| Abstract | Chinese carpets rarely received good press in the past, if they received any press at all. The Western view is usually influenced by textured-pile creations of curious feel - seemingly derived from sheep fed on plastic. For the Chinese themselves, mention of carpets will usually bring to mind lunar environments such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, where carpets are still being made by the sort of people whom the Great Wall was intended to exclude; people destined to subsist in a land where fung shui cannot exist because a surfeit of fung (wind) is matched by a near total absence of shui (water). The situation has changed that the field is deemed respectable again, increasing numbers are getting into it, presumably including the government of the People's Repubic, which is taking a keener interest in the Eastern wastelands that the old Silk Road looks like a going concern once again. |
|---|
