The diabolo began in China as the kongzhu ('empty bamboo'), whose hollow bamboo cups whistled as they spun on a string. It reached Europe in the 1790s, but the devilish name 'diabolo' only arrived in the early 1900s, with a craze.
📍 China
Playing cards were most likely invented in Tang-dynasty China around the 9th century, helped by woodblock printing. They reached Europe much later, probably via Mamluk Egypt, by the 1370s.
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📍 Eastern United States (New York to the South)
Tap dance grew up in the United States, where African American dance met Irish jigs and English clogs. A pioneer was William Henry Lane, "Master Juba", who grew up in New York's Five Points in the 1830s and grafted African American rhythms onto jig dancing.
📍 Great Lakes (Haudenosaunee & neighbouring nations), Canada & USA
Snow snake is a winter game of the Haudenosaunee and other Great Lakes peoples: players hurl polished wooden "snakes" with weighted tips down a long icy trough of snow. Haudenosaunee tradition says it is more than 500 years old.
📍 China
Garden chrysanthemums were bred in China for many centuries before they reached Japan. There the flower became the emperor's emblem, which is why the Japanese monarchy is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.
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📍 Northern China (Gansu to Luoyang)
The oldest paper scraps, from the 2nd century BC, were found in China, and Han court official Cai Lun refined papermaking around 105 AD. Egypt's papyrus was a different material.
📍 Guangdong (Canton), China
Kumquat is Cantonese for 'golden orange'. The little fruit is eaten whole, skin and all: the peel is the sweet part and the pulp the sour one. The plant hunter Robert Fortune brought it to Europe in 1846.