends to be concentrated in large warehouses on the outskirts of town, Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu all have plenty of these. Hotels will tell you how to find them. They can also arrange shipment in most cases. Zhongshan has a huge furniture market.

• Art and Fine Art the art scene in China is divided into two non-interacting parts. On the one side there are the traditional painting academies, specializing in "classical" painting (bird and flower, landscapes with rocks and water, calligraphy), with conservative attitudes and serving up painting that conforms to the traditional image of Chinese art. On the other hand there is a burgeoning modern art scene, including oil painting, photography and sculpture, bearing little relation to the former type. Both "scenes" are worth checking out and include the full range from the glorious to the dreadful. The center of the modern scene is undoubtedly Beijing, where the Da Shan Zi (sometimes called 798) warehouse district is emerging as the new frontier for galleries, reminiscent of New York's Soho in the mid-80s.

• Jade There are two types of Jade in China today: one type is pale and almost colorless and is made from a variety of stones mined in China. The other type is green in color and is imported from Myanmar (Burma) - if genuine!. The first thing to be aware of when buying Jade is that you will get what you pay for (at best). Genuine Burmese jade with a good green color is extraordinarily expensive and the "cheap" green jade you will see in the markets is made either from synthetic stone or from natural stone that has been colored with a green dye. When buying jade look closely at the quality of the carving (How well finished is it? Is it refined, or crude with tool marks visible?). The quality of the stone often goes along with the quality of the carving. Take your time and compare prices before buying. If you are going to spend a fair sum of money, do it in the specialist stores, not in the fleamarkets. Khotan in Xinjiang is a famous area for jade.

• Carpets China is home to a remarkable variety of carpet-making traditions. These include Mongolian, Ningxia, Tibetan and modern types. Many tourists come looking for silk carpets: these are actually a fairly recent "tradition", most of the designs being taken from middle-eastern traditions rather than reflecting Chinese designs. Be aware that though the workmanship is quite fine on these carpets they often skimp on materials, particularly dyes. These are prone to fading and color change if the carpet is displayed in a brightly lit place. Some excellent wool carpets are also made in China. Tibetan carpets are amongst the best in terms of quality and construction, but be aware that most carpets described as Tibetan are not made in Tibet, with a few notable exceptions. As with jade, best to buy from stores with a reputation to uphold.

• Other arts and Crafts Other things to look for include Cloisonne (colored enamels on a metal base), laquer work, masks, kites, wood carving, scholar's rocks (decorative rocks, some natural, some less so), papercuts, and so on.

Many regions - especially in the southeast of the country - also have their own "dialect". These are really distinct languages, as different as French and Italian although referring to Chinese "dialects" as separate languages is a touchy political issue. Of true dialects within Mandarin, pronunciation varies widely and there is often a liberal dose of local slang or terminology to liven up the mix. The largest dialect groups are Cantonese, spoken in Guangdong (Canton) and Hong Kong, Wu (Shanghainese), spoken in the region around Shanghai, and Minnan (Hokkien, Teochew), spoken in the region around Xiamen. Many Chinese are bilingual in the local language and Mandarin. A few who are older, less educated or from the countryside may speak only the local dialect, but this is unlikely to affect tourists. It often helps to have a guide that can speak the local language as it marks that person as an insider, and you as a friend of the insider. As a general rule, almost all Chinese can understand spoken Mandarin even if they are unable to reply except in their local dialect.

Whatever the spoken dialect, the written language is always the same. Even Japanese and Korean use many of the same characters with the same meaning. There is a complication in this, however. Mainland China uses "simplified characters", adopted to facilitate literacy education some years back. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and by many overseas Chinese, but also on the mainland in advertising and commercial signs. As a result you will just as often see ?? (yínháng) as ?? for "bank". The simplification was however fairly systematic, which means that all hope is not lost for the traveller trying to pick up some sign-reading skills.

In the far western reaches of the country, Turkic languages such as Uighur, Kirghiz and Kazakh are spoken by some of the non-Han ethnic minorities. In tourist areas however, Mandarin or English will likely be usable.

English speakers

Although most Chinese are taught some English at school, and passing an English exam is a requirement for a university degree, the focus of the instruction is formal grammar and writing rather than conversation. As a result, few learn it well enough to be able to participate in an English conversation. Outside of the largest cities and the major tourist areas, it is quite rare to find locals who speak decent English.
That said, a few locals who have studied English to university level (especially if abroad) generally have a reasonable to very good standard of English.
Useful hint: it's often helpful if you try to simplify your English. Stay away from using complex phrasing like "Would you mind if I come back tomorrow?" and stick to simpler, more abrupt phrasing like "I will come back tomorrow."

Learning Chinese

In the West, Chinese has an undeserved reputation as being exceptionally difficult to learn. While it is very different from English or other Western languages, there is no reason that a traveller can not learn a bit of Chinese; every bit you learn will be of enormous help. The main difficulty with learning to speak Chinese is the pronunciation; basic grammar is very simple.

Written Chinese is famously complex, however there is the advantage of it being easier to learn a bit of. In alphabetic writing systems, you can't understand anything until you know the whole alphabet and speak a good deal of the language. In Chinese on the other hand it's very straightforward to pick up the characters, for example for "Internet Cafe" or "Fried Noodles", without knowing anything else about the language. If you have a good visual memory, you may even end up knowing what a sign means, without being able to pronounce it out loud — still a useful skill even if only to distinguish, say, the exit ?? from the entrance ??. To bridge the gap between recognizing and reading out loud, pinyin was developed, which uses latin script to help teach Chinese to schoolchildren and foreigners. It is not obvious, as letters and combinations are not what you would expect, but learning it at even a basic level already has enormous practical value for the traveller.

• You are advised not to travel by bus in the rainy day or at night because there are many mountain roads and the roads condition is not so good and safe.