"I'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 I want to find out if their ancient traditions and mysteries have survived into the modern technical age." "So far, I've travelled through the Americas, Australia and South-East Asia." "From Cambodia l have flown to Japan." "I'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." "I'm entering a secret world." "My first treasure in Japan is ancient, yet is still made today." "It can be found in ordinary-looking factory buildings like this one near Tokyo." "It's one of Japan's most mystical objects, a deadly weapon, and a sacred work of art." "It 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." "If 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 I 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." "I'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." "It 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." "I'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." "In Britain, the bullet train is considered state-of-the-art, but it's been around in Japan for 40 years." "It's exhilarating as I 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." "I'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." "It was rebuilt more than 400 years ago." "I'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." "Its 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." "I'm going to put it to the test." "Ah now, this is splendid." "Defence in depth." "I'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 I've now reached, in a sense, the heart of the castle the great tower." "If I try to clamber up here which I might be able to do, possibly, I then discover, from that slit, a frightful cascade of filthy material, probably boiling oil orjust the contents of a latrine." "I don't know what's worse really." "Now, I don't know what's in store for me now." "... the attacker here." "Ah, I see. I'm being enticed forward." "All seems well." "Loopholes there. inwards." "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. I've made it to the wall surrounding the main tower, to the last of my great gates." "lncredible. lt's clad in metal, I suppose to prevent people trying to burn their way in." "The timber protected." "So I'm in." "Well, inside, but this is a - another world really." "It'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." "It's a fortification of the mind." "All is deception here." "Nothing is quite what you think." "There are plenty of secret and savage defences." "I'm standing on the top floor of the main tower of the castle, and from here I can see the castle's defensive system:" "the gates the walls, the moats, the towers." "I can see my route of attack the gate I entered by, and the way I had to wind around and between these walls and through these gates to get here." "But I'm standing where no real attacker ever stood." "This castle was never taken by storm." "Indeed, 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." "It'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 I hope will help me on my journey around the world." "Well, I'm into the seventh week of this world tour, and it's just gone 6:30 in the morning." "I'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." "It all looks so arid." "Nevertheless, I 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." "Interesting, 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." "I 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 I." "And I 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." "I'm not there." "But I 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." "In clothes, in architecture, in attitudes really. ln manners." "It's always there, always one can see different permutations of the same relationship." "I 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 I fly west to China." "I'm full of anticipation." "It's a country with a long and illustrious history, and boasts some of the greatest treasures in the world." "It's also the first Communist country on my trip." "But you wouldn't think so." "Well, I'd heard Beijing had changed a lot in the last 20 years or so, but I 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 I'm about to find out." "I'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." "It was built by the mighty Ming dynasty 600 years ago." "It was intended to be a vision of heaven on earth, but came to symbolise imperial corruption and decadence." "It'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, I've been granted the privilege of being allowed into part of the vast complex before it opens to the public." "But as I 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." "I can explain the situation more clearly, I 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." "It's been made clear that I can't enter any of the Forbidden City's 9,999 rooms." "It'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." "I'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." "I'll take my picture. I've deserved it." "I shall practice my Zen moment of calm." "That's the thing, isn't it?" "Find Zen enlightenment in the most unlikely places." "I 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." "In 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." "I 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?" "I don't really understand." "Yeah, I 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." "I have time on my hands, so I decide to go to a Beijing antique market to see if I can buy some porcelain to help me overcome my disappointment." "Are you walking - are we following you?" "I've asked the chap about porcelain." "I'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." "is 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 I have a little slice of Chinese history." "But I can't pretend it's a treasure." "I can only pray it's less humid tomorrow and I 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 I put off the porcelain and go in search of another treasure near Beijing." "It'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." "I cut short my dance after reminded that the bureaucrats had given me just two hours to visit the whole park." "I'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, I'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." "It'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." "It'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." "It 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." "I had been hoping to board the marble boat, but it appears to be a problem." "I 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 I, after much negotiation, am allowed to go past this point." "I alone can enter this great monument." "And that, I'm told, is a huge privilege." "Standing here, on this unlikely craft, the old world survives." "I'm in a sort of time bubble, a capsule really." "And I 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." "It'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." "It's a incredible relic." "All too soon, my visit to the Summer Palace is over." "I'd like to have seen more, but I'm ushered away." "From the Summer Palace l head back to the Forbidden City, to find out if I can see the Ming porcelain today." "The weather's cheered up and I'm hopeful of finding my treasure at last." "No luck." "Apparently too much humidity in the air." "Quite how humidity damages porcelain, I don't know." "But - and no one's explained - but there we are." "I can't see the objects, items that I'm dying to see." "Frustration, yes." "For supper, I decide to sample the delicacies on offer in the streets of Beijing." "Bugs, that's what I 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 I'm looking for." "I want something more" " Ah, now this is - is this cooked, ready?" "This is a challenge for me." "I revere I love silkworms, and now I'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 I make a great mess." "They're right, I am." "In more ways than they realise." "Thank you." "For my next treasure, I head three hours north-east of Beijing to Jinshaling." "I leave behind Beijing feeling a mixture of relief and regret." "I love the city's frantic energy and its friendly people, but I'm frustrated by the faceless bureaucracy that is answerable to no one." "I'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." "It 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." "It'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." "If 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, I 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." "If 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 I thought it would be, as I 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." "I say, look at this mighty work and tremble." "My next treasure has close associations with the Great Wall, but to find it I must travel more than 600 miles to the ancient Chinese capital of Xian." "Xian is a strange city." "Its beautiful historic towers are overwhelmed by nondescript modern buildings." "I 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." "It 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." "It'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." "Imagine 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 I was frustrated by the bureaucratic attitude of the museum officials." "Yet, among my guides there's a sense of restraint and powerlessness." "When I 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 I'd been longing to get my hands on." "I have one last chance, in Shanghai." "Shanghai is China's largest and wealthiest city." "It'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 I 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." "In 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 gowling." "It'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 I 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." "It'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 I longed to see where denied me at the last moment, became unavailable, last minute problems." "So I failed to become as intimate with those treasures, as intimate as I'd hoped." "A storm is building up, a typhoon is coming." "This, I suppose won't change things dramatically." "But I feel the elements are on my side, perhaps helping to blow the cobwebs away."