All language subtitles for Arte de chi 1

A country the size of a continent.
Population 1.3 billion and counting.

How to understand such a place and
the energies that have shaped it?

There's no better way
than to explore the art of China.

For 4,000 years it's expressed
the spirit of the Chinese people -

their struggles and their hopes.

Red mists of revolution
and long years of brutal tyranny.

Splendours and marvels
of the imperial court.

The spiritual serenity
of the Chinese landscape,

ancient refuge
of poets and painters.

The art of ancient China has
revealed the country's very origins,

thanks to a century of astonishing
archaeological discoveries,

which have revealed some of
the most compelling images

ever shaped by human hands.

The story begins here,
in a remote corner

of Sichuan province,
where, in 1986,

a group of workers, digging
in this very network of fields,

made a truly startling discovery.

These are the rural suburbs
of Guanghan city,

deep in the plains
of the vast Sichuan Basin.

Encircled by mountains,

throughout history
this land was barely accessible.

The region was known to have been
the home of a primitive

and mysterious people called
the Shu, or the people of the eye,

as they were tantalisingly described
in early chronicles.

But why they were called that,
no-one knew,

until a discovery was made

by workers in the grounds
of a brick factory.

TOOL SCRAPES

They stumbled upon two pits
containing the broken pieces

of hundreds of bronze,
jade and gold artefacts.

What they had discovered

were the treasures of a lost
and ancient city called Sanxingdui.

It took the archaeologists
all of eight years to piece together

the fragments
of their remarkable find.

When they had finished,
what they revealed was this.

A whole series of images from
ancient China, over 3,000 years,

the like of which
had never been seen before.

Grotesque masks, enormous,

made of cast bronze
with protruding eyes

and enigmatic smiles on their faces.

And that was just the beginning.

Nearly 2,000 objects were recovered,

revealing the Shu's
surprising mastery

of bronze-working technology and
their strong sense of the uncanny.

Huge faces with bulging eyes
were found

alongside more than 50
smaller, staring heads.

Looking at the bases of them,

they're hollow and they've got
clamp-like attachments,

so it seems they were meant
to be attached to poles,

perhaps placed within
the precincts of a temple.

Imagine a forest of these staring
heads, erected all around you.

Even just standing
here in this gallery,

the overwhelming impression
is of being stared at.

Eyes have always been
a source of power in images.

When the Prophet Muhammad,
in the Islam world,

wanted to destroy images,

he ordered those doing the
destroying to attack the eyes first.

The same was true in England
during the Protestant Reformation -

they scratched the eyes out.

Here, the eyes have been given
immense significance.

This was the people of the eye.
But it's very frustrating.

You're being stared at
by these enigmatic faces.

What do your eyes mean?
Tell me, tell me, tell me!

No.

They're not saying a word.

These treasures were found
without texts or inscriptions.

We know they lay buried
for three millennia,

but can only guess at their meaning.

Might they be evidence of the Shu's
spiritual belief system?

A great tree of bronze
fruit-bearing branches

on which
nine beady-eyed birds perch.

A tree of life linking sky
and earth - finely wrought prayer

to gods of heaven and harvest,
whose names we'll never know.

They save the most...

extraordinary discovery of all
till last.

I can't quite believe -
I'm very pleased -

they're actually letting me in...

to the case
with this remarkable object.

It was always thought that there was
no tradition whatsoever

in ancient Chinese art
for some 1,500 years,

no tradition of large-scale,
figurative, freestanding sculpture

and yet here he is,
towering above me.

The only known freestanding bronze
sculpture in all of

early Chinese art,
discovered less than 30 years ago.

What a figure it is.

He's got bare feet...

..perhaps to suggest that he's in
touch with the ground, the earth,

and he's got this headdress
in the shape of flames

with the eyes of power
embedded within it.

So he is a figure who connects
the ground to the heavens.

His hands are in the shape
of these great circles,

which implies the holding
of some kind of vessel.

Perhaps a hollowed-out
elephant tusk.

Elephant tusks were also found
in the burial pit.

