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<i>Hikifuda</i> are advertising handbills that became popular in late 19th to early 20th century Japan. Showing the increasing sophistication of Japanese commerce, the handbills were produced to advertise a company or promote a product, and sometimes they were even used as wrapping paper.<br/><br/> While<i>hikifuda</i> began to be produced as woodblock prints in the late 17th century, they witnessed a boom in the later 19th century when they were cheaply printed using colour lithography.
Foot binding, although notionally banned after the fall of the Qing Empire in 1911, continued in some remote areas for quite a few years under the Chinese Republic (1911-1949).<br/><br/> Not so in Shanghai, always the arbiter of modern tastes and fashion.<br/><br/> As a consequence, by the mid-1930s, Shanghai’s Zhejiang Road, Fujian Road and Nanjing Road had over one hundred shoe stores between them, with highly skilled shoemakers copying western styles, the most popular among these being high heels and open toe leather shoes.<br/><br/> A Shanghainese woman, dressed in <i>qipao</i> and walking in high heels, became the iconic look of the age, and these two kinds of footwear continued to be changed and innovated upon, becoming staples of the Shanghai fashion world.
The Astana Graves (Chinese: 阿斯塔那古墓, Pinyin: Āsītǎnà Gǔmù) are a series of underground tombs located 6km from the ancient city of Gaochang, and 42km from Turpan, in Xinjiang, China. The tombs were used by the inhabitants of Gaochang, both commoners and locals, for about 600 years from 200 CE – 800 CE.<br/><br/> The complex covers 10 square kilometres and contains over 1,000 tombs. Different plots for separate castes and families are marked by gravel dividers. Due to the arid environment many important artifacts have been well preserved at the tombs, including natural mummies.<br/><br/> A typical tomb is entered by a 10 metre sloping staircase. The tombs are not very large, usually only 2 metres high. Some tombs also have murals inside. The deceased were laid on a small raised platform in the back of the tomb, surrounded by possessions and even food.<br/><br/> Their faces were covered by cloths, some of which have distinct Persian motifs. A small funeral brick was placed to next to each body, on which was written the person’s name and other biographical information. These bricks have been incredibly useful for historians to date the tombs’ finds. There are also various Tang Dynasty figurines and silk paintings in graves.