Around the World in 80 Treasures (2005) s01e04 Episode Script

l'm seven weeks into a five-month journey
to discover 80 of the world's
greatest cultural treasures.
Ahead of me lie the oriental delights
of Japan and China.
They're two of the most important
civilisations in history,
and l want to find out
if their ancient traditions and mysteries
have survived into the modern technical age.
So far, l've travelled through the Americas,
Australia and South-East Asia.
From Cambodia l have flown to Japan.
l'm in Tokyo, one of the most modern
and vibrant cities in the world.
But all is not what it seems.
This modernity is little more than skin deep,
superficial.
Below are deep roots of tradition.
l'm entering a secret world.
My first treasure in Japan is ancient,
yet is still made today.
lt can be found in ordinary-looking
factory buildings like this one near Tokyo.
lt's one of Japan's most mystical objects,
a deadly weapon, and a sacred work of art.
lt all begins with a prayer at a shrine dedicated
to one of the deities of Shinto,
the ancient belief in the power of elemental
nature spirits and the ancestors.
Temperature change
one thousand and three hundred.
Very hot, very hot, very hot.
The sword is made of
two different types of steel:
hard on the outside,
so it can have a razor-sharp edge,
and soft on the inside,
so it's flexible and doesn't shatter in combat.
Do you want the hard steel on the edge,
the outer?
- Yes, it is very strong. - Yes.
- So that it's not breaking.
- Not breaking, because
And it's very sharp.
You want both things. Soft and hard.
Yes. Soft and hard.
- Yes, first we have temperature.
- Yeah.
Okay.
the hot steel is fantastic.
The steel is beaten time and time again,
until the sword takes shape.
The making of a sword takes 100 days.
- Okay. - Okay.
Ritsuo meticulously applies clay to the sword.
This hardens the steel
and gives the blade a sharp edge.
According to Shinto beliefs,
it also helps give the sword spiritual meaning,
because clay or earth is one of the four elements.
So the steel covered with clay
is being heated in the forge,
the colour being watched.
And this will now be plunged into water.
This is all part of the process
of giving it this razor edge.
lf the next stage is botched,
all will be wasted. Time is crucial.
Ritsuo is waiting until the sword is the colour
of the moon in August.
One chance only.
- One chance only.
- Okay, one chance.
Not two times.
A critical moment, this. This is where the sword
makes it or doesn't make it, right or wrong.
All the work wasted,
in which case broken down and start again,
or one gets a piece of perfection.
- Soon l go. - Okay, wow.
Can you tell if it was right?
- Have success.
- Have success? - Okay.
- Congratulations. - Thank you.
Accompanied by a symphony of cicadas,
a samurai warrior is about to test the new sword.
Would it shatter on impact,
or would it cut like a razor?
Now the samurai's going to cut bamboo,
which is the toughest test yet.
Hard. This is where we see
what the blade's made of.
Cutting bamboo is apparently the next
best thing to slicing human flesh.
A clean, pure, sharp cut.
And to cut bamboo like this takes force
and sharpness. The surface is very hard.
l'm told this cut is equivalent to cutting
through two human bodies.
So clearly the blade is good.
An incredible object.
Here we see a lotus, which is emblematic,
of course, of Buddha.
And here a dragon.
A dragon represents the essential quality
of the sword, the alchemy of the sword,
the transformation of base metal,
really, into a spiritual thing,
because the dragon seems to represent
the four elements: fire, water, air, earth.
lt comes from a cave.
This is saying this sword, the quintessence
of the elements, quintessence of nature,
represents the nature spirits,
the nature gods of Shinto.
l'm holding in my hands the soul of Japan.
The samurai sword may seem light years away from
Japan's great technological treasure,
the bullet train.
But both are born from the same yearning
for precision in all things.
ln Britain, the bullet train
is considered state-of-the-art,
but it's been around in Japan for 40 years.
lt's exhilarating as l head for my next
destination at speeds of over 180 miles an hour.
Himeji is much like
any modern Japanese industrial city,
but it possesses a very special treasure
which opens a door to a medieval world of
shogun warlords and their samurai warriors.
l've come to Himeji to see
a building that's full of secrets,
that combines delicacy of detail
with a violent function
that possesses a frightful beauty.