Not a single object
found in Sanxingdui

is for common or everyday use.

Everything is ritual.

It seems to be the entire
paraphernalia of an ancient temple.

You've got those huge masks,
which were probably attached

to great posts of wood.

You've got the smaller heads
attached to poles.

Imagine a temple,

a people whose worship had something
to do with the tree of life,

a tree that reaches up to a god
that may be associated with the sun,

that nourishes birds,
that nourishes the soil.

With this figure in the middle
presiding over the ritual.

Sanxingdui is China's Atlantis,
but real rather than mythical.

A civilisation buried underground
rather than lost at sea.

But why would they have broken up
their principal images

and objects of worship
and buried them in two deep pits?

Were they sacrificing these images
of their gods TO their gods

to save themselves from plague,
invasion or some other catastrophe?

Whatever the disaster was,
it must have done for them.

If they had survived,

they would surely have retrieved
their treasures.

And they never did.

Chinese history is often told
as a succession of great dynasties,

but the find at Sanxingdui
proves this is a myth.

Early China was
a patchwork of competing tribes.

The Shu may have fallen simply
because they were too peaceful.

No weapons have been found
with their remains.

But their lack of a written language
was an equally severe disadvantage.

At the very same time, another tribe
was setting out to conquer

and unify this land.

They had swords and spears.

But their most important weapon,
it seems, was the word.

The earliest origins
of written Chinese,

like much of its ancient
civilisation,

can be found along the banks
of the Yellow River.

100 years ago, here in Henan
province, local pharmacists

were dispensing ground-up ancient
animal remains called dragon bones.

The relics were covered
with archaic inscriptions,

arousing the interest
of archaeologists.

Further investigation revealed
documentary evidence

of China's first great dynasty.

What, you may ask yourself,
are these curious objects?

They are, in fact, among
the most significant artefacts

in the entire history
of Chinese civilisation.

They are the oracle bones
of the Shang.

Each one is the carapace
of a turtle.

How it worked was this.

The king would ask himself,

"Is there trouble coming
in the next ten days?"

He would ask his diviner
to help him find out if there was.

The diviner would take
a turtle shell,

apply heat to it until it cracked

and then read in the pattern
of cracks

the answer to the king's question.

King's question, priest's prediction

and actual outcome were all then
inscribed on the shell.

As well as being a record
of Shang superstitions,

these are also
the bare bones of Shang history,

recounting conflicts, crop failures
and affairs of the court alike.

But why are they so significant?

Because they amount to the first
surviving example of an invention

that would change the world -

the Chinese written language.

So, the famous oracle bones.

These are 1200 BC? Yes.

Some of the very earliest
surviving Chinese writing.

This part mentions a famous lady
of the Shang dynasty,

Lady Fu Hao. Ah, yes.

Know her well.
Well, I know here reasonably well.

The king goes to see Fu Hao.

The Shang oracle bones refer
more than 100 times to Lady Fu Hao,

a name worth remembering.

A warrior princess
who led troops into battle,

took captives
and expanded Shang territory.

What's this? Is there an eye there?
Yes. It means see.

People kneeled down with a big eye
on her head.

So to go and see is kneeling down
with a great big eye? Yes.

Very visual. Very visual, yeah.

It's a sort of painting language,
which becomes Chinese.

This is the beginning, yes?

It's not the beginning, but
the...childhood of Chinese writing.

The childhood, OK. Not the birth.
Not the birth.

Look at this character.

I got this character
from the oracle bone.

This is an example of
what you call associative,

which means you have two images
together in one pictogram.

Actually, there are three...images
here.

The left side is a little boy.
He's counting. It means five.

He's thinking five by five.

Oh, he's doing his times tables?
I'm sure. Ah! I've got it.

What's going on over here?

This means a father.
It's a hand holding something.

It looks like a stick.
Yes, he's a father holding a stick.

The father is waiting with a stick!
Standing by the side.

What's the meaning of the whole...
It means teaching.

Teaching!

That seems to me to be somehow
very, very, very Chinese. Yes.

