All language subtitles for Art de chi 2

The Great Wall of China.

The largest man-made
structure ever built.

5,500 miles long, it's
one of the Wonders of the World.

But it is a paradox too.

Not only a symbol
of Chinese Imperial might,

but of the constant threat
posed by powerful invaders.

You don't build a wall like this
if you feel safe and secure.

The periods of strife

and change that led to the wall's
construction coincided with

what's now remembered in China as
the Golden Age of Chinese art.

From the Song to the Ming Dynasties,
from roughly 1000 to 1600 AD.

For the preceding 3,000 years,

Chinese art had been overwhelmingly
the art of the tomb and the temple.

Bronze idols. Terracotta soldiers.

But now its subject was THIS world

and those who live in it.

From an emperor so in love with
art he forgot to rule his country,

to artisan sculptors carving
ghoulish images from the rocks.

And refined scholars who fled
the Imperial Court to find

themselves in nature.

Oh, it's so delicate!

This is the story of how troubled
times can produce great art.

Exquisite porcelain to feed
the guilty pleasures of an emperor,

breathtaking architecture to call
down the blessings of heaven.

Each work of art another
clue in understanding how this

extraordinary society came to terms
with its own contradictions.

This story of Chinese art begins
here, in the mountains.

The different dynasties of Chinese
history can be

compared to a mountain range,
and for me,

the highest peak of all,
the Song dynasty.

The first great expressions
of Song art were born amidst

the clouds and the mountain pines,
monumental landscape paintings.

What a view!

You feel like you're
standing on the top of the world.

The tops of the mountains are like
islands, floating in a sea of mist.

It's the kind of scene that would

inspire a great Chinese landscape
painter.

Why did the landscape preoccupy
the Chinese mind

for so many thousands of years?

I think it's because, if you
look at the unique nature of China's

belief systems, each of them
places nature at its very centre.

The Taoist.

The one who follows "The Way".

His Bible is
Lao Tzu's Book Of Changes,

he comes to nature
because he wants to retune his soul,

for him, the natural world is
a macrocosm of the human being,

the trees are nature's flesh,
the rocks are nature's bones,

the rivers are nature's blood,
the mist nature's energy.

On the other hand there is
the Buddhist.

He comes to nature in order
to disengage

himself from worldly desires.

The hunger for power,
the greed for money, lust...

He comes to isolate himself,
to purify himself.

And then there's the Confucian.

Well, the Confucian comes
to enjoy the spectacle
of the majesty of nature,

but he finds in its rhythms,
in its patterns,

in its order, in its repetitions,
he finds there a model for

human morality and human systems
of government.

So, at the centre of each of these
three belief systems lies

the natural world.

One of the earliest Chinese masters
of landscape painting was Fan Kuan.

His Travellers By
Stream And Mountains, a paper scroll

painted in ink some two metres high,
was created around 1000AD.

Tiny human figures are dwarfed by
the magnificence of the mountain.

A daunting wall of cliffs.

Stream of water cascade to
meet a torrent.

This is nature as power,
nature as irresistible force.

Fan Kuang was a Taoist.

A man who followed "The Way",

wore course clothes and lived
in the very mountains he painted.

Early spring of 1072 is
the masterpiece of Guo Xi.

A painter of swirling mist, who
emphasised change, not permanence.

He saw mountain scenery as a shape
shifting image of the universe,

and even wrote a treatise describing
its ever-changing nature.

Every boulder and tree born and
reborn in the endless play of light.

His vision of a world in flux,
may have

been shaped by Buddhist ideas
about time and reincarnation.

There is one other great
masterpiece from the 11th century.

Not a vertical scroll
but a hand scroll,

which weaves all these different
elements together

into a story about Chinese
civilisation itself.

This is Landscape With Pavilions,
by Yuan Guang Wi.

It was painted around 1030.

It's an awe-inspiring panorama,
a majestic vision of nature.

Cloud-capped mountains,
but full also of wonderful little

details - filigree trees, fishing
boats, it's full of weather.

There's mist, there's rain, there's
a little figure down there...

holding his umbrella,

and you can feel the wind
blowing against that umbrella.

The figures are tiny...

You've got these slightly bedraggled
figures on donkeys,

dwarfed by the mountains.

Nature is immense.

