The earliest Chinese objects date back to the Neolithic farmers of the Yangshao culture - well-made pottery vessels painted in red, black, brown and white with geometrical designs. You'll notice that the decoration is usually from the shoulders of the pots upwards; this is because what has survived is mostly from graves and was designed to be seen from above when the pots were placed round the dead. From the same period there are decorated clay heads, perhaps for magic or ritual, and pendants and small ornaments of polished stone or jade, with designs that are sometimes semi-abstract - a simplified sitting bird in polished jade is a very early example of the powerful Chinese tradition of animal sculpture. Rather later is the Neolithic Longshan pottery - black, very thin and fine, wheel-turned and often highly polished, with elegantly, sharply defined shapes.

The subsequent era, from some 1500 years BC, is dominated by Shang and Zhou bronze vessels used for preparing and serving food and wine, and for ceremonies and sacrifices. There are many distinct shapes, each with its own name and specific usage. One of the most common is the ding, a three- or four-legged vessel which harks back to the Neolithic pots used for cooking over open fires. As you'll see from the museums, these bronzes have survived in great numbers. The Shang bronze industry appears already fully developed with advanced techniques and designs and no sign of a primitive stage. Casting methods were highly sophisticated, using moulds, while design was firm and assured and decoration often stylized and linear, with both geometric and animal motifs, as well as grinning masks of humans and fabulous beasts. There are some naturalistic animal forms among the vessels, too - fierce tigers, solid elephants and surly-looking rhinoceroses. Other bronze finds include weapons, decorated horse harnesses and sets of bells used in ritual music. Later, under the Zhou , the style of the bronzes becomes more varied and rich: some animal vessels are fantastically shaped and extravagantly decorated; others are simplified natural forms; others again seem to be depicting not so much a fierce tiger, for example, as utter ferocity itself. You will also see from the Shang and Zhou small objects - ornaments, ritual pieces and jewellery pendants - with highly simplified but vivid forms of tortoises, salamanders and flying birds. From the end of this period there are also painted clay funeral figures and a few carved wooden figures.

The Shang produced a few small sculptured human figures and animals in marble, but sculptures and works in stone begin to be found in great quantities in Han-dynasty tombs. The decorated bricks and tiles, the bas reliefs and the terracotta figurines of acrobats, horsemen and ladies-in-waiting placed in the tombs to serve the dead, even the massive stone men and beasts set to guard the Spirit Way leading to the tomb, are all lifelike and reflect concern with everyday activities and material possessions. The scale models of houses with people looking out of the windows and of farmyards with their animals have a spontaneous gaiety and vigour; some of the watchdogs are the most realistic of all. Smaller objects like tiny statuettes and jewellery were also carved, from ivory, jade and wood.

It was the advent of Buddhism which encouraged stone carving on a large scale in the round, with mallet and chisel. Religious sculpture was introduced from India and in the fourth-century caves at Datong and the earlier caves at Longmen , near Luoyang, the Indian influence is most strongly felt in the stylized Buddhas and attendants. Sometimes of huge size, they have an aloof grace and a rhythmic quality in their flowing robes, but also a smooth, bland and static quality. Not until the Tang do you get the full flowering of a native Chinese style, where the figures are rounder, with movement, and the positions, expressions and clothes are more natural and realistic. Some of the best examples are to be seen at Dunhuang and in the later caves at Longmen. The Song continued to carve religious figures and at Dazu in Sichuan you'll find good examples of a highly decorative style which had broadened its subject matter to include animals, ordinary people and scenes of everyday life; the treatment is down to earth, individual, sometimes even comic. The Dazu carvings are very well preserved and you see them painted, as they were meant to be. In later years less statuary was produced until the Ming with their taste for massive and impressive tomb sculptures. You can see the best of these in Nanjing and Beijing .

Painting and calligraphy
 

While China's famous ceramics were produced by nameless craftsmen, with painting and calligraphy we enter the realm of the amateur whose name has survived and who was often scholar, official, poet or all three. It has been said that the four great treasures of Chinese painting are the brush, the ink, the inkstone and the paper or silk. The earliest brush found, from about 400 BC, is made out of animal hairs glued to a hollow bamboo tube. Ink was made from pine soot mixed with glue and hardened into a stick which would be rubbed with water on an inkstone made of non-porous, carved and decorated slate. Silk was used for painting as early as the third century BC and paper was invented by Cai Lun in 106 AD. The first known painting on silk was found in a Han tomb; records show that there was a great deal of such painting but in 190 AD the vast imperial collection was destroyed in a civil war - the soldiers used the silk to make tents and knapsacks. All we know of Han painting comes from decorated tiles, lacquer, painted pottery and a few painted tombs, enough to show a great sense of movement and energy. There is a scroll in ink and colour on silk attributed to Gu Kaizhi about 400 AD and entitled Admonitions of the Instructress to Court Ladies, in the British Museum, and we know that the theory of painting was already being discussed, as the treatise The Six Principles of Painting dates from about 500 AD.

The Sui-Tang period, with a powerful stable empire and a brilliant court, was exactly the place for painting to develop, and a great tradition of figure painting grew up, especially of court subjects - portraits, pictures of the emperor receiving envoys and of court ladies, several of which are to be seen in Beijing. Although only a few of these survived, the walls of Tang tombs, such as those near Xi'an, are rich in vivid frescoes which provide a realistic portrayal of court life. Wang Wei in the mid-eighth century was an early exponent of monochrome landscape painting, but the great flowering of landscape painting came with the Song dynasty . An academy was set up under imperial patronage and different schools of painting emerged which analyzed the natural world with great concentration and intensity; their style has set a mark on Chinese landscape painting ever since. There was also lively figure painting - a famous horizontal scroll in Beijing showing the Qing Ming River Festival is the epitome of this. The last emperor of the Northern Song, Hui Zong , was himself a painter of some note, which indicates the status of painting in China at the time. The Southern Song preferred a more intimate style and such subjects as flowers, birds and still life grew in popularity.

Under the Mongols there were many officials who found themselves unwanted or unwilling to serve the alien Yuan dynasty and who preferred to retire and paint. This produced the "literati" school , with many painters harking back to the styles of the tenth century. One of the great masters was Ni Can . He, among many others, also devoted himself to the ink paintings of bamboo which became important at this time. In this school, of which there are many extant examples, the highest skills of techniques and composition were applied to the simplest of subjects, as also with the paintings of plum flowers. Both of these continued to be employed by painters of the next three or more centuries. From the Yuan onwards a tremendous quantity of paintings has survived. Under the Ming dynasty there was a great interest in collecting the works of previous ages and a linked willingness by painters to be influenced by tradition. There are plenty of examples of bamboo and plum blossom, and bird and flower paintings being brought to a high decorative pitch, as well as a number of schools of landscape painting firmly rooted in traditional techniques. The arrival of the Manchu Qing dynasty did not disrupt the continuity of Chinese painting, but the art became wide open to many influences. It included the Italian Castiglione (Lang Shi-ning in Chinese) who specialized in horses, dogs and flowers under imperial patronage, the Four Wangs who re-interpreted Song and Yuan styles in an orthodox manner, and the individualists such as the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou and some Buddhist monks who objected to derivative art and sought a more distinctive approach to subject and style. But on the whole, the weight of tradition was powerful enough to maintain the old approach.

Jade and lacquerware
 

Lacquer is also found as early as the Zhou. Made from the sap of the lac tree, many layers were painted on a wood or cloth base which was then carved and inlaid with gold, silver or tortoiseshell, or often most delicately painted. There are numerous examples of painted lacquer boxes and baskets from the Han and, as with jade, the use of this material has continued ever since.