ABSTRACT
The cultural history of China truly begins with the period of the Shang Dynasty. Two major cultural attainments characterize this stage in the course of Chinese development. One is a well-established form of writing, which provides an extensive record of the life of the time, and the other an extraordinarily brilliant and never-surpassed mastery of the art of bronze casting. In Shang time, the ancestors of the ruling clan leaders, both male and female, were worshipped, offered sacrifices, and were the objects of divination. Shang bronze art was clearly related to Shang belief and practice in magic. It is a highly stylized form of art. Shang was a wild age of magic with a freer attitude towards human relations and to sex than was to exist later under the constraints of Confucian society. The magic of relating the forces of nature to human existence and survival was expressed in the direct and natural way.
