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Sui Dynasty covered pot made of green glass.

Glassware containing lead and barium emerged as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty. The lead-barium glass requires a relatively low melting temperature. It looks sparkling and crystal clear, but thin and brittle, and can not resist sharp drop or rise in temperature. It is therefore unfit for making utensils or apparatuses. Often lead-barium glass was processed to make ornaments, ritual objects or funerary objects.

By the beginning of the Warring States Period, dragonfly-eye and jade-imitation glass was invented. Dragonfly-eye glass is prepared by adhering multicolor rings on top of glass beads, looking like dragonfly-eyes, thus the name. in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, glass techniques became mature and technical exchange with foreign country started. The technical process in making glass includes casting, twining, inlaying, etc. glass objects such as bi (a round piece of jade with a hole in its center used for ceremonial purposes in ancient China), ring and sword are prepared by pouring melted glass into moulds.

In the Han Dynasty, glass manufacturing became poly-centered, mainly in three regions. In the Central Plain region, Zhou Dynasty process was followed, producing chiefly lead-barium glass. In the Hexi Corridor region (in Northwestern

Qing Dynasty blue transparent glass bottle kept in Palace Museum

Gansu, so called because it lies to the west of the Yellow River) lead-barium glass was also produced with traditional formula, adding sodium and calcium as flux. In the Linnan Region (area covering Guangdong and Guangxi) centered on Guangzhou, potassium-silicon glass was produced. In the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties, regional separatist regimes hankered after importing foreign glass, in particular in the Northern Dynasties Period, when the rulers not only imported glass, but also introduced western glass technology to China. In the Sui Dynasty, a eunuch named He Chou, dawing on the experience of green porcelain manufacturing, successfully produced glass. Glass in the Tang Dynasty was mainly high-lead glass without containing barium, but containing sodium sometimes.

Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, glass grew various in kind. In the Ming Dynasty, Yanshen Town (now Yidu of Shandong Province) was a hub of glass production, where the site of glass production, where the site of glass furnace ruins that had long fallen into oblivion has now been excavated. The Qing Dynasty was at the zenith of ancient glass manufacturing. Glass production at that time was double centered. In the south was Guangzhou whild in the north was Yanshen Town. The imperial glass factory was known for merging together the glass process in the north ans south with European techniques. The imperial glass was plain and unsophisticated, unusually exquisite, representing the achievements attained in glass making in the Qing Dynasty.