Tobacco reached China from the Philippines in the 16th century and quickly caught on. At first its health benefits were touted, but soon came warnings of its ill-effects, and in 1639 a ban.
Another great China flood: the story of how the Yellow River was tamed, and a Confucian lesson to boot scmp.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scmp.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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An ink drawing of a concubine on her way to join the household of her new master. Photo: Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
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Having lived his whole life in the modern cities of Singapore and Hong Kong, Wee Kek Koon has an inexplicable fascination with the past. He is constantly amazed by how much he can mine from China s history for his weekly column in Post Magazine, which he has written since 2005.
If Haiti president's assassination is a puzzle, how about when Chinese imperial palace maids tried to kill an emperor in his sleep? scmp.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scmp.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A museum worker cleans a bronze relic, which was excavated in 1986, at the Sanxingdui Museum on April 13, 2005 in Guanghan, Sichuan province, southwest China. Some believe this and other artefacts unearthed in Sanxingdui point to alien life. Photo: Getty Images
Opinion
Reflections by Wee Kek Koon
Aliens in China? An extraterrestrial civilisation thrived in ancient times, believe some, based on relics uncovered by archaeologists
Three thousand-year-old artefacts unearthed at Sanxingdui, first in the 1920s and then in the 80s, have convinced many of past alien life in southwestern China
Historians have begun to speak of multiple centres of advanced cultures in the ancient world that were ‘jointly ancestral to Chinese civilisation’