About

East Epoch is an independent journal about Chinese civilisation — its festivals, its arguments, its craft — written for readers in English.

It exists because most English-language writing about China is either journalism about the present or scholarship about the distant past, and very little of it explains how the two connect. A calendar that has been counting since the Han is still in use on a restaurant placemat. A tea bowl designed for a gesture nobody performs any more is still in museum cases. These are not curiosities. They are the working parts of a living system, and they are badly served by being treated as decoration.

What you will find here

• Festivals — what is actually being marked, and why on that date
• Philosophy — the arguments, taken seriously as arguments
• Arts & Craft — objects, and the constraints that shaped them
• History — the paperwork: who recorded what, and for whom

There are no trackers on this site, no newsletter pop-up, and no comments. The video work lives on YouTube.