China in Six Easy Pieces

For centuries, we in the West were enthralled by ceramics from China

and by blue and white in particular.

650,000. At 700,000. Any more at 700,000?

But what we didn't know

was what the Chinese had been making for themselves.

Over there, emperors, scholars and collectors

were entranced by something completely different,

deceptively simple forms, many of them subtle monochromes,

a whole species of ceramics never seen in the West.

Then, in 1860, Western troops rampaging through Beijing

and pillaging the Emperor's summer palace

found these ceramics, a kind entirely new to them.

Imagine the greed which filled the British and the French troops

when they entered these ransacked palaces to discover

that they were absolutely crammed with porcelain.

The troops had blundered into a treasure house,

revealing an aesthetic completely different to their own,

one which emphasised

just how mysterious the people of Cathay were.

NEWSREEL: And now for something really antique.

In the 1920s, one Englishman set out to build a collection

of such pieces.

Through these wares, Percival David believed

he could bring the West into a closer understanding of the East.

I think he was right.

I believe that through these wares we can reveal

aspects of Chinese society and character.

To me, they ARE China in ceramic form.

These beautiful objects are time travellers.

They'll take us on a journey through a thousand years of ceramic history,

to the 12th-century capital of the academic Song Dynasty,

gleaming blue and white porcelains will carry us to the 14th century,

the Yuan era,

and then we'll be in the 18th century and the Forbidden City

for the beginning of the end for the Qing emperors.

I've set myself a real challenge.

I'm going to take half a dozen ceramic items

and I'm going to see whether through them,

we can get an understanding of an entire civilisation.

For me, the urges began in adolescence,

but I was 21 before I actually touched any imperial porcelain.

Well, my first experience of actually handling pieces

made for the emperors was as

a young probationary specialist

at a well-known auction house.

I got to play with the toys. I just was in heaven!

There is a huge world of difference

between seeing an object through glass in a cabinet

and actually getting your hands on it.

In the West, we don't actually value the notion of feeling an object

as much as they do in the East.

You're in direct contact with the people who made this,

whenever it might have been.

There was one collection above all which I wanted to get my hands on...

..the celebrated Sir Percival David Collection.

NEWSREEL: Inside Pekin is the Forbidden City.

It's where emperors once lived in barbaric splendour.

Percival David began collecting ceramics in his twenties,

just as the imperial system ended.

He had legendary taste and remarkable access.

The Percival David Collection

is the finest collection of Chinese ceramics outside China.

The great collector was born in India in 1892,

into a dynasty of merchant princes.

He first visited China in 1923.

He's entering China at a time that's quite exciting

in terms of the art world.

We're seeing a lot more ancient things appearing in the market.

He was paying top dollar for many of the objects he acquired.

But, of course, you know, he had the funds to do that.

Today, the collection is on public display at the British Museum.

He felt that he was so fortunate

to have direct experience of China and Chinese things outside of China,

and he was one of the lucky few

who could purchase what he really wanted. He wanted to share that.

Museums like statistics.

The average visitor to the British Museum

dwells in a gallery for 174 seconds.

But in Gallery 96, the average stay is seven minutes.

Now, in those seven minutes,

60% of the people asked, "What was it like visiting Gallery 96?"

put it down to an emotional and a spiritual experience.

And I'm sure that Sir Percival would have been very pleased.

Many visitors are Chinese.

I believe they're reporting more than the spiritual uplift

that comes from expensive antiques.

I think it's a response to an enigma.

These vessels are ancient but unchanged by the passage of time.

They reverberate with bygone eras.

It's just a question of listening for the echoes.

I've chosen five pieces from the Percival David Collection

and one from modern China.

They're all old friends of mine, pieces I've known for years.

'Now I won't just be looking.'

Well, you've got a massive pair of vases.

For three decades, I've handled ceramics without price

and sometimes without value, but always with care.

But this is different.

Handling these pieces calls for control of one's nerves.

Many are priceless. They're all fragile.

My first choice may come as a surprise,

but to me, it's a minimalist masterpiece.

This is a film about beautiful objects.

To many people's eyes, this is no more than a dog bowl.

I think this is exquisite -

white porcelain, the material that we above all associate with China.

This has an ivory feel to it, cold to the touch

but smooth as satin.

This was made at a time when there were no enamels,

there were no colours, but you could decorate it

by scratching or carving a design into the surface.

And you can almost see the hand movement of the potter.

He will use a wire or a little cutter

and turn the basin round, and he'll get this beautiful flow.

For me, that's one of the most satisfying tests.

