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Article: Antiques.(China and Western world)
- Article from:
- The Magazine Antiques
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no
value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your
country's manufactures.... I do not forget the lonely remoteness of your
island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea.... My
capital is the hub and centre about which all quarters of the globe
revolve.
Letter from the Qianlong emperor to George III of England, 1793
For Westerners, China has long been, and still remains, enigmatic, inscrutable. Many in the West entirely dismissed the first full report of China given in the mid-fourteenth century by Marco Polo, whose tales of the vast wealth, power, and strange ...