Himeji Castle is one of the most
beautiful castles in the world.
lt was rebuilt more than 400 years ago.
l've always wondered
how this romantic fairytale palace
could also serve as a stern
and daunting fortress.
Don't be deceived by its pretty,
almost fragile exterior.
The little roofs are made of timber and tiles.
lts walls too look delicate,
but they're built of compressed earth
and thick enough to withstand shot and shell.
So how impregnable is the castle?
There's only one way to find out.
l'm going to put it to the test.
Ah now, this is splendid. Defence in depth.
l've got through the outer defences, the outer
walls of the castle, the outer moat system,
through this great fortified gate,
into the castle proper.
Yes, this is the way - ah, yes.
Again typical. Attackers would get through
this gate and be confronted,
not by another gate
but by a wall with loopholes.
They'd be confused here,
because the path divides this way or that way.
Where do they go?
Confusion is death, of course,
because it's time consuming.
One goes up.
Ah, fantastic.
All the time under attack. Ah.
So l've now reached, in a sense,
the heart of the castle the great tower.
lf l try to clamber up here
which l might be able to do,
possibly, l then discover, from that slit,
a frightful cascade of filthy material,
probably boiling oil
orjust the contents of a latrine.
l don't know what's worse really.
Now, l don't know
what's in store for me now.
the attacker here.
Ah, l see. l'm being enticed forward.
All seems well.
Loopholes there. lnwards.
Crikey.
Here we'll have to bow down,
offer our back really to get through.
That's humiliating, of course,
to bow to your enemy.
And also it makes you
very vulnerable to bow through
and fight through here,
with missiles and everything - oh dear.
Ah, well this is it really. l've made it
to the wall surrounding the main tower,
to the last of my great gates.
lncredible. lt's clad in metal,
l suppose to prevent people
trying to burn their way in.
The timber protected.
So l'm in.
Well, inside,
but this is a - another world really.
lt's dark, confusing,
more frightening, more sinister.
The upper levels of the tower
are like a labyrinth.
There's no clear route.
The stairs go this way and that.
The passageways meander. The attacker
would be entirely baffled by the place.
The castle employs psychological warfare.
lt's a fortification of the mind.
All is deception here.
Nothing is quite what you think.
There are plenty of secret and savage defences.
l'm standing on the top floor
of the main tower of the castle,
and from here
l can see the castle's defensive system:
the gates the walls, the moats, the towers.
l can see my route of attack the gate
l entered by,
and the way l had to wind around and between
these walls and through these gates to get here.
But l'm standing where
no real attacker ever stood.
This castle was never taken by storm.
lndeed, it was never besieged, never attacked.
Now, that may seem odd and that all of this
was a waste of time and money,
but not at all. The point is, it was a deterrent.
The fact the castle looked so strong
stopped people even attempting to attack it,
and that was the great secret
of success for castles, really.
They shouldn't be attacked.
As the sun sets on Himeji,
a performance of Noh theatre gets
under way in the shadows of the castle.
Noh theatre is beguiling and mysterious.
The performance is sparse,
yet strangely mesmerising.
lt's quintessentially Japanese.
Every detail is precise,
every movement perfect.
The highly trained actors are known officially
as 'living treasures'.
The ancient city of Kyoto is famous for
its temples, sacred gardens and shrines.
Japanese gardens are the stuff of romance.
With their quaint bridges,
soothing ponds and picturesque temples,
it's like walking into a traditional painting.
Japanese-style garden buildings were immensely
popular in 18th century Britain.
My treasure in Kyoto is a garden,
but a very different kind of garden,
one that l hope will help me
on my journey around the world.
Well, l'm into the seventh week
of this world tour,
and it's just gone 6:30 in the morning.
l've come to the Ryoanji temple in Kyoto,
famous for its early 16th century
Zen Buddhist garden.
The garden is a tool for meditation,
a means of enlightenment.
But my first impression is disconcerting.
lt all looks so arid.
Nevertheless, l focus my mind
on the rock sand gravel
to find that intuition,
that flash of awareness called satori
which lies at the heard of Zen Buddhist belief.
My mind wants to make this look
like something else, analogy.