When you look at it, does the design make you want to turn it round?

Does it have life? Does it want to rotate itself?

It sounds a bit highfalutin, but that's the way it is.

And then in the centre, we have this beautiful array,

not only in the centre but on the inside of that galleried rim.

And my word, the copper band just gives it this presence.

To think that the Normans were still rampaging over England

at the time this was made.

This basin was made around the end of the 11th century AD,

an example of what is called Ding ware.

It was designed for the use of an intellectual or scholar,

and it opens my first window onto a particularly Chinese trait,

the respect for learning and for the learned.

In all sorts of different walks of intellectual life,

there's a very powerful Chinese tradition of scholarship.

It might be about art or philosophy or food or music.

And it is distinctive from our own.

11th-century China was ruled by the Song Dynasty,

emperors to whom scholars were heroes.

In Chinese society,

people were ranked according to their profession.

At the top was the scholar,

then came the farmer, then came the artisan or craftsman,

and right at the bottom was the merchant.

When the Song came to power, scholarship was greatly revered,

and being able to read and write and appreciate your venerable past

was a most important quality.

But academic excellence was of less importance than athletic prowess

when, in 1127,

marauding Tatar forces chased the Song out of their capital, Kaifeng.

They fled south to a city that is today called Hangzhou.

I wanted to see the town where the Song found refuge.

Hangzhou sits in a natural hollow by a picturesque lake

with a gentle climate perfect for growing tea.

The Song court had been through hell.

This was heaven.

The Southern Song Dynasty, as they're known today,

began to make their new capital a thriving metropolis

and a centre of academic excellence. So naturally they left good records.

The urbane citizens of Hangzhou

had a bewildering choice of evening classes

for those interested in the sciences and the arts.

There was a choice of the early music society,

the horse owners' appreciation society,

the girls' choral society,

the calligraphy society

and all sorts of other interests,

including the ghost hunters' society,

the exotic food enjoyers' society

and the antique collectors' society.

Now, that's one 12th-century club I should love to have attended.

To run their very civil society, the Song required a civil service.

Examinations were open to all and standards were high.

Pushing a pen, or rather a brush, required fluency in the classics

and dexterity with the scholar's tools.

Calligraphy is really at the base of any scholar's performance.

The scholar surrounded himself with useful utensils on his table,

a whole array of objects that would have helped you

with the pursuit of your writing or your painting.

But you didn't want to use something that was ugly,

you wanted to use something that would lift your spirits,

and each of these would have been beautiful in its own right.

Our bowl is such a tool.

Chinese calligraphy is more than just writing, it's art.

Song officials had to paint words, or rather characters, beautifully.

At the Hangzhou Art Institute, the scholars' tools still include

the ink, the brush and the bowl to rinse one from the other.

The Ding ware basin is almost certainly a brush washer.

LARS GASPS IN ADMIRATION

This is very, very beautiful, very, very impressive,

and you have a very appreciative audience.

Here we are in Hangzhou, famous for the Song Dynasty.

Is there one style associated with the Song Dynasty scholars?

TRANSLATION: For the dynasties following the Han,

there were lots of changes in style.

The Song Dynasty had its own calligraphic orientation.

It was more free, more able to express inner feelings.

Each era had its own style.

As far as art is concerned,

the Wei and Jin periods were the most creative.

In the Tang Dynasty, law and regulations were emphasised.

In the Song Dynasty, they wanted to walk in a different road.

Cultured people were more natural,

living in a different historic climate,

and this more expressive literati created a more expressive style.

My English name, when said in Chinese, is not good. Lars Tharp.

Yeah, yeah. It means "trash can".

So, many years ago, I asked my Chinese friend

to find a good Chinese name for me.

Subole.

I must use this. This is a Guan Yao brush washer.

OK, here we go.

Hm...

The next bit is something like this.

And the next bit is...

erm...

Very good?

LARS LAUGHS

Run by academics, Song society was calm and ordered.

And in order lies contentment, a precept of Confucianism.

When the brush washer was made,

Confucius had been dead for nearly 1,500 years,

but the Southern Song resurrected interest in the philosopher,

the study of his teachings and precepts

regarded then and now as the pursuit of scholars.

Confucius, perhaps one of the most famous philosophers of all time,

was born in 551BC.

He was a minister in the state of Lu. And there he is...

..famous for his sayings, many of which, of course, are apocryphal,

but in fact, an amazing man.

He set the entire basis for the way in which China has been run

in the 2,500 years ever since.

