The Story of China s01e01 Ancestors EN SUB MPEG4 x264 WEBRIP [MPup]

The.Story.of.China.s01e01.Ancestors.EN.SUB.MPEG4.x264.WEBRIP.[MPup]

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Home to over a billion people, China is the new superpower, a country we all want to understand - and Michael Wood argues that to do so we have to look at its history. In The Story of China, he explores the history of the world’s newest superpower, from its ancient past to the present day, travelling across the country to explores the landscapes, peoples, stories and cultures that have helped create China’s distinctive character and genius over more than 4,000 years.



Starting in Wuxi, Michael joins the Qin family reunion, when 300 relatives gather to worship their ancestors on Tomb Sweeping Day. "Like the nation, the family has been through so much," one says. ‘‘Now everyone wants to know - what are our roots?”

To answer that question Michael journeys to the plain of Yellow River, where he joins a million pilgrims at the shrine of ancient Goddess Nüwa, who legend says, made the first people from the yellow mud of the Yellow River.

Looking for the origins of the Chinese state, he visits the excavations at Erlitou and sees an exquisite turquoise dragon sceptre from 2,000 BCE. China’s first writing is found on ‘oracle bones’ dug up from the Shang royal tombs at Anyang over a century ago. Then at the Beijing Planetarium, we travel back in time as astronomers plot the planetary conjunction that the ancients believed foretold the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty.

Next the Age of Philosophers and Confucius, whose book Analects, some say, has had greater influence worldwide than even the Bible. In Xi’an we hear how the First Emperor united China and created the authoritarian Qin state that gave us the word China.

Finally we return to the temple fair in Henan for a dramatic night ceremony to give thanks to the ancestors. China, Michael concludes, is rising again, not just because of its economic strength, but because of the incredible solidarity of the Han Chinese view of their own civilisation, their sense of family, and of course, the presence of the ancestors.