And it all starts here.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

Of the three great pictographic
languages, including cuneiform

from Syria and hieroglyphics
from ancient Egypt,

Chinese alone has survived.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

And, in the process,

it has become the foundation of
continuity in Chinese civilisation.

The most basic form of Chinese art
is Chinese written language.

Here's Mr Tang's teaching
or education.

Slightly altered from
the oracle bones over the millennia

but it's still essentially
recognisable.

The little boy doing his five-times
table while his father

stands over him rather forbiddingly
with a stick.

The Chinese form of language,
because it's picture making,

contains within it values, beliefs,
attitudes, systems -

this isn't just teaching, this is
teaching "get it right or else!"

Through a series of images,

it freezes ancient moments
in history.

If you look at the symbol for wife.

Wife is woman, large hips,
cross-legged

and she's got a stick through her
hair because in ancient times,

in Asia, when a woman
became married,

she lost the right
to wear her hair free

and she had to put
a stick through it.

Wife, again, it's a...

so to speak, it freezes a moment
in ancient history.

The Chinese written language stayed
fixed precisely because it was

a set of pictures, and therefore
immune to changes in pronunciation.

What do you think?

It's not good, is it?

No.

No!

The written language has always been
the bedrock of Chinese civilisation.

THEY CHANT

Its creation was the key
to controlling a vast population.

And, thanks to its earliest
incarnation,

the characters on the oracle bones,

we know that the Shang dynasty used
language to govern,

to educate and to write the laws

by which they imposed
their fierce rule.

THEY CHANT

Thanks to their written laws,

the Shang were able
to take control of and organise

huge swathes of territory
around the Yellow River Valley.

Not quite China, but the beginnings
of the nation it would become.

The ground below the city of Anyang,

where 3,000 years ago
the Shang capital stood,

produces so many
historical artefacts,

the archaeologists can't keep up,

stockpiling whole chunks of
relic-rich soil outside their labs.

When they extract these cubes
of compacted burial mound earth,

they know that they contain
something, but they don't know what,

so it could be a chariot, it could
be a bronze drinking vessel.

It's sort of like
an archaeologist's lucky dip.

Excavations here unearthed
the palace of a powerful Shang king,

Wu Ding, who ruled over
the Shang kingdom in 1250 BC.

Nearby, the archaeologists found
the tomb of his consort,

a very warrior princess whose name
I'd seen on the oracle bones,

Lady Fu Hao.

Now...

Ah...

I'm amazed they've allowed me in,
but they have.

Here we are.

So who was Lady Fu Hao?
We know she was a princess.

She was one of the favourite
consorts of King Wu Ding,

who obviously thought a lot of her
because he had her buried

not in the royal burial complex,
but here, in his own palace complex,

which suggests that he wanted to
remain close to her after she died.

She was a general
as well as a princess,

the first recorded female general
in Chinese history.

This tomb gives us
a remarkable insight

into the beliefs of the Shang
concerning the afterlife.

It would appear that they believed,
rather as the Egyptians did,

that we continue to live in the tomb
after we've gone.

King Wu Ding had her buried
with a huge array of bronze objects,

mostly to do with food and wine.

We see two of these ding,
which are containers for food.

We see cooking utensils on a stove.

And everywhere else,
containers for wine.

She also - this is
rather a grisly detail -

she was also supplied
with human attendants.

They have uncovered
16 human skeletons.

They were executed
and buried along with her

so that they could attend her
in the afterlife.

The only person missing is
Lady Fu Hao herself,

but that is because this area
of the tomb where her coffin was

was below the water table
so it's all rotted away,

leaving just the red paint that
probably decorated a lacquer coffin.

If you're wondering why
the authorities allowed me in here,

that's because this place is
partly authentic -

yes, this really is
the site of her tomb -

but it's also partly theme park,

in the sense that all of
these objects are actually replicas.

They don't tell you that,
by the way,

when you walk into the museum, but
you need to know it for yourself.

And if you want to actually
experience

some of the richness
and sophistication

of Shang material culture,
you need to go up the road

to the local museum.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

OK.

