CHINA

The history of the "Middle Kingdom" is a mirror to all of humankind's highest achievements, and all its worst anxieties. For centuries enlightened civilization and social order flowered and developed in an age when Europe remained enveloped in dark and primitive inter-tribal conflict. Ancient China nurtured the highest developments in philosophy, medicine and scholarship. And concocted gunpowder - the original weapon of mass destruction. She remained suspicious of outsiders and the world beyond her imagined, and later walled, borders; but was the powerhouse of the Great Silk Road and the export of her much sought knowledge, artistry and textiles to the Middle East and the foundling civilizations of the Mediterranean.