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China’s Greatest Treasures: from antiquities to apps, BBC series looks at their influence today

  • New series hosted by art critic and BBC host Alastair Sooke looks at how important works of Chinese art still influence the nation today
  • Subjects covered in the series include family and ancestors, calligraphy, food, China’s links with the rest of the world, and Chinese-made apps

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A BBC crew filming the Da Ke Ding 3,000-year-old bronze cauldron at the Shanghai Museum for China’s Greatest Treasures. Photo: BBC
Bernice Chanin Vancouver

For his upcoming series China’s Greatest Treasures, art critic and BBC host Alastair Sooke shows how important works of Chinese art continue to influence the nation today.

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In the first episode entitled “Family and Ancestors”, Sooke, 37, goes to the Shanghai Museum to see the 3,000-year-old Da Ke Ding, a large bronze cauldron used for ritual sacrifices to powerful ancestors during the Zhou dynasty. Sooke later goes to a town called Baogai in Hunan province during Ching Ming, the annual tomb-sweeping festival.

“I was a token member of the Liao family and got to place incense sticks into a similar-looking cauldron to pay respects to the Liao ancestors,” Sooke recalls, speaking on the phone to the Post from London. “It was very moving to see this continuity, particularly the way the family was honoured – not just from the past centuries, but millennia.”

Other subjects covered in the series, which kicks off on October 5, include calligraphy, food, China’s links with the rest of the world, mass production, and Chinese-made apps. So not all the treasures featured in the series are antiquities.

Alastair Sooke (wearing yellow scarf) with the film crew and local residents in Baogai, Hunan province, before going tomb sweeping. Photo: BBC
Alastair Sooke (wearing yellow scarf) with the film crew and local residents in Baogai, Hunan province, before going tomb sweeping. Photo: BBC
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Sooke is the host of such shows as An Art Lovers’ Guide, Treasures of Ancient Greece and Trump on Culture: Brave New World? He explains how he and UK-based Mustang Films, which co-produced China’s Greatest Treasures with a subsidiary of China’s CCTV state broadcaster in collaboration with BBC World News, went through months of meetings with Chinese art experts in Britain to pare down a massive wish list of treasures they wanted to feature in the six-part series.
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