ALL TALK AT ONCE

Xiexie. Thank you.

So here it is.

Shang dynasty bronze.

3,500 years ago
this object was made.

It's a very heavy thing and yet
it's a vessel for drinking wine.

What you can see very clearly is
one of the principal motifs

of these grave goods,
the taotie, which is

a kind of abstracted, grotesque,
demonic, grinning, staring face,

formed from the shapes
of two dragons.

Perhaps designed to ward off
evil spirits

from Lady Fu Hao's afterlife.

And on the handle, you've got
the most hostile face of all.

To me, because it's a handle,
it suggests a snake

so it might almost be a cobra,
coiled to strike,

and yet it's got the ears
perhaps of a wolf, a dog?

This is an object that speaks of
their ability to master technology.

They also had the first chariots
in China.

It was a kind of revolution
in warfare that enabled them

to spread their culture
across the north.

Absolutely fantastic.

Faith in the ancestors'
life after death

was the dominant belief system
in ancient China.

It was used by the Shang
and later dynasties

to affirm a rigid social hierarchy.

While finely crafted grave goods
for nobles like Fu Hao

would allow them to live nobly
after death,

the vast majority of Chinese

living on the land were kept firmly
in their place in THEIR afterlives.

They were taught only to expect
more ploughing and cropping.

As late as the Han period,
around the birth of Christ,

they too were being buried with art,
but not crafted bronze ware.

Crude earthenware tablets
showing scenes of harvest.

Low art for low expectation.

And the afterlife now?
Well, it just won't die.

To this day the Chinese still make
offerings to their ancestors.

Plates of fly-blown food
are involved,

but if you want something
more elaborate,

there is a modern solution
woven from bamboo and paper.

This is Mr Yang's
emporium of the dead.

It's where you come to buy
everything you need

if you want to make a sacrifice in
the modern day for your ancestors.

How do you do? Hello.
Very good to see you.

What an extraordinary setup.

You've got everything you need!
You've got a computer over here.

In case you need to check
your e-mails in the afterlife!

You can log in.

Dead. Password...

Totally dead.

That'll do it.
Oh, it doesn't seem to be working.

The internet is a bit dodgy
in this part of China.

There's a car!

There's a car.

Mr Yang. Mr Yang.
It's a Mercedes? Mercedes?

Why isn't it a Chinese car?

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

People love Mercedes even when
they're dead? Good quality.

Hi. Hello. Good to meet you.

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Show me... What is this thing here?

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

These are the attendants.

Ah, so, like Lady Fu Hao,
she had human sacrifice skeletons

to look after her in the land of
the dead, but they actually have...

What's back here?

Oh, wow!

Fantastic!

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Is this for a dead farmer?

So that you can do a bit of milking
in the afterlife, make yourself...

Oh. What's that? It's got an udder!

It's got a bamboo udder. Let's not
go there. Let's not go there.

That's animal abuse.

It's a dog!

Do you know how they sacrifice
all this stuff TO the ancestor?

They pile it all up - sorry, Fido -
and they set fire to it.

The Zhou dynasty,
which followed the Shang,

lasted from 1000 to about 250 BC.

It wasn't a golden age for art.
Very much a bronze age.

But it was intellectually vibrant.

Writing was no longer the preserve
of priests with their oracle bones,

but done on split bamboo staves
by secular authors,

poets, philosophers.

Most famous was Confucius,

still venerated today
in temples such as this.

He developed a benevolent philosophy
of statecraft as opposed to

the violent rule
so commonplace before.

He believed a ruler was to be
like a father to his subjects.

The Confucians stood for
family values, personal morality.

This was the period that also saw
the birth of Laozi

and his writings, which later came
to be crystallised as Taoism.

He preached the exact opposite.
A retreat to nature.

He preferred silence over words,
inaction to action.

It's been remembered in Chinese
history as the time when

100 schools of thought contended,
but 100 armies also contended

and it was a period of increasing
fragmentation and division,

at the end of which, China was
split into several warring states.

Then one man came along
who decided to change all that.

