Chapter 1 introduces the research question: Why the classical tradition of early China represents history and ideology of kingship and statecraft in the culturally specific ways laid out in the famous story about the bronze ding tripod vessels? In this chapter, I lay out the various components goes into this symbolic representation of power, namely the ritualization of food and food vessels, of metallurgy, of time and space, which formed the defining attributes of the classical tradition. The aim of this book is to presents an archaeological narrative on the process that each of these components evolved in early China and their eventual convergence in the development of kingship and states.