But it's more than just a depiction
of the natural scene, I think

this is a good example of how the
Chinese painter approaches

landscape and often has
a form of symbolism in his mind.

The great mountain peak is...

..as it were, the Emperor,
surrounded by the lesser peaks who

are the 100 princes who pay him
court.

So, the landscape expresses the
structure

of human civilisation,
and if you see this whole scroll,

as a journey, it takes
you from formlessness towards form,

towards structure.

Even when contemplating what seems
like the wilderness of untamed

nature, the Chinese artist can
actually be making

a comment on the true
ordering of society.

But how do you order a society in
the throes of great change?

This is the night market in the
Chinese city of Kaifeng.

1,000 years ago,
this little-known city, 400 miles

south of Beijing, was the capital
of China and the Song dynasty.

Hugely cosmopolitan, as well
as a thriving commercial hub.

Kaifeng, at the time, was the most
important centre of

trade in the entire Orient.

Now, as Europe was stumbling
out of the Dark Ages into

the Middles Ages, here in China
they were experiencing a great

age of enlightenment.

New discoveries,
new inventions. Gunpowder,

the magnetic compass, printed money,
and money was important

because, here in China, while Europe
was still locked in feudalism,

they developed
the first free-market,
truly entrepreneurial economy.

China was vibrant,
but above all, China was rich.

But the man who took control of
this city and China in 1100, the

Song dynasty's most famous Emperor,

was less interested in commerce
than art.

The 11th son of the former
Song Emperor, Huizong never

expected to succeed his father.

Raised as an Aesthete, not a ruler,

Emperor Huizong was an idealist,
who put art before all else.

900 years later, in modern-day
Kaifeng, they still celebrate
Emperor Huizong's rule.

Aptly enough, though a modern
theme park which recreates

a painting
commissioned during his reign.

It was created by this man,
Zhang Zeduan.

Early in the 12th century,

he was charged with painting
the Emperor's capital.

Which he did in intricate detail.

His work is now China's most
famous painting.

It's called The Qingming Scroll,
so fragile and precious that the

authorities only let you examine
a high quality replica.

And here it is...

So, I'm going

to imagine that I am
the Song dynasty Emperor, Huizong,

who can never go out into the city
that he rules because he's too

illustrious and elevated for that.

The only way he can experience it
is by looking at this painting.

The hand scroll's subject is
the capital Kaifeng.

It's a cinematic representation of
Song society

as it was nine centuries ago.

Essentially, it's a fantastically
intricate line drawing.

What the artist is
interested in is in detail.

And here we've got these rice
traders, sitting on their bags of

rice which are going to be loaded

onto these boats by these
slightly misshapen labourers.

And in the background,
paper money is changing hands,

a great new innovation in
China of the period.

Hogarth would have loved this
painting.

It's full of comic touches.
Look at this!

Here's a boat that's lost its tow
rope, and all the sailors are

gesticulating rather frantically at
the people on the bridge for help.

Some do try and help, some
are laughing, some are just gawping,

disaster may be about to happen,
who knows?

And I love the scene on the
bridge itself.

There's a character on
a sedan chair,

and he's coming up against a rider,
and they both won't give way.

It's like a Bentley
and a Mini meeting in the middle

and there's road rage. You give way!

But for all its bustling
prosperity,

12th-century Kaifeng was
the capital of a vulnerable Empire.

Nomads to the north coveted
their wealth,

and Huizong underestimated
their threat.

A man of letters,
he put his faith in words

and ideas rather than weapons
and neglected his army.

He believed a nation, like a work
of art, could last forever,

if founded on principles of reason
and beauty.

Kaifeng, or Bianliang as it was
then,

nurtured a flowering of
philosophy,

poetry and writing, but it was also
central to the political

administration, as this rather
quaint piece of street sculpture
marks.

Confucian scholars, the
army of bureaucrats who ran China,

came from all corners to this city
to purchase their copies of

the Confucian classics and to sit
their exams for the civil service.

Confucian ideas about state craft
spread all the more rapidly

among the educated classes,

the literati, as they were known,

thanks to a new invention.

Moveable type, developed in China

some 400 years before

Caxton's printing press rolled in
the west.

Few of Huizong's political
pronouncements have survived.

But you can get
a flavour of his rather dreamy

attitude from a celebrated painting.