He believes in proper relationships,

that we have a duty from one person to another,

from superior to inferior and vice versa,

and believes that a state that knows what those relationships are

is a well-ordered state and one which will succeed.

A society run by thinkers is a well-ordered one.

GONG SOUNDS

But what else does the tale of the scholars tell us about the Chinese?

That they've long recognised

that you don't have to be rich to be clever.

Emperors were chosen by heaven, but everyone else was chosen on merit.

For hundreds, for thousands of years,

the scholar was the glue holding together Chinese civilisation.

A lowly farmer's boy could rise

to become an imperial government minister

if he applied himself with scholarship and study.

But with the Cultural Revolution, everything changed.

Scholars, intellectuals, were a thing of the past.

They, like the landlords, had to be purged.

Mao's Red Guards drove scholars into the fields to do proper work.

The zeal with which he persecuted intellectuals was grim confirmation

of just how important they had been.

How free are today's scholars to think the unthinkable?

There's no question at all that there are limits

on what is regarded as acceptable in Chinese universities and so on.

There's still great respect amongst the Chinese for scholarly pursuit.

The most coveted position for a young Chinese graduate

is to work in some shape or form in the state.

Or if they want to work in a company,

they still by and large prefer to work in a state-owned company

than a private company.

Ding ware is low-key and maybe an acquired taste.

Time for my second object.

If you thought that was plain...

what about this?

This is my second piece, a very plain object,

a very classical thing.

In terms of ceramics, the Song Dynasty is perhaps my favourite.

The wares are so exquisitely simple.

There is a sort of serene simplicity in their beautiful monochromes.

This piece dates from around 1100AD,

about a century younger than the brush washer

but still from the Song era.

It's known as Guan or official ware, fired in a government kiln.

And "plain" isn't the word.

Wow. What a fantastic object. It's called a cong.

I'm going to turn it upside down.

HE LAUGHS

Er, this is, er, this is a little bit of a dream. Here we go.

And there it is. It's the bottom of the piece.

The first thing that strikes you is its presence.

It's actually a very sturdy object. It has good weight.

It's not too heavy, it's certainly not too light.

And the other thing is the feel of it.

This has a creamy texture.

And it is a very, very beautiful colour. It's a sophisticated colour.

You see all sorts of tones of blues and greens.

And you have this celadon glaze covered in a fracture, a craquelure.

Now, it's technically an error,

but the Chinese potters rather liked this effect.

They actually cultivated the effect.

It is remarkable to think that an object

which, erm, might pass most modern people by

if it was in the shop window as an interesting shape maybe

is actually 800 or 900 years old.

When this object was made,

the technique of manufacturing porcelain was still relatively new,

but the unusual shape of the vessel was very, very old.

The form dates back thousands of years to the Stone Age.

Objects of identical shape have been discovered

amongst the bones of the Chinese Neolithic tombs.

They are very mysterious objects,

and they obviously have a special meaning,

but because they were made in the prehistoric period,

before there is any writing,

nobody knows exactly what they were or what they mean.

This vessel speaks to me about another very Chinese characteristic,

respect for the past and for the ancestors.

The Chinese are aware of, familiar with,

influenced by and intimate with their own history.

Any discussion or debate of any importance or profundity in China

is inevitably punctuated by quotes from, citations from, an old sage.

This is completely different, I think,

from the way the West operates.

This object takes us back to the Southern Song Dynasty,

in their new lakeside home, digging in.

In the Song period, you have the beginnings of antiquarianism

and even archaeology.

People start digging ancient things up from the ground.

And although they didn't know

precisely what period these things dated from,

they were treasured and many of the shapes copied in ceramic.

The Song liked the sense

of being connected with their ancient ancestors.

The modern residents of Hangzhou

are also keen to be linked with their ancestors.

When the refugee court arrived here in 1127,

Hangzhou was a trading post.

Within a century, they'd made it a hotspot of creative excellence.

The citizens of Hangzhou are so proud of their Song heritage,

the heritage of scholasticism, of scholarliness, of taste,

that they've decided to open a theme park -

you could call it the World of Song -

which encapsulates all of these virtues.

This theme park, the Song Town Scenic Area,

celebrates the glamour that the Song brought to Hangzhou.

But that took time.

When they first arrived,

they had nothing but the clothes they stood up in.

When the Song were driven south, great treasures were lost,

so one of the first things they wanted to do

was make new and beautiful objects.

The Tsung-form vessel is quite a rare piece.

I mean, many of these objects are rare,

but this one's exceptionally rare,

because it's a shape that's not natural to ceramic.

It's a shape that's based on ancient jade.

