He was nicknamed "the steel mill" for his capacity to just keep going on and on. He was Mao's lieutenant who was purged twice and rose three times, the final time to the very top. He enabled China's economic miracle to happen after 1978 by allo

Bruce Lee: Screen Warrior

May 3rd, 2018 13m 58s

He may still be the most famous non-western film star in the world. Yet he made only a handful of films in the early 1970s, none of which are artistic masterpieces. It wasn't his acting that made Bruce Lee the first Chinese to conquer global po

Mao Zedong: The Man Who Made Modern China

May 2nd, 2018 13m 18s

In the early 1920s, he was just a library assistant at Peking University. Yet by the end of his life, he would rule a fifth of all humanity, turn China into a major power, and destroy the lives of millions in a Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong w

Factory Girls: Modern Girls, Modern Dreams

May 1st, 2018 13m 42s

They came out of the countryside and helped to build China's industrial revolution. In the late 19th century, textile factories started to appear in the Yangtze delta, and working in them, teenage girls and young women. It was a hard life with

Cixi: Ambivalent Empress

Apr 30th, 2018 13m 53s

She rose to power behind the scenes in China's late 19th century imperial court, and became one of the most powerful women ever to exercise authority in the empire. Cixi was a dowager empress, and her influence shaped China through the tragedie

Hong Xiuquan v Zeng Guofan: The Duellists

Apr 27th, 2018 13m 56s

This was the duel that shaped China. Hong Xiuquan was a poor boy who went into a trance and became convinced he was Jesus's younger brother, with a mission to conquer China. Zeng Guofan was a loyal Confucian bureaucrat who rose up the imperial

Wang Jingwei: Revolutionary Renegade

Apr 26th, 2018 13m 46s

He is condemned as China's worst traitor. What made him do it? In 1938, as China was plunged into war, Wang Jingwei defected to the enemy, Japan. Yet in his early life, he had been one of the great figures of the Chinese revolution, second only

Lu Xun: Compassionate Cynic

Apr 25th, 2018 13m 47s

To create one character who says something profound about the society you live in might be a stroke of luck. To create three suggests you really do have your hand on the nation's pulse. That creator was Lu Xun, widely regarded as modern China's

Robert Hart: Chinese Customs

Apr 24th, 2018 12m 56s

He was a servant of the Chinese empire, respected in Beijing and London alike. Yet he was no son of Shanghai, but of Ulster. Robert Hart grew up in Portadown, but his real life started when he shipped out to China. He rose to the top of the Mar

Zheng He: The Admiral Goes to Africa

Apr 23rd, 2018 13m 34s

China rarely had an image as a great maritime power. But for a brief time in the mid-15th century, that all changed under the Ming dynasty and its admiral, Zheng He. He was sent out on seven voyages to points as far apart as Southeast Asia, Cey

River Elegy: River and Ocean

Apr 20th, 2018 13m 55s

In 1988, one of the most important television programmes in history was shown. Titled River Elegy, it was watched by perhaps 100 million Chinese viewers. Despite its stirring music and dramatic imagery, it wasn't a drama, or documentary - but a

Li Qingzhao: Patriotic Poet

Apr 19th, 2018 13m 53s

Li Qingzhao, who lived (1084-1151) during the late Song dynasty, is recognised as one of China's greatest poets. She grew up within China's culture of highly regulated court bureaucracy. While her husband was a senior official, she became a bri

Confucius: Becoming the Sage

Apr 18th, 2018 13m 46s

If there were a competition for most famous Chinese in history, Confucius (551-479 BCE) would surely come out on top. He was the philosopher and ethicist who has given China a significant part of its cultural DNA. Confucius lived during a perio

Kublai Khan: Cosmopolitan Conqueror

Apr 17th, 2018 13m 47s

He was the man with the pleasure dome, according to Coleridge, but in reality Kublai Khan didn't have so much time for pleasure. He was too busy running one of the most complex and cosmopolitan empires on earth. Kublai was ruler of the medieval

Sima Qian: Grand Historian

Apr 16th, 2018 13m 27s

He wasn't quite the man who invented history in China, but he certainly shaped it for thousands of years. Author of the Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian), Sima Qian told the history of China in the 2nd century BC in way nobody had done be

Ding Ling: Sophie, Sensation and Sex

Apr 13th, 2018 13m 50s

In 1927, China's literary scene was struck by a sensational new character. Her name was Sophie, and she was tormented by sexual longing, unashamedly self-centred about her desires and dreams, and determined to carry out mental torture on her ni

Matteo Ricci: Jesuit and Geometrist

Apr 12th, 2018 13m 33s

Better living through geometry. That was one of the lessons shared with the Chinese emperor by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci. He was part of an enterprising group of Jesuits priests who brought their faith to China, along with new ideas drawn

Kumarajiva: Translator Monk

Apr 11th, 2018 13m 42s

Millions of Chinese speak the words of Kumarajiva (334-413) every day. Far fewer have any idea of who he is. He was perhaps China's most influential translator: in medieval China, he translated some of the most important Buddhist texts from San

Chiang Kai-Shek and Soong Meiling: Asian Power Couple

Apr 10th, 2018 13m 47s

Rana Mitter argues that we can think about Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Meiling (Madame Chiang) as Asia's first power couple. They dominated politics in China and were two of the most prominent non-westerners on

Wu Zetian: The Female Emperor

Apr 9th, 2018 13m 52s

Rana Mitter tells the story of Wu Zetian, the only woman ever to rule as China's emperor in her own right, in two thousand years of dynastic history. Even more remarkably,, she did it during one of the finest moments of China's cultural history

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