Now, this beautiful little
scroll painting, done on silk,

intended to be
read from right to left...

was probably painted
by Emperor Huizong himself.

He was a skilled artist.

And it takes us backstage,
so to speak, into Huizong's palace.

The ladies of the court
are preparing silk.

They're pounding silk, they're
sewing silk, they're ironing silk.

I like her energy.

She's rolling up her sleeves,
getting ready for some hard work.

These ladies are sewing.

This crouching woman with her fan is
fanning the embers of a fire

so that that iron, it looks rather
makeshift, piled itself with

glowing red embers, can be heated up
to do its work.

They don't have ironing boards,
they hold the silk taut.

A wonderful sense of energy
in the picture.

This lady is leaning back to hold
the piece of silk taut

as it's ironed.

I like the detail of this little
girl horsing around.

The figures are represented
almost like cartoon characters.

He's got no interest
in the background,

no interest in the detail. What he's
interested in is the activity.

And the activity is loaded with
ritual significance.

First of all, silk. The painting's
actually done on silk.

Silk was one of the was one of the
great sources of Chinese prosperity.

The production of silk was hugely
important to the wealth

of the state, and as part of palace
ritual the ladies of the court,

the first day of spring
every year,

they would atually participate
in the processes of silk production,

silk refinement,
the creation of clothing,

all the way through to the end
product itself.

But at the same time, it's a very
important statement for Huizong

himself of order being
observed at court.

Having all the women of the Imperial
Court brought together in this

way, preparing the emperor's
new clothes.

In another way, what they're
actually working at is

the fabric of government.

The picture is a demonstration that
everything within the palace

is functioning properly.
Everything is in order.

And though Huizong isn't in it,
it is by implication all about him

and his power.

Huizong used his power above all to
collect pictures

and commission exquisite artefacts,

still believing that a
perfectly-refined life on his part

would induce the gods to protect him
and safeguard his rule.

The greatest monument of Huizong's
devotion to art

and the life of the mind is
not in China,

but here in Taiwan where the
National Palace Museum contains the

greatest concentration of imperial
Chinese art anywhere in the world.

Nearly all of the museum's
holdings from the Song period

and before were once in Huizong's
own collection.

Under his reign, ceramics
were to become regarded as art

and taken to new heights.

Simplicity, purity, austerity,
spirituality.

These are the essential
characteristics

of Song dynasty civilisation.

And they are expressed to perfection
by Song dynasty porcelain.

Look at that beautiful white
Ding ware,

this blackware with the glaze

that seems almost to be bursting
into flames before your eyes.

And here, most beautiful, most
highly-prized at all - Ru ware.

There are only 73 of these
pieces in the entire world,

and five of them
are behind that glass case.

Huizong's preference was for simple
forms.

Appreciated for every nuance
of colour. Every ripple of glaze.

In the daytime this museum is packed
with people seven deep

trying to get a glimpse at these.
They are...

They are the Mona Lisas
of the world of Chinese ceramics.

Why are they so highly prized?

Because of the fineness of this
glaze.

Its craquelure has been compared
to that fine cracking

that you see in ice,
also to fish scales.

There's a lovely story about how
this ware originated.

It is said in Chinese legend that
Emperor Huizong himself had a dream

and in that dream he saw the colour
of the sky after the rain had

stopped in a clearing.

And he described the dream
to his craftsmen and said,

"Which of you can create me
a ceramic the colour of my dream?"

There it is.

During the later years of his reign,

Huizong became obsessively
preoccupied

with fortune and the gods.

He sent envoys across his empire to
record lucky signs or symbols

of divine favour, rainbows,
unusually-shaped clouds,

auspicious animal behaviour.

In 1117, Huizong requisitioned rice
boats meant to feed his people

and had these strangely-shaped rocks
transported all the way from a lake

in southern China to the Imperial
Garden at his palace in Kaifeng.

In Chinese culture rocks have the
power to bring good luck.

Huizong not only collected
the strangely-shaped rocks,

but he painted them too.

Professor Chow is an authority
on Emperor Huizong

and his troubled rule.

Do you think painting for him

is part of the mental
discipline of being a ruler?

I don't think
he knew how to rule a country.

He was a great painter.

He was brought to that position to do
things that he had no idea.

I don't know if he was able even to
manage his household

when he was the prince.

He was not brought up as an emperor
or prepared to be an emperor.