And it's very difficult to recreate

that quite solid jade form in ceramic,

so I'm guessing the failure rate for making those was quite high.

So the fact that this one survived and it's in such good condition,

it's really quite exceptional.

30 years ago, archaeologists uncovered one of the Song kilns,

not just any old kiln, but the Guan kiln,

the very one in which official wares had been fired.

These are the fragmentary brothers and sisters

of our second object, the Tsung.

Just look at these pieces,

some of them more or less intact, others in tiny pieces,

and look at the variety of colour.

Now, this piece here is an incense burner.

Over here we've got a basin

which is almost certainly a brush washer for calligraphy.

And then beyond that we have a very, very traditional Chinese shape

known as a meiping, a plum blossom vase,

that very, very beautiful thing.

And beyond that, they haven't recovered all of the pieces,

but it's a really intriguing little double vase,

an outer vase containing an inner vase,

and the outer wall has been pierced with a pattern,

and this sort of play with clay was something the emperors loved.

But it's not just the pots that brought me here.

The museum is built around the most important discovery of all,

the foundations of the kiln itself.

And here it is, the famous dragon kiln of the 12th century,

quite possibly the same kiln in which our Tsung vase was fired.

It's amazing. It's 48 metres in length.

The original fire is set down in the firebox at the very bottom,

and the flame is drawn all the way through by this slope,

which acts as a flue.

Guan wares are very, very sophisticated.

They've already been fired in a low firing before they reach this stage,

and they've been dipped several times

in this wonderful glaucous glaze.

And on this site, they've discovered

shards identical to the material that we see

in that fantastic Tsung vase.

A thousand years ago, this was the white heat of new technology.

But the Tsung shape was already ancient,

a form revered for its antiquity

even though nobody knew what it had originally meant.

In the Song Dynasty, you can imagine an emperor or a collector

wanting a piece of ceramic in this mysterious jade form

just as a curious thing to own.

Whatever its original function,

we CAN say it's one of the oldest forms still in use in today's China.

So this shape links the deep past with the present.

It links the ancestors with the people of now.

It's transferred into a vase, a wine vessel.

And it even supports a modern building.

Even if the meaning eluded scholars of the Song, they still revered it.

To me, the survival of the shape shows us that for the Chinese,

though the past is gone, it's never forgotten.

In the rush to build a new China,

the country has become a construction site.

But in the midst of change, the past is a constant.

As in the Song era,

modern Chinese look to their ancestors for comfort and security.

In mid-March every year in China, millions go to visit their dead.

Grave-sweeping day takes two days.

Their reverence for the past

and respect for the ancestors who populate it isn't unique,

but does it have an extra resonance for the Chinese?

Ancestral worship is very important to understanding the Chinese.

The Chinese are not a religious people. It's a stress on continuity.

One of the extraordinary kind of paradoxes of China today

is that no society in the world is changing more quickly

and yet at the same time is influenced more by its own history.

Going to my third piece, we go from the world of plain white,

where the decoration is something

you can only enjoy if you get really close to it,

I mean pieces which were probably made for a scholar's table,

to the world of blue and white porcelain.

Now, this is a revolution, because we go from close-up decoration

to decoration that can be enjoyed at a distance.

We can see designs a long way away.

The third chapter in my voyage through Chinese society

is via the grandmothers of all blue and white porcelain,

the so-called David vases.

So far, I've been allowed

to enjoy the tactile qualities of my landmark pieces.

Now I'm happy just looking.

Slightly wonky.

This one doesn't stand absolutely straight,

and as a pair, well, there's a difference in the zoning

and the shades of blue aren't quite right.

These lovely elephant handles once had loose rings.

You can just about make out where the ring used to sit on the bottom

of the trunk, where it made contact with the shoulder in each place.

Those have gone, so they're damaged.

But there's something very special about these.

These are, in fact,

the earliest dated known white vases in the world.

These were given to a temple in China in 1351.

We know this because there is an inscription on each of them.

These vases take us into the 14th century

and a new dynasty, the Yuan.

They were made for a temple, but for me,

they're not about religion, they're about trade.

The blue in blue and white porcelain would not have been possible

without the activities of merchants.

Jingdezhen, west of Shanghai, was the porcelain capital of the world.

At some point towards the middle of the 14th century,

this place underwent a technological revolution.

It was the arrival of the muddy mineral, cobalt,

which, applied before the glaze

and fired at an extremely high temperature,

emerged from the kiln a glorious, violet hue.

The David vases are part of a series of porcelains

that came as a tremendous aesthetic shock

when they first appeared in China.