You want to make it look like a landscape.
These are islands.
The gravel's the sea, raked to look like waves.
And the wall, the mud wall, with this oil,
you begin to see it as a setting sun,
as a landscape too. Again very pleasing.
Your mind is imposing,
translating images, abstract images,
making them into pictures you've seen elsewhere,
you know before,
but you must see this as it is.
Then you begin to see the rocks,
count the rocks.
There are 15.
But no matter where you sit,
you only ever seen 13 or 14 at one time.
lnteresting, that.
You contemplate the shapes of the rocks,
the different qualities, textures.
Again, information.
Then you see the space in between the rocks,
the space becomes more important.
Negative, positive.
l know what should happen in the end.
The whole thing with meditation
is to free yourself from yourself,
get out of your mind,
get away from the ego, the l.
And l guess in the end what should happen,
in fact comes when you see this not as a
landscape, not as a sea, not as a setting sun,
stop counting the number of rocks.
You just sit here and see 14 rocks,
knowing that one rock is hidden.
When you get to that point, your mind is free,
you have enlightenment.
l'm not there.
But l feel that's my intuition,
the way things ought to be.
Japan is endlessly fascinating, just to observe.
The relationship between modernity,
new technology, new ideas
and old, old traditions, always there,
underpins everything.
Absolutely gripping to watch.
ln clothes, in architecture,
in attitudes really. ln manners.
lt's always there, always one can see different
permutations of the same relationship.
l suppose in many ways
it's rooted in the ancient religion,
Shintoist belief in all things
having a spirit all things living,
all things part of the great soul of the earth,
be they plants, trees, the moss l'm sitting on.
Of course, the fish in the pond.
Meanwhile back to my eel.
From Japan l fly west to China.
l'm full of anticipation.
lt's a country with a long
and illustrious history,
and boasts some of the greatest treasures
in the world.
lt's also the first Communist country on my trip.
But you wouldn't think so.
Well, l'd heard Beijing had changed a lot
in the last 20 years or so,
but l hadn't realised how much.
A great, modern, western, fabulous city.
This is Beijing.
So what became of the dreams of Chairman Mao?
He smiles benignly over the
notorious Tiananmen Square.
A face from another age,
robbed of meaning
and now reduced to a pop art image.
But my first impressions
of modern China are deceiving.
The ghost of Mao lives on -
as l'm about to find out.
l've come to see a treasure that was
for 500 years one of the most hidden,
indeed forbidden, places on earth.
The forbidden city
is the largest palace in the world.
lt was built by the mighty Ming dynasty
600 years ago.
lt was intended to be a vision
of heaven on earth,
but came to symbolise imperial
corruption and decadence.
lt's a miracle it survived Mao's Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s and '70s,
when much of China's heritage was destroyed.
Getting access to the Forbidden City
is a bureaucratic nightmare.
Finally, l've been granted the privilege of being
allowed into part of the vast complex
before it opens to the public.
But as l approach the Hall of Supreme Harmony,
the doors behind me are opened
and the hordes surge in.
Suddenly all harmony disappears
and the magic is lost.
l can explain the situation more clearly, l think.
We were given half an hour to film the
Forbidden City before the gates were opened.
Because of the atmospheric condensation our
cameras didn't work until the last five minutes.
So we had about two minutes to film.
Then the gates opened and the hordes rushed in.
Absolutely fascinating.
lt's been made clear that l can't enter
any of the Forbidden City's 9,999 rooms.
lt's a struggle just getting close.
The horror, the horror.
Clearly the Chinese are fascinated
by their imperial history.
Virtually everyone here is Chinese.
Very few western tourists.
Thronging. And there is the - the -
the imperial throne, or one of them.
Once the punishment for entering
the Forbidden City uninvited was death.
Now it attracts more visitors each year
than anywhere else in the world.
Seven million, to be precise.
And most of them seem to be here today.
Fantastic. The fight for a view.
l'll get stuck in. Oh, warm bodies.
Glorious throng.
And there is the throne. Everyone clicking away.
A mere second a passing glance.
Throne of the last emperor,
and indeed many before him.
Made it.
l'll take my picture. l've deserved it.
l shall practice my Zen moment of calm.