He never imagined
he would become emperor.

Instead he was brought up as a rich
man, as a man with great taste

knowing how to enjoy his life,
how to do art, how to kill his time.

Instead of managing the country,
he was expecting

something to come down from heaven
to help him.

And when a flock of cranes,

traditionally seen as messengers
of the gods,

landed on the Imperial Palace,
Huizong tried to perpetuate

the moment by painting it.

Not so much a work of art as an
act of denial.

A doomed attempt to keep
the forces of history at bay.

But those forces were already
beginning to turn on him.

For some years Huizong had been
using silk to pay off mercenary

tribesmen from the north.

An attempt to protect his vulnerable
northern borders from invasion.

It was a ploy that was
doomed to fail.

By 1126, it was all over for the
emperor whose passion for art

and antiquities had blinded him to
the dangers towards which

his country had slipped.

Kaifeng was burned to the ground by
his allies turned enemies

from the north. Huizong was taken
prisoner

and would die in captivity
nine years later.

The remnants of the Song dynasty
were pushed south

and China fell into a period
of division and violence,

worsened by the deepening
threat of nomads from the north.

The popular art created around this
time shows just how uneasy

the Chinese felt during this
period of turmoil.

The cave complex at Dazu,
1,000 miles south-west of Beijing,

contains one of the most spectacular
assemblies of Buddhist sculpture

anywhere in the world.

Much of it created towards
the end of the Song dynasty.

They vividly embody and enact
the nightmares of a generation.

The Dazu cave carvings reach their
climax in this enormous

depiction of the terrors of hell.

These are the punishments that await
those who have not shown good karma,

good behaviour in their lives.

They will be reborn into these
tormented existences.

What it shows us are the various
versions of Buddhist hell.

This is the hell of freezing cold
and boiling hot.

You freeze and then you're thrown
into this cauldron

for the demon to stir you.
Look at the flames that lick up.

Stirred with glee by a demon
with an animal's head.

This is the hell of being
sawn in half.

HE MAKE SAWING SOUNDS

His feet are bound to a frame,
he's suspended upside down...

Look at how much fun, look at the
relish with which he's sawing

this poor unfortunate
upside-down sinner.

All of these hells are designed to
speak very vividly to the

ordinary people of the Song dynasty.

Their own tools, their carpentry
tools, their agricultural tools,

are the actual weapons that are
being used to torture them.

The style of these sculptures isn't
remotely sophisticated,

refined, elegant. It's graphic,
violent, almost cartoon-like.

This is popular art.

What hope is there of escape?

Well, the one rare hope is to be
found in the upper level

of carvings.

Above you have these ten rather
forbidding kings

who stand for dharma,
for the Buddhist law.

They stand in judgment over
humanity.

The only ray of hope is provided by
the Bodhisattva in the middle.

It's her mission to bring
light into this darkness.

I have to say the overall effect
is of a very little bit of light

and an awful lot of darkness.

Over the next 150 years
the threat from the north persisted,

but this time it was
the Mongol hoards.

First under Genghis Khan,

who advanced on the Song forces now
entrenched in southern China.

The art of the Song courts would
reflect these troubled times.

Chen Rong's Nine Dragons
created in 1244.

One of the great masterpieces
of all Chinese art.

It's like a bolt from the blue.

This image of mythical beasts,

scaly creatures with their staring
eyes, fighting the abyss,

doing battle with whirlpool,
tsunami, flood and deluge.

What's the picture about? Nine
dragons. Nine, an auspicious number.

The dragon, great symbol of power,
potency, fertility.

It's what the emperor
wears on his robes.

It's what he decorates his
palace with.

It's a symbol of Chinese might.

I think this great scroll,
ten metres long,

is a kind of extended prayer
for help in troubled times.

Think what's happening in
13th century china.

Genghis Khan is on the move.
The Mongol Empire has been founded.

Theirs is a world full of threat.

Who's going to win?

The dragon?

Or the whirlpool?

The artist doesn't know.

It was, of course, the whirlpool.

In 1279 the Song were finally
defeated by the Mongols,

absorbed into what was briefly
the world's largest empire

stretching all the way from the
Pacific Coast to Eastern Europe.

In that same year Genghis Khan's
grandson Kublai Khan

proclaimed himself
leader of a new Mongol dynasty

and gave China the capital it
still has today.

