I once got into a talk with a guy at work about some items that I’d seen at a museum. I mentioned how derelict a lot of the Roman and Greek exhibits look. “You got it to hand it to the Koreans,” I said to my friend (a Korean), “they know how to preserve historical artifacts. I saw a 5,000 year old pottery that looked like it was made yesterday.”
“5,000 years isn’t really that long,” he said. I don’t think he was showing any false modesty or pulling my leg, because he added, “China’s history is longer.”
And he’s right. China’s got a fantastically long history that most Westerners aren’t familiar with. And that includes me. I’m not going to pretend that I know my Qin Dynasty from my Xin Dynasty from my Qing Dynasty. The small taste of Chinese culture from the Summer Olympics two years ago thrilled — and sometimes frightened — the entire world with China’s grandeur and historical scope. With such a rich history, then, it’s a shame that few Westerners use China as a setting.
One of the few is Ben Costa, creator of the Xeric Award winning Shi Long Pang, the Wandering Shaolin Monk. The story takes place at the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, which was “one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history” by the University of Calgary but which we remember mainly for the nice vases. And when the most stable government in the world falls, you probably don’t want to be around to witness the aftershocks.