That's the thing, isn't it?
Find Zen enlightenment
in the most unlikely places.
l feel bitterly disappointed.
Much of the city is a building site,
as the authorities renovate
their greatest tourist trap.
The sun is fighting a losing
battle against the pollution,
evidence of modern China's helter-skelter
economic growth.
Yet the dead weight of Communist bureaucracy
still hangs as heavy as the smog.
The mandarins here have given me just two hours
to visit the Forbidden City,
all 720,000 square metres of it.
But there is beauty here.
Beauty in abundance in the intoxicating
exotic style of the architecture.
ln the muted light,
the mellow colours of the buildings
with their terra cotta roofs
look wonderful.
The city's countless courtyards,
temples and palaces
have charming names like Harmony,
Tranquillity and Peace,
though the descriptions now seem ironic.
This is where the empress and
the concubines lived around this courtyard,
in these charming, delicate pavilions.
Hard to imagine it now,
with this throng of walking masses,
that's including me.
Once of course, one of the most hidden
and secret places in this hidden empire.
All too soon my time is up and an official
tells me to make my way to the exit.
There's more disappointment to come.
l had arranged to see another treasure
within the Forbidden City -
Ming porcelain.
Now, out of the blue, officials are saying no.
There's nothing my guide An Dong
can do about it.
Today the problem is humidity.
The humidity, too high. lt's about 90 per cent,
so we cannot - they cannot take that porcelain
from underground store rooms.
Because it could damage the porcelain or what?
l don't really understand.
Yeah, l think, damage because it's one thousand,
even more than one thousand years old, antique.
So we cannot take it out today.
But we can try it another time. lf you have time.
So that we - we have time
Yeah, you have time, we can do that.
But you are too hurried, then maybe we miss it.
Maybe tomorrow. We'll come back tomorrow
and hope for the best.
But if the weather's the same,
then - then it'll be the same problem.
- Yeah, okay.
- Okay, and thank you.
l have time on my hands,
so l decide to go to a
Beijing antique market to see
if l can buy some porcelain to help me
overcome my disappointment.
Are you walking - are we following you?
l've asked the chap about porcelain.
l'm not sure he wants to show me any more.
So do you - one of you. Obviously it's hot.
Ming.
The very words 'Ming porcelain'
have a ring about them.
One of China's great cultural treasures,
and for centuries one of its
most lucrative exports to the west.
Do you have porcelain? Porcelain.
What - what age, how old?
That's Chin.
Chin? Chin?
The best porcelain has a delicate,
almost sublime quality,
and is painted with exquisite detail.
Lovely.
Porcelain. Hello.
About 200.
Oh, porcelain.
But how it was made was a closely-guarded secret
and a mystery to Europeans.
How - how much is this then?
Lovely, lovely piece.
How much is that?
Wait a minute.
ls that the best price you do here.
No, no, no. Much too much, much too much.
Oh - hang on, you've gone up again.
Oh, that's a much better price.
For ten pounds
l have a little slice of Chinese history.
But l can't pretend it's a treasure.
l can only pray it's less humid tomorrow
and l can see the best examples.
Money well spent. Bye.
She can't stop laughing. Well, okay, okay.
The next day the weather is still humid,
so l put off the porcelain and go in search
of another treasure near Beijing.
lt's one of imperial China's
most extravagant legacies.
For centuries the Summer Palace's huge park
was a royal haven,
with its lake and ornamental buildings.
Now it's a much loved public park
and retreat for the people of Beijing,
who brave the pollution to take
their daily constitutionals.
l cut short my dance
after reminded that the bureaucrats
had given me just two hours
to visit the whole park.
l've chosen the Summer Palace as my treasure
because it's a fascinating barometer of China,
past and present, for better and for worse.
This garden was created in the mid-18th century
and was - l think remains - a spectacular affair.
But its history in the 19th
and early 20th century was very turbulent
and it tells us much about China's difficult
relationships with western nations.
This garden was invaded in the 1860s
by Anglo-French troops
who came here to avenge a diplomatic slight,
and also damaged
during the Boxer rebellion of 1900,
when again, European forces came through here
to relieve diplomats besieged in Beijing.
