Interest in the marine Mollusca, both as useful products, and as objects of beauty and intellectual speculation, probably has a longer continuous history in China than elsewhere. Significant attention to bivalves occurs in the encyclopaedias published in China in the early eighteenth century, and manuals on the culture of bivalves are known from the Ming Dynasty (est. 1470 AD). The Chinese marine fauna has received much attention from collectors and scientific expeditions over the past one hundred and fifty years. While initial taxonomic work was being undertaken by numerous specialists in Europe, the scientific community of China was also studying...