He set out to replace
confusion with order.

To replace debate
with his absolute rule.

He changed China
and he changed Chinese art for ever.

In 221 BC, the first emperor,
Qin Shi Huang,

quelled all opposing
armies and kings

and, for the first time,
created a single, unified country.

This was the moment China was born.

He standardised everything.

Weights, measures, currency...

road dimensions, language.

Like Hitler, Stalin and Mao,

who modelled himself
on the First Emperor,

he understood
that ruthless organisation

was by far the best way
to run a tyranny.

And he was a true tyrant -

brutal, cruel,
sadistic and paranoid.

To truly know the First Emperor,

you only have to look at his
burial site - 22 square miles.

Home to the most perfectly
totalitarian artistic vision

the world has ever seen.

An army of terracotta warriors.

Over there is Pit 2, which
they haven't yet fully excavated.

Behind that is Pit 3
where you've got the headquarters.

A small group of leaders
of the army.

And in here...

Pit 1.

The thousands and thousands
and thousands of soldiers

who stand guard
over the emperor's tomb.

Remember Lady Fu Hao's little tomb?

With her objects for the afterlife.

Now, just look at this.

And remember,
this is just a tiny part

of 56 square kilometres of
the first emperor's tomb - look...

it's like King's Cross!

It's like King's Cross
and there they are!

There they are,
the emperor's imperial guard.

The Terracotta Army lined up...

for all time, like commuters
waiting to travel into eternity.

8,000 men of clay face east,
where he believed the souls

of his enemies lay in wait.

He'd subdued the eastern lands
during his lifetime,

massacred populations

and intended to do it all again
from beyond the grave.

He didn't just want to
LIVE the afterlife,

but to conquer it.

There were ancient legends
detailing this dark creation -

an underground city
and an immortal army

but it was only in 1974
that the soldiers were uncovered.

Few are allowed to walk
within the restoration area

and amongst the ranks of troops.

But, up close and personal,
it becomes apparent

that each soldier is an individual.

The faces of the emperor's soldiers

express the breadth of his realm.
Take these two.

This chap is, almost certainly,
a local, a Qin,

he's got the right face,
the right eyes,

the right hairstyle, but...

this bloke...

well, high Asiatic cheekbones.
He's got the beard

of what the Chinese at that point
were still calling "a barbarian"

and yet he's in the emperor's army.
He's almost certainly

from central Asia.

No-one's doing their own thing
any more.

Everyone's marching
to the First Emperor's tune.

The creation of the Terracotta Army
required its own army -

700,000 strong.

It took them 38 years
to finish the job.

This wasn't an artist's workshop -
it was a production line.

I like this part
because they've, um...

They've laid the sculpture out
so that you can actually see

some of the evidence
of its bureaucratic making -

here, you've got the name
of the craftsman responsible.

A poor slave labourer,
he was called Duo...

and here, here and here
you've got the seal

of the supervisor of the department

that was bureaucratically
responsible for the creation

of the Terracotta Army, so...

Duo did it and "Boom, boom...
that's good to go."

Good to go to the tomb.
And look over here...

Looking down into the legs
of a terracotta soldier...

you're not just looking down
into that, you're looking down

into the traces of how
these objects were made.

Very simply, using, essentially,
child's modelling clay

that's then baked. And you can
still see, if you look inside,

you can still see...

the imprint of the craftsman's hand.
His fingers.

The way that they've dragged
the clay into the shape required

to model the torso and the legs.

The Terracotta Army may yet prove
to be just the beginning

of the discoveries here.

Such is the scale of the site,

the archaeologists say
that it may be more than a century

before they finish
their excavation.

The pits and soldiers lie
a full mile to the east

of the emperor's
final resting place.

According to a Chinese historian
who was writing less than a century

after the First Emperor's death -

The emperor had himself buried
within that great mound

in a stone sarcophagus
placed inside a bronze surround

within an entire underground palace
filled,

the historian writes tantalisingly,
"with treasure".