If you imagine the muted tones of Song Dynasty porcelains,

suddenly, there is this porcelain painted in bright,

vibrant blue and covered in patterns.

This great ceramic leap forward would not have been possible

without the activities of merchants.

Merchants were bringing in a whole string of goods.

They were bringing in silks, spices,

precious metals and commodities,

including cobalt, bought from Persia.

Goods flowing north-south along the Grand Canal,

linking the great west to east flowing Yangtze and Yellow rivers,

created boom towns like Yangzhou along the way.

The merchants who made their homes here

brought with them more than just cash.

Along with luxury goods, traders brought in new ideas.

Once it had been Buddhism,

now Islam came in along the reopened Silk Road.

The grave of one merchant is a place of pilgrimage

for visitors to Yangzhou's Muslim district

because this 14th century eminence

claimed direct descent from the Prophet.

Muslim traders were trusted by the Chinese,

because their faith forbade dishonesty

and they were trusted by neighbouring peoples

because they weren't Chinese.

And here he is, Puhaddin himself.

A very distinguished citizen of Yangzhou, a missionary,

a member of the Muslim merchant classes who brought

commodities from Persian lands into China and,

my goodness, all the way along the Grand Canal

there are mosques dating to this period.

It was the Muslim merchant classes bringing commodities to China

who, of course, also acted as the conduit

for Chinese products to go West.

It was a two-way traffic.

It's no accident, I think,

that looking at this beautiful tomb

with the lovely incised lotus designs,

these are designs that we see on blue and white china.

In time, Chinese merchants would make blue and white porcelain

the first globally traded man-made commodity.

In the West, it's often thought that China is a closed society,

but if you look at the history,

nothing could be further from the truth.

It opens, it closes, it opens again with the successive dynasties.

We have a period of closure in the Song Dynasty,

an inward-looking dynasty,

and then it opens up again with the Yuan, the Mongol dynasty.

And all the time, through all of these successes, openings up

and closings, the one permanent feature is the merchant class.

The merchants are central

to the way in which this country has developed over millennia.

Merchants in traditional Chinese society were the bottom rung,

but of course, they were the machinery that kept the empire going.

They were once despised,

but today's merchants are the shock troops of the new economy.

Are they the new heroes of the people?

People respect entrepreneurial skill.

China's a very competitive society, any Chinese will tell you this.

1.3 billion people, it's very, very difficult to make a mark in China.

It's very striking, the skills that the Chinese have in moneymaking,

and this is not new.

This is a resource that lies deep in Chinese history.

So, the economic turnaround after 1978 and Deng Xiaoping

actually is drawing on this historical experience.

One product has, since the 17th century,

created an unbreakable bond between the Chinese and the West,

and it's the inspiration for my fourth choice

from the Percival David Collection.

Tea - a drink that unites everybody,

all 56 nations that make up China

and indeed, the rest of the world.

We're bound for the Qing Dynasty, mid-18th century China,

about four o'clock in the afternoon.

The Emperor takes tea - a habit he shares with all his subjects.

I've chosen this next object to illustrate

the importance of unity to the Chinese.

Oh, yes!

What a beautiful little object!

It's a teapot.

Quite refined, quite feminine,

beautifully decorated with pine trees,

a glimpse of prunus

and just a touch of bamboo.

We've started with porcelain, we went to blue and white porcelain.

In fact, this piece emerged from the kiln

as a piece of blue and white porcelain.

All you could see was just the cones and the outlines.

It was then sent along to the enameller,

who painted these beautiful greens, browns,

touches of red, on top of the glaze.

The style is known in China as doucai, or contrasting enamels.

Absolutely beautiful.

What wonderful painting.

There's something really special about this teapot.

We know who it was made for.

It was made for a great tea drinker and scholar par excellence,

the Yongzheng Emperor.

And if I very carefully pick it up...

there is the mark of the Emperor Yongzheng.

In his reign, Chinese porcelain of the Qing Dynasty

reached its absolute top of perfection.

This teapot was made down in Jingdezhen

under the supervision of Yongzheng's Minister of Porcelain.

Tea united the Yongzheng Emperor with his workers -

dynasties of peasant families tilled the fields and grew the rice.

They had built the Great Wall, they had dug the Grand Canal.

They had fought wars and had paid their taxes.

Over millennia, the workers and soldiers had made China what it was

with their ceaseless toil and with their lives.

When Yongzheng came to the throne in 1723,

the population numbered around 275 million.

Unity had to be maintained through the common written language

and by habit, and tea was China's social glue.