Beijing,
Peking as it used to be known.

It's world famous
but how many people know

that it was actually built
by the Mongols?

They didn't want their new city
in the north of China close

to their ancient homelands,

to seem like an invader town, they
wanted it to look Chinese, so they

actually modelled it on a template
laid out in the Confucian classics.

They built a city in grid formation.

They made some changes.

They did away with the old barriers
and gates within a Chinese city,

separating one area from another.

After all, they were nomads,

they liked the free movement of
people, the free movement of goods.

If you were a fly on the wall
700 years ago,

you might have thought
that it was business as usual

in Mongol China
but you'd have been wrong.

The Mongols regarded the indigenous
Chinese people as untrustworthy

and most of the literati,
the scholars who traditionally

ran the country,
were banned from government jobs.

This meant that artists and men
of letters were marginalised.

Painters and calligraphers
came from the literati class.

But what would emerge from this
adversity was a spectacular

surge of artistic creation.

This is Autumn Boating
On A Maple River,

painted by Sheng Mao in 1361.

The Mongol,
or Yuan dynasty as it's known,

marked a new dawn
for the literati painters,

the Chinese scholar artists
who had now become ostracised.

Under the Yuan dynasty,

the intellectual elite of China felt
disenfranchised and isolated.

They collectively turned away
from the centres of power

in a kind of frenzy of disgust
and retreated to nature.

They literally upped sticks,
left the cities

and moved to the rivers
and the landscapes.

They lived among farmers
and fishermen.

And at their centre was
a charismatic recluse called Ni Zan.

In many ways he was contradictory.

Obsessively fastidious,
he washed his hands all the time

and doused himself in
so much perfume that apparently you

could smell him in a place five
minutes after he'd left it.

And yet he spent 20 years
of his life living on a simple

houseboat, devoting himself to
painting, calligraphy and poetry.

He saw all three as aspects
of the same one activity.

And together with his friends,
he invented what was an entirely

new form of Chinese landscape
painting - the art of misery.

I've come to the Shanghai Museum
to see one of the greatest

examples of this new kind of art,
an art of self-expression.

It's one of Ni Zan's scroll
paintings entitled Six Gentlemen.

And it's so precious,
it's hardly ever displayed.

So I have to make my way to a secure
area in the basement to see it.

My instructions are...

..to wait here.

Good timing. Yes, we are ready.
You're ready? Fantastic.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Hello, I've got
an appointment with Ni Zan.

Gosh, I feel like
I'm entering Fort Knox.

The Fort Knox of literati painting.

So, is this the Ni Zan?

(Wow.)

I can't wait.

We in the West are used to the
idea of going to an art gallery

and we can just see its
greatest treasures like that.

There they are on the wall,
the Rubens, the Van Gogh,

whatever it might be.
Chinese art is not like that.

Chinese scrolls are so delicate,
so fragile that many of these

works of art are only exhibited once
every ten, once every 20 years.

So, it really is a privilege
to be able to see one of the great

masterpieces by the principal
painter of the literati movement.

ANDREW GASPS

'The painting's title Six Gentlemen
is a loaded metaphor for what was

'going on in China at the time.'

Oh, goodness.

Oh, it's so delicate.

At first sight,
it looks like nothing much.

Six Gentlemen,
six pine trees on a mound,

an expanse of dead space,

bit of water

and a distant line of hills.

It's a very minimal
depiction of nature.

There's a huge contrast between
this relatively modest, intimate,

very important, intimate scroll,

this depiction of an almost nothing

like an out-of-the-side-of-the-eye
glance at a piece of landscape,

a piece of dead space,
a piece of hill,

and those great, huge monumental
depictions of landscape.

Here, the artist is using landscape
very much as an expression

of his own emotional core.

And there is...

..A wonderful sense of
these trees almost...

They represent, they are fragile,
they are slender,

they are in a difficult place.

They have planted themselves
on stony ground

and yet they stand
and yet they persist.

This tree almost seems
to have a human foot.

Can you see that?

It's anthropomorphised.

He painted the same image again and
again and again and again and again.

This was the image
in his mind's eye.

It stood for his own determination
to persist.

Ni Zan was also a great,
great calligrapher

and this piece of calligraphy
is as important,

certainly in the eyes
of any Chinese connoisseur

looking at the painting, it's
as important as the image itself.