All around me, of course, still is the garden,
which was, l'm told, very badly damaged
when western forces stormed through here.
Even some of the bronzes were looted.
But all seems to be more or less repaired now.
Ah, now, another stage of my journey
has been reached. We're about to land.
The park is enormous,
spreading out over 290 hectares,
three quarters of which is lake.
For centuries it was a private playground for
China's mighty and ruthless emperors.
The sheer luxury of the park is staggering.
Everywhere you look there are temples,
pavilions and pagodas.
There are over a hundred
ornamental structures in the garden.
Just look at this delightful little pagoda.
Structures like this fuelled a fashion,
a passion for all things Chinese in Europe,
starting with some, well, chinoiserie,
which becomes a great dominant force
in European design from the 1750s.
The covered walkway is an art gallery
in its own right.
lt's decorated with fascinating paintings
telling romantic tales from the past
and heralding victories in battle.
Perhaps the most eccentric and revealing relic
of imperial China is the marble boat.
lt's pure folly, it doesn't actually float,
because it's built on the lake bed.
The marble boat was created in 1755
by the Emperor Ch'ien Lung
lt was a birthday present for his mother.
But it had a greater meaning than that.
lt was a symbol of the Chinese empire -
the boat was unsinkable,
as was the empire itself.
The marble boat may have been unsinkable,
but it did contribute to the humiliating defeat
of the Chinese navy in 1894 by a Japanese fleet.
The powerful Empress Dowager T'zu His diverted
money earmarked for modernising the navy
to the restoration of the symbolic boat and
gardens, after the attack by Anglo-French troops.
She extravagantly transformed the boat
into a modern paddle steamer.
There you see a great cog-like machine.
Futuristic emblem.
So the empire is saying their great ship of state,
the celestial timeless image of the empire,
has been given modern wheels.
Lovely, actually.
l had been hoping to board the marble boat,
but it appears to be a problem.
l must wait while negotiations
take place behind the scenes.
So precious is the marble boat,
so sacred almost, as a national shrine,
that no ordinary people are allowed on it.
And we have had great trouble -
only l, after much negotiation,
am allowed to go past this point.
l alone can enter this great monument.
And that, l'm told, is a huge privilege.
Standing here, on this unlikely craft,
the old world survives.
l'm in a sort of time bubble, a capsule really.
And l see the dining room in which the
Dowager Empress presided by herself.
So grand was she, she could dine with nobody
apart from herself. And to keep herself company,
she had a mighty mirror,
so she could see herself reflected as she dined.
This creation says so much about the old China,
the old empire.
lt's emblematic of it in many ways.
But strangely and wonderfully really,
it's also venerated by the new China.
So here we have it, this one creation,
old and new,
history, modernity,
the future and the past combined.
lt's a incredible relic.
All too soon,
my visit to the Summer Palace is over.
l'd like to have seen more, but l'm ushered away.
From the Summer Palace
l head back to the Forbidden City,
to find out
if l can see the Ming porcelain today.
The weather's cheered up and
l'm hopeful of finding my treasure at last.
No luck. Apparently too much humidity in the air.
Quite how humidity damages porcelain,
l don't know.
But - and no one's explained -
but there we are.
l can't see the objects,
items that l'm dying to see. Frustration, yes.
For supper, l decide to sample the delicacies
on offer in the streets of Beijing.
Bugs, that's what l want.
Once one starts eat insects,
it's a bit addictive.
They're so good, insects
Now this stall looks very promising.
Yea, one. Not quite what l'm looking for.
l want something more - Ah,
now this is - is this cooked, ready?
This is a challenge for me.
l revere l love silkworms,
and now l'm going to eat one.
Yeah, absolutely, one - one silkworm.
Oh - oh yes, well, snake,
yeah, well, all right. Yes.
A bit rubbery.
The silkworm was an early stage of its life,
before the little devil had
had a chance to produce silk.
A strong taste. Not without flavour, actually.
They're telling me l make a great mess.
They're right, l am.
ln more ways than they realise.
Thank you.