'It was so important that under the Ming Dynasty,

'it had jeopardised the state.'

Tea had become so popular

that it was transacted in dried cakes like this.

I've chosen a cheeky little 2006 from Menghai. Mmm!

These cakes actually began to supplant money,

so that by the early Ming, the Emperor Hongwu

was so cheesed off with his currency being undermined

that he put a ban on these tea cakes

and so tea was sold in loose leaf form.

The switch to loose tea led to the development of the teapot.

DOORBELL RINGS

Thank you.

'Now tea could sit and steep.'

'The preparation of tea took time,

'and so it became an increasingly ritualised event.'

-Two hands?

-Yeah.

-Oh! Ah!

-I'll show you.

-The dragon claw.

-Yeah.

Like so? Here we go.

-How about it?

-Delicious.

-Very good. And a nice cup as well.

-Thank you.

I think you say, "One cup is good, the second cup is better."

The third and the fourth is best.

-And if you drink the fifth, you're staying too long?

-No, no, no!

Through the tea ceremony,

the humblest citizen could experience an elevating ritual.

-So, this is...

-First better.

-Better than the first.

Mm, it is.

This is very Chinese

and there are certain elements of this

which must have moved over into England.

You have your little finger beautifully extended.

-Ladies, like this.

-Ladies?

-Gentlemen...

-Boys?

I think that English travellers in China in the 18th century

saw this and took it back to England.

Every drip and dribble has significance,

each cocked finger or brandished whisk a meaning.

Emperor and worker alike understood the signs and the meanings,

but they were also drawn to something else.

'Tea, if you drink enough of it and particularly forms of green tea,'

give you a certain sense of euphoria.

The Chinese scholar certainly believed that the drinking of tea

helped unblock his spirit and his creative senses.

Tea wasn't the only drink that united the ancient Chinese.

It's possible the Emperor used this pot for a rather faster form

of transport to a place of enlightenment -

it may also have doubled as a wine ewer.

Wine was used by scholars to free up their intellect

and to compose poetry while they were slightly inebriated.

Either way, the same pot gives us the same story -

the Chinese believe in wine, or tea, lies truth and beauty.

There is a lovely painting of the Yongzheng Emperor.

He's seated his guests out of doors in the garden.

They're ready to do some poetry

and he sends down the stream a little flotilla of cups.

The idea is this...

Your friends are seated on the platform.

You fill each of the cups with wine

and you send them on their way on the stream.

The wine winds its way

round the floating cup stream

and in the time it takes...

Oops!

..for the cup to reach your guests,

they must come up with a poem.

There was a young Buddhist from China

He was noted for being a diner

After supper he rose

A poem to compose

Because he thought scansion Was so much finer.

I think that'll have to do.

Thank you. Ganbei.

China is the most populous nation on Earth -

a vast land with power devolved to the regions.

The small rituals of daily life

that emphasise similarities, rather than differences,

are now more important than ever.

My journey through 1,000 years of Chinese society via six pots

is also a potted history of ceramic technology

and of the tastes of emperors.

Oh, wow! Yes, yes, yes!

This is absolutely spectacular!

The Percival David Collection includes a scroll,

part of the catalogue of a vast art collection

known as The Emperor's Playthings.

Like the teapot, it belonged to the Yongzheng Emperor.

Oh, wow! Look at that!

Money was, of course, no object to this monarch

and he amassed thousands of precious things, ancient and modern.

Song Dynasty, Neolithic... Gosh, it's a real mixture.

Yongzheng only had 13 years in power.

His treasures passed to his son,

who put his father in the shade with his own collecting.

Chien Lung became the fourth Qing emperor in 1736.

This was the modern age, and he was a man of fashion.

My fifth object was made expressly for him,

the height of modernity with a very European feel.

Thank you!

It's a little gem.

And if we rotate it...

you'll see it's flat at the back,

because this was intended for a sedan chair, to hang on the wall.

We have come an incredibly long way

from the pure white early porcelains of China of the Song Dynasty,

that perfect reserve.

Now we've gone wild with enamel colouring.

The overall impression of this is, I would say, very un-Chinese.

This has all the intimation of Europe behind this.

This could almost be a European object.

And maybe that's not entirely accidental,

because the Chien Lung Emperor

was interested in European architecture and art.

This object encapsulates,

in a way that none of our other pieces have done so far,

one particular class in Chinese society,

the Emperor,

the man at the top of the Confucian pyramid.

This vase has a telling history, evidence of another Chinese trait,

an ambivalence about outsiders.