The palace was surrounded by
a moat of poisonous mercury

and if that weren't enough
to deter would-be tomb robbers,

there were ingeniously-rigged
archers

armed with deadly crossbows.

Now that once might have all seemed
like historical fancy, legend,

but now that they've discovered
the terracotta soldiers

anything seems possible.

What secrets lie buried
beneath that great hill?

Of all the objects uncovered
during the excavations so far,

these two bronze chariots
have to be the most remarkable.

Found close to the emperor's
burial mound, they were designed

to transport his spirit
through his realm in the afterlife.

Now, the terracotta soldiers
are relatively crudely made -

this object is very different.
It's made out of bronze,

the craftsmanship is
utterly remarkable,

it's a fully-functioning chariot.

If you detached it
from its horses and its stand,

it would roll along the ground -
it works.

Look at the umbrella
under which he rides.

It's got a mechanism,
still-functioning mechanism,

that enables its angle to be moved,
its elevation to be altered.

This may well be the most
complicated bronze object

ever created by man.

Formed from more than 3,000
separate pieces.

The charioteer -
what a piece of work he is.

He's got a sword in his belt,
he's got arrows by his side.

And look at these horses -

these are the horses
of the Mongolian steppe

with their pronounced haunches,

their startled eyes,
the flare of their nostrils,

the folds of their skin -
all rendered in cast bronze.

So what are these objects?

What do they represent? What do
they stand for as works of art?

Well...
it used to be heresy to say so

in Communist China...

but now
it's a commonly-held opinion

that what they represent in terms
of art history is actually...

(the first great influence
of the West on the art of China.)

Previously there had been
no Chinese tradition

of realistic figurative sculpture,
images of man that looked like man.

This is Western realism
applied to Chinese beliefs.

In the Ancient World, only
the Greeks had created such art.

And how might the First Emperor
have seen Greek sculpture...?

100 years earlier,
in the time of Alexander the Great,

Greeks had settled as far east
as Afghanistan

and may well have been trading with
the Chinese along the Silk Road.

This was the harshest corner
of this land, the far north-west,

the corridor between the Mongolian
steppes and the mountains of Tibet.

Through this windswept desert came
not only foreign styles of art,

but foreign beliefs that would
transform Chinese civilisation.

The Silk Road is a modern name
for the ancient network

of trade routes that formed
cross-continent,

linking Europe and Asia.

Through this perilous and epic path,

merchants, soldiers
and monks arrived.

Now,
you could read about it in a book,

you can look at it on a map

but nothing quite prepares you
for the experience

of actually
walking along the Silk Road -

thousands of miles
of unendingly hostile terrain...

and yet...this was the route,
the only route,

for merchants carrying
silk and spices

from China to the outside world

and carrying Western or Indian
goods back into China.

Travelling the Silk Road
wasn't just arduous,

it was extremely dangerous.

On the one hand there were
roving groups of bandits

ready to steal your treasure
and kill you.

On the other hand there was nature.

The sand dunes and their
ever-shifting configurations.

Sand storms blowing in.

Sometimes the only way you'd know
you were on the right path

was because
you'd come across a little heap

of bleached-white human bones.

In 206 BC, just five years after
the First Emperor's death

the Qin Dynasty gave way
to the outward-looking Han.

The new rulers expanded,
defeating the nomads,

who'd dominated these desert lands.

Frontier towns were created
to control

both the newly-extended borders
and the growing trade.

One of the biggest,
built on an oasis, was Dunhuang.

2,000 years ago, travellers
and merchants grew rich here

from the blossoming trade
of the Silk Road.

But the travellers from the West
brought more than goods.

They brought their ideas
and their gods.

None had greater impact on China
than Buddhism.

From the 3rd century, Buddhism
spread rapidly among the Chinese

offering them
a joyful alternative

to their own grimly-limiting
visions of the afterlife.

Suddenly, even the poorest person
could hope to be reincarnated

into a better life
and eventually achieve nirvana,

the Buddhist state
of transcendent peace.

BELLS RING

The religion's beginnings in China
were humble.