For my next treasure, l head three hours
north-east of Beijing to Jinshaling.
l leave behind Beijing
feeling a mixture of relief and regret.
l love the city's frantic energy
and its friendly people,
but l'm frustrated by the faceless bureaucracy
that is answerable to no one.
l'm heading for the largest structure
ever created by man,
that is, in its Asian vast scale,
a potent expression of the continuity and
sophistication of China's ancient civilisation.
Work began on the Great Wall
of China around 220BC.
lt was the creation of the first emperor,
Chin Shi Huangdi.
The wall's a tremendous piece
of military engineering,
but of course it's a lot, lot more than that.
Just look at the way it relates to the landscape,
snaking over the land, over the mountains.
Unbelievably beautiful.
Unbelievably difficult to build.
What an act of will and determination.
What a revelation about a civilisation that can
organise the construction of such a thing.
The Great Wall winds its way across China
from the Gobi Desert in the north-west
to the Bo Hi Sea north-east of Beijing.
The Great Wall stretches for
over four thousand miles,
and was last substantially rebuilt in the late
14th century during the Ming dynasty.
lt's said that 300,000 men
were used to make this wall
and many died,
their bodies mixed into the clay of the bricks.
These bricks, the old bricks here.
For that reason it's called the Wall of Tears.
The longest graveyard in the world.
The human sacrifice was great,
but for centuries the wall stood between China
and its most fearsome enemies:
barbarians and nomadic tribesmen.
To them, it must have looked more like
the work of gods than of man.
Now, this is fantastic, ingenious.
There's defence in depth within the wall.
lf attackers scaled this portion of the wall,
got up here and stormed along here,
the defenders, forced to retreat,
would go up towards a little fortress at the top.
But what they would do,
they'd fight wall by wall,
so what happened is the attackers come up here,
the defenders shoot bows,
l guess, dodge behind here, they'd also shoot
from here at the attackers down there.
Now, if the defenders are still under pressure,
forced back, they simply go back to the next wall,
fighting, raining blows down here
on the attackers who are at a disadvantage.
The defenders then pop round here, fire again,
and then, still under pressure,
they go back to the next wall and,
if they have to, retreat wall to wall to wall,
back to the little fortress right
at the top there.
And this little fort reveals another
of the defensive tricks of the Great Wall.
lf the defenders are forced back to take refuge
and they just slam the door -
and push the bar across,
and the attackers possess the wall down there,
then this part of the wall can be isolated.
The attackers can't run down
the whole length of the wall.
This little fort bars their way,
with the defenders in here
attacking the chaps down there.
The Great Wall is just as spectacular as
l thought it would be, as l hoped it would be.
The scale is amazing.
And the way it relates to the landscape.
Just look at it over there,
the silhouette of the towers,
the ridge of the world really.
The hills, this great mist coming down.
l say, look at this mighty work and tremble.
My next treasure has close associations
with the Great Wall,
but to find it l must travel more than 600 miles
to the ancient Chinese capital of Xian.
Xian is a strange city.
lts beautiful historic towers are overwhelmed
by nondescript modern buildings.
l don't hang around,
because just outside Xian lies one of the great
cultural wonders of the world,
a treasure that lay hidden for two millennia.
This formidable army of terracotta warriors
was discovered by chance in 1974.
lt was one of the most remarkable
archaeological discoveries ever made.
Like the Great Wall of China, it's a legacy
of the first emperor, Chin Shi Huangdi.
The first emperor died
just over 2,200 years ago,
and his burial must have been
an extraordinary affair.
His body was placed in a mighty mausoleum,
stretching all the way around,
a couple of square miles.
This was a - an underground world,
a subterranean city, a city of the dead.
And this city included an army of figures,
nearly eight thousand, over life size, terracotta
soldiers arranged in different divisions.
An army ready to battle,
to battle for the emperor,
to conduct his warfare in heaven.
The army once bristled with weapons:
swords, crossbows
and spears made of wood and iron.
Sadly, these have long since rotted
or rusted away.
The empty hands of the soldiers
continue to grasp their invisible arms
and they still look menacing.
To look into the eyes of these warriors -
they're all individual,
their faces, their features.
They're all people.
They're people that have lives and histories.
lt's an incredible experience.
This is the power of the art
of these terracotta figures.
They were meant to represent living soldiers
and they still do.
They are still alive.
