As a medium in which women could materialize their ideas, needlework influenced women’s lifestyles, values and emotional expression. Photo: FILE In traditional China, scholars and scholar-officials were expert at using art forms such as poetry and painting as vehicles of self-expression. Painting was regarded as “silent poetry,” and poetry as “painting with sound.&rd…

A photo of Kang Youwei, a reformer of the late Qing Dynasty, who deeply realized the destructive effects on society brought by the abandonment of legal traditions Photo: FILE In an article published in 1997, William P. Alford, a professor of Chinese law and legal history at Harvard Law School, noted that when he was engrossed in the study of Chinese legal history during his graduate period…

People who became rich liked to purchase land and property or invest in social welfare, which would not lead to social changes, but rather strengthen the traditional order.

Small-town youth, who live between big cities and the countryside, have constituted a very important link in the country’s drive to build an olive-shaped society. Photo: FILE In recent years, young people living in smaller cities and towns, dubbed small-town youth, have become a hot topic for public discussion. The latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows tha…