In the second part of our series, Dr. Timothy Cheek, Louis Cha Chair of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, talks about Mao Zedong.

Fu Hao was a consort to King Wuding. She was also a mother, a priestess, and an oracle caster. If those roles were not impressive enough, she was also regarded as the first female military general in Chinese history.

The period from 1966 to 1976 is known in Chinese history as the Cultural Revolution. A time of turbulence, violence and change, the Cultural Revolution has affected, if not defined, the course of China's development. In the first part of our series, Radio86 interviewed Dr. Rana Mitter, a multi-awarded author and historian and a professor at the University of Oxford.

Media conduct over the last two weeks has come under close scrutiny by both Chinese authorities and ordinary people. Western media, particularly, has come under fire for alleged distortion of facts and the dissemination of incorrect information. Was journalistic ethics compromised?

The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was one of the first truly international bureaucratic agencies in the world. It also represents an integrated entity that operated non-stop in China for almost a hundred years and that helped bring substantial revenues to the Chinese central government. In today's world international cooperation is the rule, but the groundwork for such collaboration was already being laid in the China of the 1850s.

Across China in 2007, 39.93 million hectares of farmland was affected by drought, of which nearly 9 percent became unfertile. Millions of people had difficulty accessing drinking water

Seventy years after the massacre, Nanjing is stepping out of the shadows in a bid to stake its claim as 'the office of the world'

In 19th century China, farmers near Anyang in Henan province began turning up mysterious pieces of notched bones which they sold as dragon bones.

Born to the family an ordinary official, the Empress Dowager Cixi became one of the most powerful female figures in Chinese history, ruling the country for almost half a century.

Pu Yi, China's last emperor, did not lead an ordinary life, even after his abdication. He stayed in the Forbidden City until 1924 when the warlord Feng Yuxiang launched a coup that forced Pu Yi to stay at his father's mansion with the rest of his court.