• Chinese Inventions: Can You Name Them? [Asia for Educators]
Short descriptions of key Chinese inventions or items of Chinese origin from throughout history, including silk, paper, porcelain, and tea.

• Secrets of Lost Empires: China Bridge [NOVA, PBS]
Companion website to a 2000 PBS program documenting the “effort by a NOVA-assembled crew of scholars and timber framers to design and build a Chinese bridge known only from an ancient painting [the Beijing qingming scroll].” Includes a reading, “China’s Age of Invention,” that highlights many Song-dynasty inventions.

Classroom Activity Idea • SILK: Raise Silkworms
Order the worms (from an online vendor such as Insect Lore), then have students observe and record the life cycle of the silkworm, learning scientific procedure in the process. Mature cocoons can be boiled and unraveled, revealing the silk.

Classroom Activity Idea • BAMBOO: Grow Bamboo in the Classroom
Plants can be ordered from an online vendor (such as the Bamboo Sourcery, which also has extensive information about Bamboo). Have students research the uses of bamboo in China.

• Red Panda [Bronx Zoo]

• Giant Panda [National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution]

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