The Chinese for cloisonne is jing tai lan, “Jing Ta” being the name of a Ming Dynasty emperor during whose reign mass production of such articles (物品) began. Cloisonne techniques were brought from Persia into Yunnan Province during the Yuan Dynasty and improved during the Ming Dynasty by searching for a combination with the traditional techniques, giving birth to a new kind of cloisonné called jing tai lan.

Jade artifacts of the Liangzhu Culture are found mainly in Jiangsu, Zhejang and Anhui provinces near the lower parts of the Yangtze River. The discovery in 1986 of the largest “ king of congs, ” was a surprise. The “king” , which is 8.8 centimeters long and 17.6 centimeters in diameter and weighs 6.5 kilograms, was dug from an old tomb on Mount Fanshan, Zhejiang Province.

The Chinese porcelain before the Song Dynasty (960-1279) basically was blue or white, but this was changed in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) when a new type was produced, that is, the globally famous blue and white porcelain. Most raw materials for blue and white porcelain came from Yunnan, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, and the rest were imported from foreign countries.

Bronze vessels of the Shang Dynasty ( C. 1600-1046 BC ) take the shape of animals that look unusual to catch people’s eye. A most well-known example is a wine vessel dug from the tomb of Fu Hao, a wife of King Wuding of Shang, in Anyang, Henan Province. The vessel takes the shape of an animal with a head that looks like a horse head but with goat horns. There is a wing on each, and a dragon on the back.