Beijing, around 1750. This painting shows the vase in the sedan chair.

The sedan chair vase takes us to a moment

when two continents begin to collide.

When, years later, the collision happens, emperors are toppled.

What a privilege for a foreigner

to come into the Emperor's otherwise Forbidden City,

walking straight down the path that only the Emperor could take,

carried on the sedan chair by his 18 bearers.

Chien Lung's court was open to interesting outsiders

bearing gifts and news of architecture, science and fashion.

The Emperor regularly had delegations

of envoys from foreign regions who came to visit him.

The Chinese court saw Western Europe as being rather quaint.

They would always bring gifts with them.

Chien Lung would have seen a huge range of foreign fashion

and foreign goods.

Diplomats came for the same reason tourists come today.

It was exotic and mysterious

and, if you could get into the Forbidden City, terrifyingly grand.

This holy of holies still radiates an aura.

Visitors can't get in, and deep down, they don't want to,

because the barriers keep the mystery inside alive.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the centre of the Chinese universe.

The Dragon Throne, a place of tranquillity.

Few people would come to see the Emperor here. Very few.

Excuse me. Xie xie. Xie xie ni.

I like to think that having attended to the business of the day...

Oh! Xie xie ni. Xie xie. Xie xie.

..that the Emperor would call to his favourite eunuch and say,

"Bring me the Scroll of Imperial Playthings."

Chien Lung was interested in foreign ideas, but only on his terms.

Outsiders were kept at arm's length.

In 1793, the British came to discuss trade.

But the ageing Emperor waved them away. He was more interested in art.

The sedan chair vase bears a poem composed by the Emperor.

What he didn't know was that his own house of Qing was ultimately doomed.

They were living in a fantasy world, a pastoral idyll,

but heading towards the block.

This is what he wrote on that little vase.

"This hanging vase inspires the traveller both to sing

"and to gather flowers by the wayside.

"A sedan chair is indeed a suitable place for it to be hung,

"as over its side, wild flowers incline so appropriately.

"The red dust of the mortal world is barred from entrance,

"but fragrance can penetrate the gauze of the window blind.

"Composed by the Chien Lung Emperor."

Chien Lung failed to see that the barbarians had to be listened to.

Within a few decades, it was too late.

After a succession of disputes,

military incursions and two trade wars,

the Chinese were humiliated,

forced to allow the British to peddle opium to the population.

In 1860, after British blood was spilled,

the Summer Palace was looted and torched to teach China a lesson.

Closure became bad for the Chinese.

They thought, "We are superior to you,"

and of course, it was absolutely fatal.

The 19th century was an absolute disaster.

In 1820, the Chinese economy

accounted for one third of global GDP. You know?

By the end of the century of humiliation,

it accounted for 4.6% of global GDP.

I mean, that is absolutely disastrous.

The humiliation of the Qing

sealed their fate as the last dynasty of all.

China turned in on itself.

The new rulers came from the people

and had no desire to do business with the West.

Now they're looking outwards again.

They've learned the lessons of the past.

China's problem at the end of the 18th century,

early 19th century, of, you know,

thinking you've got nothing to learn,

looking down on the rest of the world and so on,

is now the Western problem.

My first five objects have one thing in common.

They were made by nameless artisans.

Percival David collected ceramics made under the imperial system,

when craft was an act of homage.

My sixth object is an act of defiance,

illuminating a final Chinese quality,

rebelliousness.

The Chinese are rebellious,

and there's a long history of popular rebellion in China.

One dynasty rises and then falls.

With all these lines of continuity,

which are very important, very powerful,

it doesn't mean that things can't be turned upside down.

My final piece is dedicated to the artist class,

and you might say this is a touch of industry and idleness.

We've come to 798,

a former industrial area in Beijing

which has now been abandoned by heavy industry

and has been given over to art and galleries.

This is where young people come

to see the smart art of their own times.

I'm on the way to meet an artist who was the star of District 798

until he was expelled for a creation

that contained messages critical of the authorities.

A modern artist may choose to use very traditional techniques

but perhaps to use them

in a subversive or commentative kind of a way.

Shapes and decorations in China very often have hidden meanings.

That's partly to do with the Chinese language,

that things can be said in the same way and mean more than one thing.

So, very often in a shape or in a pattern, you have a pun,

which, if you know how to read it,

says something quite different to the pattern itself.

Liu Liguo's new atelier is out of the spotlight.

He now lives more comfortably in less interesting times.

We've travelled through ceramic history,

from the plainness of Ding ware to a multicoloured creation

that refers to the past but is definitely of the here and now.