Simple monks' caves cut into the
rocks by the side of the Silk Road,

where travellers would give thanks
or pray for safe passage.

Soon,
the prayers were accompanied by art.

At the beginning of the 20th
century, just outside Dunhuang,

the most remarkable examples
of this early Buddhist art

were rediscovered, concealed
beneath 1,000 years of sand.

The Magao cave complex is
a labyrinth of hundreds of temples

hewn into the rock face.

The earliest date back to 336AD.

Within them, 45,000 square metres
of extraordinary Buddhist painting.

2,000 sculptures of Buddhas,
bodhisattvas,

guardians and devotees.

All document the evolution
of Chinese life

over the best part of a millennium.

This...this is a treat.

All of the paintings
and sculptures in this space

were created
more than 1,500 years ago.

This is one of the most
spectacular sequences

of early painting
anywhere in the world,

not just in Dunhuang.

What do we see...?

The principal image of the Buddha
and all around us...

what must have seemed to Chinese
people, in the 6th century,

astonishingly exotic,
foreign, alien faces.

Look at this
fantastically-Indian Buddha,

this is Indian art
and Indian religion

transplanted to Chinese soil.

Remember, the Chinese,
up to this point, really,

they were used to their sacred
spaces being underground.

Now they're 100 feet up in the air,

contemplating a theatre
of Buddhist imagery. Now, look...

..the sculptures force you
to your knees.

Because only
when you go to your knees

do you meet their eyes.

And then, when you do look up...

you see these processions of figures
going around the walls

and what you see are these...

..wonderfully stark,
very quickly-painted, impulsive,

expressionistic images
of the Buddha teaching,

the Buddha meditating.
Here he is...

during that time when he set out
to meditate for 49 days

and demons and devils
and poisonous snakes came

to tempt and distract him.

Perhaps they were meant to be
the demons of the mind?

One of the messages of this space
is that there are many Buddhas.

That any individual can rise
to Buddha-hood.

You see that in the lower register
of the paintings, where you have

these wonderfully vivid depictions
of the roughly 1,200 people

who've paid communally
to have this chapel created,

and those figures are matched by -

you see up there? - these sort of
plaques that decorate the wall,

they are 1,200 Buddhas, so the idea
being that each person

who paid for the creation of this

might themselves rise
to become a Buddha.

And I think the principal impact
of this space might have been...

this great, seemingly endless
frieze of figures,

especially when you think how
it would have been experienced

by many worshippers
through procession.

You process around the space
and you don't just do it once,

you do it many, many times,
perhaps as many as 100 times.

You say your prayers to the Buddha,
you prostrate yourself

before the Buddha, you continue
to pray, perhaps to chant,

there might be music...

The whole purpose of this space was
to help those who worshipped here

take themselves to another space.

The space that, perhaps,
isn't even in this world at all.

The Magao Caves reached their heyday
some 300 years later

at the turn
of the 7th century

with the arrival of the enlightened
and the tolerant Tang Dynasty.

Under their rule, Buddhism surged
in popularity -

the impact can still be felt
in modern China

where a third of the population
is Buddhist.

One Tang ruler even elevated
the importance

of this new faith from India
above Chinese Daoism.

Which is perhaps why,
at the heart of the Magao Caves,

that ruler was immortalised
on a monumental scale.

Ha.

The statue that we're trying
to get a peek of, well...

is fully 35 metres tall.

HE PANTS
Come on, hurry up,
I know you're tired.

We've risen so far above
the madding crowds

we've actually come level
with the mountains, but...

this is what we're here to see.

The central cult image.

Look at that...

The great image of the Buddha.

Look at those staring,
tranquil eyes.

But...what's the great surprise?

The great surprise
is that this Buddha...

(this Buddha is a woman!)

And not just any woman.

It's a portrait of Empress Wu!

The only female emperor
in all of China's history.

A deeply controversial figure.

Much maligned after her death
by Confucian scholars.

More objective historical record
tells us

that China was hugely prosperous
under her rule.

She expanded its territories,

she laid out vast areas

of previously royal land
for agriculture.

