You may in fact plan to do any or all of these, or not, but some thoughts:
1) I'd put in at least one art history visual source per lecture segment, since a lot of the material has tie-ins to historical events and personages, and helps to fill out the "kings and the wars" side of things better.
The Thames-Hudson survey, or any other good study (the Penguin survey, or the "Chinese Art" section of the Gardner series) would give you, say, 10 objects to link to the work, perhaps chronologically, and would dimensionalize it.
Favorites: The bronze dragon-faced urns used for warming wine in early rituals; the bazillion buried clay soldiers; the pagodas, and why and how they were built; the cave-shrines, ditto; anything from the Song Dynasty (birds are lovely, in particular); one of the T'ang horses, or other ceramic works (the glazes are amazing); one of the hanging scrolls of landscapes, that can be read from a Daoist, Confucian, or Buddhist perspective; things like statuary or mandalas reflecting incursions of Buddhism; the Nine Dragon Scroll (
http://www.craigcoss.com/DragonScroll.html); one of the elaborately embroidered royal coats; the later painted royal portraits (Peabody-Essex has a good collection of these); modern works since the Revolution, etc.
Even if you only have a simple 2-3 line description, include the 5-pt ID (title, artist, place, time/school, brief commentary) for each one and post it for them to work from, include in reference to a contemporaneous event or just put it up with your lecture title pages for each segment of the course, the exposure to visual sources gives an important element that is usually left out.
Not understanding what the visual means to Chinese culture is not understanding Chinese culture, a mon avis.
2) If you're going into the modern period, it might also be interesting to require a critique of one of the more popular novels by Amy Tan or Bette Lord, having students take a chapter from the book and research the historical background in which it is set.
The scene in one of Lord's books, in which the daughter loyally wears a plum-colored dress her mother has made, and the result, for example, brings home certain aspects of the Cultural Rebellion very clearly.
Another scene, in one of Tan's books, ("Bonesetter's Daughter," perhaps) where the whole family leaves and a great chasm of historical material opens up in the life of the next generation--things not discussed, etc.--is pivotal for the individuals, and provides a good place from which to discuss attitudes towards staying or leaving a family compound, what happens in each case, psychological discontinuity and its larger effects, etc.
3) There are also missionaries' diaries with eyewitness accounts of events like the Boxer Rebellion which would make an interesting alternative "take" on the events reported, those give good fulcrum points for a consideration of Western/Eastern interpretive stances and the ways those play out into the present.
One that comes to mind is, "Death Throes of a Dynasty," a compilation of the letters of the Ewings, who were besieged during the rebellion and returned to the US afterwards.
It's on Google-books if you wanted to dip into it; it's a good reminder for students to read things with an open mind, in the first place, and enough background in what they're reading to be able to fill in other sides of a story for a better understanding of it.
What a lovely problem!