It speaks of the origin
of the painting.

It tells us that Ni Zan was
invited by his host to paint this

picture and he didn't want to
do it because he was tired.

It was late,
his host greeted him with a lamp.

With a lamp, very important detail.

So, it's night-time
when he gets to the house,

when he paints this picture and
yet this picture is in the daytime.

It's Ni Zan's way of emphasising
that these are images that

come from the mind.

They're not images that
come from the outside world.

The tragic image of the outcast
literati artist, as characterised

by Ni Zan's six pine trees,
has had an enduring appeal in China.

TRADITIONAL SINGING

In the remote countryside,

the six gentlemen still
congregate to this very day,

even though their names
have changed,

and some of them nowadays are women.

The tradition of the elegant
gathering, in which musicians,

poets, calligraphers and painters
come together to share inspiration

is still very much alive.

This is a collective performance
where the artists not only

work individually
but ultimately come together.

In Chinese culture,

writing and painting are
two expressions of the same impulse.

And there's no better
way to understand that

than in one of these
elegant gatherings.

The painter performs his art
using the brush

and the calligrapher performs
her art using the brush

and in a sense, they're both
attempting to do the same thing.

See, now the painter has begun
to work on the same sheet

as the calligrapher.

He's using the same brush
and the same ink.

That's very much the spirit
of the elegant gathering as well,

that goes back to the Yuan period
when the artists got together,

the literati got together
to keep each other company,

to show group solidarity
and that was

when this idea began that
they would actually write on each

other's paintings,
paint on each other's calligraphy.

Each work of art was itself
a kind of statement of literati

solidarity,
art was a form of self-defence.

Not all artists fled from
the court of the new Yuan dynasty.

A generation before Ni Zan,
one of the most celebrated of the

literati painters had created this
work, specifically for the Mongols.

This is Grooms And Horses
of 1292 by Zhao Mengfu.

The image of the horse calculated
to please China's nomadic

rulers from the steppes.

The faithful attendant,
a self-portrait of Zhao Mengfu.

Seen by some as a collaborator,
a traitor even,

Zhao Mengfu later regretted
his decision to serve the Mongols.

He retreated to the mountains where
his art would radically change.

Now, together with Ni Zan,
Zhao Mengfu is perhaps the most

celebrated of the literati
painter-calligraphers of the

Yuan period and this is perhaps
his most radical masterpiece.

It's called Orchids And Rocks
and it's astonishingly pared down.

It's...

..absolutely expressive of this
Yuan notion of scholarly misery.

This is the reject's vision,
the worm's-eye view of the world.

It's come down to...

a single square metre of turf.

What's he looking at?

A scribbled piece of rock,
two dead twigs,

brambly twigs with thorns
sticking out of them

that look almost like scars stitched
into the surface of the picture.

Some twitching insects,
a few fronds of grass,

that is what the world
has shrunk to.

That's what it's shrunk to
for these rejects from society.

It's a tremendous image.

It's so raw.
It's such a modern-looking image.

If I didn't know what it was
and I simply looked at it unseen

and blind, I would guess 1920.

But no, no, no.

This is the 13th century.

Zhao Mengfu's paintings are
highly prized, but examples

of his calligraphy are venerated
like holy relics in modern China.

This is seen as the handwriting
of the Chinese soul.

Zhao Mengfu's calligraphy is

so precious that I'm only allowed
a few minutes with it open

and I have to wear a surgical mask
which makes me feel even

more like a doctor standing over
a patient on the operating table.

It's a beautiful piece of work
and essentially,

it's a short poem, a gift to
one of his closest friends,

and its subject is water,
different kinds of water.

Here, we've got
the characters for cloud, fog,

moisture and what's wonderful
about Zhao Mengfu's calligraphy is

just how beautifully
expressive it is.

This cursive line that
seems almost to

flow across the page like water,

the liquidity of the word moisture
where he's almost allowed

the ink to get out of his control

but then caught it into the gesture
that shapes the mark

and as he moves across the page,

it becomes ever more flowing
as the water flows more rapidly,

the script flows more quickly
and it ends with this beautiful,

almost dribble of a signature,
Zhao Mengfu.

Zhao and his fellow exiles
identified with water,

ancient Taoist symbol of resilience.