Now, my last piece, number six, to represent modern China,

will come as a bit of a surprise.

When you see this, as I saw it for the first time in 1999,

you think, "Oh, this is European, encrusted with flowers,

"just like Coalbrookdale or Paris porcelains".

But no, this is Chinese. And I suppose the giveaway is the shape.

This shape is known as a meiping,

and it goes all the way back into the Song Dynasty.

But look at that lavish decoration,

each petal of every flower made by hand

and stuck onto the porcelain piece

and then embellished in an amazing array of colours and gold all over.

On the sides, we have little transfer prints of a cockerel

and all round the base

further transfer prints of traditional lotus.

But I suppose the biggest surprise of all

is what you find when you look at the bottom.

It's as if a whole new door has been opened up on the Chinese world.

Mr Liu!

'When I last saw Liu Liguo, he was just about getting by.

'Since then, he has risen on his own fashionable notoriety.'

We last met in 1999.

HE TRANSLATES

HE SPEAKS MANDARIN

And in your own house, in the very small house.

And now you are a world-famous man!

-TRANSLATES:

-Thank you very much.

Your world has exploded! Look at all of this!

Liu's work is especially cheeky

because he subverts traditional motifs.

For me, it has a little bit of a very traditional Chinese sign,

the peach.

HE TRANSLATES

HE SPEAKS MANDARIN

So, for him, it's quite a warm figure,

because you can openly show your butt!

So it's kind of like you are very close, to share something,

and then it's totally open.

Liu treads a careful line today, but stepped over it in the past

with a very graphic statue of Mao using his bottom as nature intended.

It was that that got him exiled from the trendy 798 District.

TRANSLATION: That was a very bad atmosphere.

We artists created 798.

But in the end, we all left.

It's like this - we respected tradition,

but these people need a new angle to open up,

to look at these people from a new angle,

to look at the history, politics and economics of these people,

because China is a part of the world, the East is a part of the world.

So in this corner of the world, we need to use our own culture

to create better understanding in the world.

This is how the future will be.

This is the future. This is the future. It will be the future.

Has this been difficult for you?

He said it's very challenging.

Western artists might use graffiti or video installations

to rail against the system,

but Liu chooses a very Chinese medium, porcelain.

And to make it, he employs the potters of Jingdezhen,

ancient capital of Chinese ceramics.

What we're seeing now, in the last ten, fifteen years,

is a number of conceptual artists working in porcelain

and using the skills and technology they have at Jingdezhen

to realise their idea.

What does this last piece have to say about the Chinese?

That for all their respect for the past and for order,

they are latent iconoclasts, happy to build a new world

but equally prepared to break it all down again.

Depending on their mood,

today's rulers will tolerate a degree of rebellion.

But there are limits.

There's always been this huge concern, even obsession

in China, with order and stability.

If you're running a country which has one fifth of the world's population,

the centrifugal forces involved in that society

are absolutely enormous,

and this is something the West just don't understand.

Running Britain is a doddle compared with running China.

Looking at Mr Liu's works, which are certainly very different

to anything that was produced before the Cultural Revolution,

I'm puzzled.

I don't really know how revolutionary these pieces are.

He's certainly cocking a snook at the Party,

but is it more than that,

or is the Party quite happy to see these as mildly entertaining,

the works of an irritant, rather than a revolutionary?

I don't know.

Only time will tell.

Which piece would I take with me to the desert island?

The first piece, the piece of Ding,

with its beautifully carved floral motifs?

The second piece, that Tsung,

I think is an incredibly potent object.

Very tempted.

Should I choose the Percival David vases,

the earliest known dated blue and white vases in the world?

And then doucai, that fabulous wine pot or teapot.

I have to say, that is a lovely object,

and if there were plenty of tea bushes growing on the island,

I would go for it like a shot.

The sedan chair vase -

the Emperor says that porcelains made in his own reign

are far superior to the products of the Song Dynasty.

Well, I have to say I disagree.

And then we come to the final piece of all.

I think that sort of statement is a short-lived one,

and it doesn't have eternity at heart.

It's going to have to be the most beautiful, the most serene object.

Give me the Ding brush washer.

I think it's a beautiful, exquisite thing.

To me, the objects in Gallery 96 speak volumes about the Chinese,

and not just their tastes.

They reveal the importance of learning to them

and the tranquillity that comes from order.

Above all, they have a message about work.

Many of the pieces here are tools

designed to make a task more efficient

and by the by, more pleasurable.

And if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing beautifully.

And for me, that is a spiritual experience.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd