Chinese culture is not the only place to find a good list; there’s something very human about grouping things together under a definite number. Something almost mythical seems to happen just by bestowing a title like ‘The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World’ or ‘The Three Musketeers’. But in my experience – perhaps the outsider’s perspective – Chinese culture seems to go in for this sort of thing more than most. Perhaps it has something to do with the sheer length of its historiography that has given rise to this love of enumeration. Often, though, a reference is casually dropped in an ancient text to something like ‘the five tastes’ without explanation. Curiosity piqued, I set out to track down the items on some of these lists and hence this website was born.

I cannot claim any expertise in the field, so this website is very much an exercise in learning in public. After completing my undergraduate degree in Chinese Studies many years ago, further study has continued very much on an amateur basis. But I hope this is less in the pejorative sense the word has gained in English of ‘bumbling fool’ and more in the French sense of ‘lover of’. Where I can, I give sources so that interested readers can check what I write for themselves. I continue to be intrigued and beguiled by what I discover about Chinese culture and I hope this website will be useful for others, too.

Rhys Mumford, 2025