Cut it with a knife, it heals.

Disturb it,
it always finds its own level.

It's one of the masterpieces
of Chinese calligraphy.

And my time is up.

Thank you for showing me
the Zhao Mengfu.

Xie xie.

Goodbye, sir.

A growing resentment towards
their Mongol oppressors

led to Han Chinese revolts
in the mid-14th century.

And by 1368, the indigenous Chinese
had finally reclaimed their country.

A new Ming dynasty was born.

With the Mongols gone,

the Chinese rapidly regained
their old entrepreneurial zest.

The merchant class prospered,
exporting goods -

particularly pottery - across Asia,

the Middle East and even
into Europe.

The city of Jingdezhen had,

for centuries, been the ceramics
capital of China.

But it was the manufacture
of porcelain here during

the new Ming dynasty which was to
give China its first global brand.

The world couldn't get
enough of this fine Ming porcelain,

created by Jingdezhen's ceramicists
and painters.

But then neither could the Emperor.

The city's defining moment came

when the Imperial Court
requested the best porcelain

for the ruler of the Ming dynasty
himself, to be made here.

An imperial kiln was constructed
in the city in 1367.

And from its ruins,

archaeologists have retrieved
some truly remarkable finds.

Over the past 20 years, a team
of technicians has been working

with shards of porcelain
recovered from the imperial kiln.

They've been piecing them together
like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

Not only have
they managed to reconstruct

a number of wonderful porcelain pots
and bowls,

they've also been able to
rewrite a small piece of history
from the Ming past.

We're looking for Professor Jang.

'On a wet Jingdezhen morning,
I met Professor Jang

'from the Ceramic Archaeological
Research Institute.'

How lovely to be here.

'What surprised the archaeologists
is that

'some of the perfect Ming porcelain
had been deliberately smashed.'

Extraordinary! Now, tell me
something about these pieces.

For example, this one.

Why was it destroyed?

TRANSLATION:

So the archaeological
evidence tells us

a great deal about his belief that
what he owned had to be

exclusive to him, because this is
actually a perfect piece.

There's nothing wrong with
the firing, there's nothing wrong

with the painting, there's nothing
wrong with the design.

It's simply that the Emperor wanted
there to be only two

in the world and both of them
were to be his.

What they didn't want - the one
thing they really didn't want -

was for the Emperor to go to someone
else's house and see this bowl.

I think my favourite object...
This is my favourite thing.

I'm very intrigued by this.
This is an intact object.

It hasn't been smashed.

It's this perfectly decorated,
wonderful survivor.

It's absolutely exquisite. It's got
birds, it's got an auspicious crane.

What's it for?

This is... This is... Oh, that's it.

There's his name on the bottom.

"Created for the Emperor."

And it's...

this wonderful relic
of an entirely bygone age.

If we put the lid back on it,
it's as if we're

putting the lid back on the world
of the Ming dynasty itself.

The grasshopper loving Ming emperor

presided over an age of
contradictions.

80 years before Columbus and
Magellan, Chinese ships

laden with porcelain
sailed all the way to Africa.

Yet later during the Ming,

trade with corrupt foreigners was
discouraged by the Imperial Court -

a Confucian slap on the wrist which
the merchants mostly ignored.

Thanks to the merchant class,

theatre and other popular arts
flourished during the Ming -

everything from graphic novels to
boldly designed playing cards.

But at court, where the scars
of Mongol invasion had been reopened

by new wars with the old enemy,
a siege mentality prevailed.

Chinese art had to be elegant,
old-fashioned, safe.

Now, the trick in these museums
of scroll paintings is that

you have to stand quite close to the
glass and then the light comes on.

Why are we here?

We're here because I'm interested in
the painting of the Ming dynasty

and the way in which it reflects
this rather frozen,

bureaucratic attitude to life
that the Ming emperors hard.

If the ladies of the court
had their bound feet,

the painters of the court
had their hands bound

because in the Ming dynasty,

you had to be a member of
the Imperial Academy to work
as a professional painter

and in order to get into
the Imperial Academy,

you had to copy the styles
of the artists of the past.

So look at this. This is by Dai Jin,

but it's called Landscape After
The Style Of Yan Wengui.

He's painted it as a pastiche

of the great Song dynasty
landscape painter.

Here we've got a very beautiful
depiction of bamboo in wind.