She promoted business,

she promoted female rights,
she was one of the great one-offs

in all of Chinese history
and I really like the fact

that SHE is the tutelary deity

of this great labyrinth
of Chinese creativity.

Professor Ning Qiang spent
seven years living at Dunhuang,

decoding the life and rituals
depicted in the art

of just one extraordinary cave.

Perhaps because his specialist
subject

is the life-affirming art
of Buddhism

he's that rare creature,

a Chinese art historian with a truly
infectious sense of humour.

So, you spent many years here
writing and working

on your dissertation. Indeed!

Does it bring back memories for you
to come...?

Oh, indeed.

And my favourite moment is
sitting near the tree,

enjoying my tea
and "Look, it's a Buddha."

Although I can't see the Buddha's
face because of the building. Yeah.

But it's in my mind, you know,
you just feel it.

The Buddha, the tree and you.

You are sitting with history
and you ARE history, see.

I like that.

Didn't the Buddha reach
enlightenment sitting under a tree?

Indeed, yes it's the same thing!
Indeed!

The professor's cave contains
the first known Chinese image

of the Buddhist western paradise -
The Pure Land.

A painting that looks like a faded
but richly-embroidered piece of silk

and which shows the blessed
healed of all illness or deformity,

listening to music
among scented trees

in a garden
where magical waters flow.

Stark contrast with
the barren deserts outside.

On the opposite wall

there's a picture of
an actual Buddhist healing ritual.

Apt, since Buddhism helped
to heal the Chinese soul,

bruised by conflict and tyranny.

Tell me a little bit
about these figures.

When I saw this,
I was absolutely struck by, well,

particularly this dancer which is
so delicately, beautifully depicted.

You know, the healing ritual requires
a kind of celebrative environment

for the Buddha, right?
So you have dance and you have music.

Dance are called...

HE SPEAKS CHINESE

..or foreign whirly dance

and you just turn around
and very fast

you wave your scarves.

But you never leave the small carpet
so it is called "whirly dance".

And look at these musicians.

I love this scene.

They are just a combination
of musicians

from different regions, you see,
probably from India.

I was going to say,
she is from India. Yes.

So here, what you are looking at,
is actually

the dance and the music culture
of the Silk Road.

Having been on this journey
through Chinese art...

for a long stretch of history...

one is looking at bronze vessels

and then suddenly
there's the terracotta soldiers

but you don't really have a sense
of people's lives from the art,

when suddenly...
Yes. ..you come here and it...

it all explodes.

That's the excitement
of Dunhuang art.

The past is another country,

but at Dunhuang
you can still travel through it

with your eyes
and your imagination.

Here, at last,
are the people of ancient China,

fully revealed in art.

Falling in love.

Falling into prison
and being released.

Liberty or containment?

The Chinese have always been
striving for freedom

while contending with those
who would control them.

That's the great revelation
of the recent archaeological finds.

We knew it was true
of Communist China

but now, it seems,
it's always been so.

Ever since the people of Sanxingdui,
with their idiosyncrasies,

were succeeded by the fiercely
controlling Shang Dynasty,

with its mastery
of the written word.

Followed by the chillingly
bureaucratic First Emperor.

Dunhuang is exhilarating

because it's such a triumphant
assertion of Chinese freedom.

Freedom of belief.

Freedom of expression.

This is life itself, body and soul.

Even the startled donkey -
ears pricked up,

trembles with the sense
of individual consciousness.

I think it's also
a discovery that's changed

the Western stereotypical view
of the Chinese cultural identity.

Often, we in the West tend to think
of the Chinese as a people who have

too much regard, perhaps,
for their own traditions.

A people who are still
teaching their children,

2,500 years after Confucius died!
Teaching their children

to recite his sayings by rote.

A people who leave...
too little space in their lives

for creativity, imagination,
free will,

the eccentricity
of the individual.

But Dunhuang disproves all that.
Dunhuang proves that

once upon a time, the Chinese had
1,000 Picassos in their midst.

And I think THAT'S why
this place really does belong

at the centre of any story
of Chinese art.