Michael Wood tells the tale of China's first great international age under the Tang Dynasty (618-907). From the picturesque old city of Luoyang, he travels along the Silk Road to the bazaars of central Asia and into India on the track of the Chinese monk who brought Buddhism back to China. This tale is still loved by the Chinese today and is brought to life by storytellers, films and shadow puppet plays.
This episode tells the tale of China's most creative dynasty - the Song (960-1279). Michael Wood heads to the city of Kaifeng, the greatest city in the world before the 19th century. Here in Twin Dragon Alley, locals tell him the legend of the baby boys who became emperors. He explores the ideas and inventions that made the Song one of greatest eras in world culture, helped by China's most famous work of art, the Kaifeng scroll, which shows the life of the city in around 1120.
Michael Wood recounts the tale of one of China's most famous dynasties beginning with the amazing story of Hongwu, a peasant rebel who founded one of greatest eras in Chinese history.
China's last empire, the Qing, lasted from 1644 to 1911. It began in violence and war as the Manchus swept down from the north, but invaders became emperors and three generations of one family ruled for 133 years. Among them, Michael Wood argues, was China's greatest emperor - Kangxi. Under the Qing, China doubled in size to include Xinjiang in the far west, as well as Mongolia and Tibet, creating the essential shape of China today.
'Revolution', Michael Wood observes, 'has been a fact of life in Chinese history'. Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged. Michael Wood explores the effects of the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion and the two world wars, before ending the story with Mao’s death and the boom time of the last thirty years.
Michael Wood
Host
Rebecca Dobbs
Producer
Writer