Bamboo, that ancient Chinese
symbol of the upstanding,

bending to the wind -
strong follower of the Emperor.

Here it's placed in a void very much
in the style of the Yuan landscapes.

And here, this is by Yao Shu,
sitting alone in the woods,

its subject is melancholy, misery,

its Ni Zan all over again.

The trouble is, that Ming art was
frozen in its respect for the past.

It venerated the Chinese-ness of
Chinese culture to such

an extent that it produced an art
of ossification, almost completely

but not entirely because it also
left space

for an art of dissidence.

Artists who failed the imperial
exams struck out on their own

and they created this -

oh, you've got to turn it on again.

- this wonderful flowering...

Flowering is the right word
because the subject is itself

flowers, but look at this.

Isn't that fantastic?

This free anti-academic, almost
abstract, expressionist,

explosion of vegetation.

Painted by Xu Wei,

even his calligraphy is riotous.

Blooms such as these could never
have flourished in the airless

world of the Imperial Court.

Just as Western painting was
entering the Renaissance, Chinese

imperial painting was in decline.

The rulers of the Ming dynasty
expressed their values most

forcefully, not in painting,
but in architecture.

In the heart of Beijing, is the
emperor's palace,

the Forbidden City.

It perfectly embodies
the Ming dynasty's conservative

brand of Confucianism,

enthroning the emperor
father of his people in a daunting

citadel of stone.

So imagine you are a 15th century
European visitor to China

and this is your first
look at the Forbidden City.

You've never seen
anything like it before.

These five bridges lead you towards

the Gate Of Supreme Harmony.

Everything here is symbolic.

The five bridges stand for the five
Confucian virtues - filial piety,

respect, compassion, kindness, etc.

And they cross this canal
which has been artfully designed

to mirror the shape
of a Confucian official's belt.

That side
is the Hall Of Military Excellence.

That side of the Hall Of Cultural
Excellence.

War, learning.

Yang yin.

All of the buildings are configured
to reflect celestial harmony.

The five bridges, as well
as symbolising the Confucian

virtues, stand for the Milky Way.

We've now crossed the Milky Way

and we have entered,
or are entering, Heaven.

According to Chinese astrology,
the emperor is the son of Heaven.

The Forbidden City is his palace

and therefore,
the centre of the universe.

This is the gate that leads us
towards the emperor.

The roofs are yellow.

Yellow is the colour of the emperor.

No-one else in Beijing is allowed
to have a yellow roof,

and the roof is guarded by these
mythical creatures.

Look at them - one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven

at each level who exist both to
draw down celestial power

and to ward off evil.

Every last detail is charged with
symbolic significance.

Look at these cloud-wreathed
pillars.

Look at these images of coiling
dragons.

The roof painted,
every last inch painted.

So this is the gate. It is
only the Gate Of Supreme Harmony.

Step across its threshold and there

is the Hall Of Supreme Harmony.

The Hall Of Supreme Harmony,
the emperor's throne room,

is the destination
for the modern tourist.

But for me, there's an attic sale
feel about the modern display -

just some old furniture and other
bric-a-brac in a darkened room.

SPEAKS CHINESE

But that too tells
a kind of truth about this

place as the epicentre
of the Ming dynasty.

A dynasty that expended much
effort on pretending to be more

all-powerful than it actually was.

The Forbidden City is magnificent,

but its architecture is
the architecture of wish fulfilment,

designed to protect an emperor who
ultimately could not be

protected, and to keep at bay
powers that could not be resisted.

Which brings us back full circle
to the Great Wall.

The wall too was completed under
the Ming dynasty,

and is itself very much a reflection
of the anxieties of the time.

It's come to stand I think
in the public imagination as a great

symbol of China's imperial sense of
its own impregnability,

but in fact, it's actually the
largest confession

of weakness ever built.

It was breached on hundreds
of occasions, and eventually

China fell again to another
invader from the North, the Manchu,

who formed the last of the nation's
great dynasties, the Qing.

And so the pattern of Chinese
history,

so vividly reflected in its art,
repeated itself once more.

Sometimes inward looking, sometimes
responding to the shock of invasion.

But the greatest threat of all still
lay far beyond the borders

marked out by the wall in what
we now simply call the West.

And what happened when China met
the West?

Well, that's another story.