Tonight I went to see the Europalia exhibition ‘Son of Heaven‘ at Bozar. It’s a short history of all the dynasties, illustrated by objects from the personal collections of all these emperors and dynasties, starting with Qin.
Very impressive. A civilisation which already had intricate stonework 1300BC, and fine jewellery 200BC. Beautiful potteries, colourful embroidered silks.
What stayed with me, was this guy: Ferdinand Verbiest. This flemish jesuit, after some wandering, ended up being a personal advisor of the emperor. So not only was he an accomplished mathematician and philosopher, he also mastered mandarin to the point of being able to sell a new calendar to the emperor (and to write a couple of books on the subject). The wikipedia entry says he invented the first steam car.
An extraordinary man, no doubt, a geek avant la lettre and a genius. Surprising how even back then, when most people never moved too far from their place of birth (barring emigration to America, of course), some people travelled to the other side of the world, and managed to have extraordinary, eventful lives.
People always moved and explored even far from their places of birth
. Greeks e.g. had colonies all over the coastlines. Egypt exchanged goods with major cities in Tukey, Syria and Iraq (and there was a lot of traffic). The Medes (a group living in Iran) were nomadic horse riding cowboys around 600 BC. Many Romans moved to conquered land and lived a happy life there.
Sometimes we think because people lacked modern ways of luxury travel (planes and automobiles) they didn’t move. It’s not true
It just took longer. Was slightly more time consuming and was a lot more dangerous. On a positive note there were less traffic jams and crying babies.
Cool story about Mr. Ferdinand. There was another famous Belgian exporing the East: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Rubruck He travelled to Monogolia and wrote down one of the first written observation on the Kingdom of Mongolia.
indeed, you’re right
thanks for the story about William of Rubruck.
I still have a childrens book lying around about verbiest… Let me know and I’ll dig it up!