To the average 1WEST, China has always been, ever since Marco Polo, a very 2MYSTERY and fascinating country. The cloud of mystery which began to be dispelled after the 3FORCE opening of China in the nineteenth century descended once again with the 4EMERGE of the Communist regime. Now the cloud is thinning once more, and there is a surge of interest in China to be felt not only in Europe and America but in almost every country in the world. Although the West has influenced modern China, that nation cannot be understood without 5REFER to all the major phases of its long past. We are here dealing with the 6EVOLVE of a proud and largely self-sufficient civilization. The attitudes of Chinese alive today are, to an 7USUAL degree, rooted in a history consciously present to their minds. Chinese history is not the oldest in the world. We have records of developed civilisations in the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates-Tigris, and even Indus which are older than that of the Yellow River. But peoples and 8LINGUAL have changed out of all recognition in those other centres of early civilisation.