The Great Mall

Eric Feferberg—AFP/Getty Images

War craft: Mass production, not individual artisanship, created the terracotta warriors

The South China Mall in Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in Guangdong province, is the world's largest shopping center. Opened in 2005, it's a gaudy monument to the breakneck ascent of Chinese capitalism — 7 million sq. ft. (650,000 sq m) of leasable space, with wings designed to mimic Venice and the Champs Elysées. But, as Anthony J. Barbieri-Low notes in Artisans in Early Imperial China , the concept behind these new mainland megamalls (four of the globe's 10 biggest are in China) is quite old news. As in two millenniums old.

Near the...

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