This is a newly revised and updated edition of this classic award-winning book, with updated text, additional new colour photographs and fully updated bibliography. The book explains why chinese silks and porcelains, unsurpassed for over a thousand years, have been prized around the world for their fine textures and brilliant colours. Paradoxically, the arts valued most in China have been calligraphy, ink painting, jade carving and bronze casting. The authors explain why, describing the origins of these diverse achievements and setting them in their historical context alongside decorative arts such as lacquer, cloisonne and glass. The wealth of illustrations include well-known blue-and-white Ming ceramics as well as less familiar jades of the Neolithic period and rare world-famous paintings on silk from the Buddhist Silk Road caves at Dunhuang.