These are the men that garrisoned the Great Wall
of China when it was first constructed.
You can see regional and ethnic differences
in the style of hair and facial features.
About 85 master craftsmen
were responsible for this vast army.
They made the heads,
probably portraits of individuals,
while hundreds of workers produced the hands
and bodies, moulding the clay by hand.
The different elements were
then assembled and fired in kilns.
Look at the craftsmanship.
They're little works of art, each one,
they're a sculpture.
They would have been brightly coloured originally.
That was the idea.
Very few traces of colour have been found.
lmagine that ranks upon ranks, brightly coloured,
lifelike figures staring into infinity,
all looking east towards the rising sun,
towards heaven,
waiting to serve their godlike emperor.
The presence of all of this is still here,
is still here, still surrounds these figures.
Beautiful individual works of art.
There's a huge amount of work still to be done
to restore all 8,000 soldiers.
But even more tantalising is the thought that
there is still much more to be excavated.
What other treasures does
the first emperor's tomb contain?
Filming the terra cotta army was stimulating,
but again l was frustrated by the bureaucratic
attitude of the museum officials.
Yet, among my guides there's a sense
of restraint and powerlessness.
When l query a seemingly illogical decision,
they're quick to point out
that China is a Communist country.
Now they tell me it's impossible for me
to see any Ming porcelain at all,
and it was a treasure
l'd been longing to get my hands on.
l have one last chance, in Shanghai.
Shanghai is China's largest and wealthiest city.
lt's nicknamed the dragon's head,
because of the way it has led China's headlong
rush towards a Capitalist economy.
My first impressions are that
it's a peculiar place.
Everything seems sparkling, brittle and new.
But not always ultra-modern and high-tech.
Fortunately its museum boasts one of the
finest Ming porcelain collections in the world,
one which l am told surpasses
even that of the forbidden city.
Attitudes are more relaxed here,
and we're allowed to film.
This is a beautiful thing, made in the late
16th century, early 17th century
during the Ming period for the emperor Yuan Li.
That's what it says up there. Made in the reign
of Yuan Li, that's the lettering.
So, for the imperial household,
as is revealed by the decoration.
This dragon is an imperial symbol.
Ornamentation here was not simply a thing
of beauty and fashion,
but it carried a meaning.
Dragon imperial.
Europe was mesmerised by Chinese porcelain when
it appeared in quantity in the late 16th century.
ln fact, Shakespeare writes about it
in Measure for Measure.
He talks about Chinese dishes
being of very high quality.
That was in 1600.
The thing was these objects were not
only beautiful but technically advanced.
The west didn't know quite
what they were made of and how.
This pot was made in the early 15th century.
A lovely thing, and sort of translucent.
The secret of porcelain
is the material its made from.
We call it in the west kaolin.
Here it's called gowlin.
lt's a sort of clay, a very particular clay,
with silicone oxide,
aluminium oxide and iron oxide.
This was mixed with other material, stone dust,
to produce this very fine material.
And when fired, it comes up with a -
kind of almost, as l say, transparent quality.
Very thin and delicate section through it.
Also of course, the firing's important.
Here the blue would have been painted on first
of all, the blue pigment, as with the other pot.
Then glazed,
and then fired to a high temperature,
so high that the kaolin, the - the body,
the clay, mixes with the pigments, the glaze,
becomes one object all fused together.
That's part of the secret, that's part of the
reason for this translucency and delicacy. Mmm.
My short stay in China is almost over.
lt's a complex country,
and for outsiders relationships
and actions are hard to fathom.
Modern China and Japan
are the fruits of ancient civilisations.
And even in China there's a cultural
continuity stretching back,
well, two and a half thousand years.
But things are not maybe
what that history suggests -
but although it has this western aspect,
one's become very conscious that Japan,
particularly China,
remain secret and hidden worlds.
This was very much the case with my quest
to see my treasures in China.
Many things l longed to see
where denied me at the last moment,
became unavailable, last minute problems.
So l failed to become as intimate
with those treasures, as intimate as l'd hoped.
A storm is building up, a typhoon is coming.
This, l suppose won't change things dramatically.
But l feel the elements are on my side,
perhaps helping to blow the cobwebs away.