There is a LOT of Chinese history!
Useful timeline.
A complete animated history in 20 minutes! Dynasties song to help remember them. All China’s dynasties explained in 7 minutes!
Excellent online course on The European Discovery of China, with the wonderful Professor Dolores Folch. A fantastic resource, and it is free! Amongst lots of excellent material, it uses the Qingming festival handscroll (Ming dynasty version).
Mind-expanding book on The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, and his view of the contemporary New Silk Roads book, and documentary. The New Silk Road Project website. A German documentary on this subject.
BBC radio podcasts include much on Chinese culture & history:
- China: As History is my Witness, a very interesting series on how history informs today’s China.
- The Reith Lectures 2008 opened up Chinese Vistas.
BBC recent history – Shadow War: China and the West - In Our Time:
- early sources of Chinese History
- Silk Roads
- Tea
- Confucius
- Sun Tzu and The Art of War
- Daoism
- Journey to the West
- Zen
- Legalism
- the Han Synthesis
- Warring States
- The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- The Battle of Talas
- the An Lushan Rebellion
- Genghis Khan
- Marco Polo
- Matteo Ricci and the Ming Dynasty
- The Ming Voyages of admiral Zheng He
- the Great Wall
- Li Shizhen and his natural remedies
- the Taiping Rebellion
- the Boxer Rebellion
- the Opium Wars
- the Second Sino-Japanese War
- the Long March
- the Cultural Revolution
- the Needham Question
- A History of Ideas included Ancestor Worship and Creation Myths including Daoism.
- A History of the World in 100 Objects included:
- Chinese Characters – from the female Emperor Wu Zetian to Bruce Lee and many more!
Other excellent podcasts (I have referenced the websites, but you need to find the podcasts themselves through your normal podcast platform):
- Comprehensive China History Podcast, and its Youtube channel, with a thematic approach, by Lazlo Montgomery
- Also his History of Tea
- The History of China podcast: a detailed chronological survey by Chris Stewart
- A short Silk Road History, by Nathan Cherry
Plus:
BM Curator’s corner on Han woman’s costume.
Lecture on Women in the Forbidden City.
Article on Marco Polo – a Chinese edition! Did he exist? Did he really go to China?
Archaeology articles: Queen Fu Hao, Tang Women.