 Welcome to this evening's online event from the British Library. We are delighted to welcome back one of our favourite speakers and I'm sure one of yours too, Michael Wood, who is joined by Li Jia Zhang to an explore for an hour the story of China. It's one of the world's greatest and oldest cultures but I'm almost certainly one that should be far better known in the west. Here at the British Library we have many links with China, including looking after some exceptional collections. Among the star items are the world's earliest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra of 868 AD, found in the Dunhuang caves of the eastern Silk Road and we have parts of the Yongle Dajian, a massive document covering all aspects of Chinese knowledge commissioned in the Ming dynasty and we also hold oracle bones from the second century BC carved with Shang dynasty the oldest known form of Chinese writing. Our connections are very active today. We all have recently toured some of our treasures to China, including works by Shakespeare Bronte Oscar Wilde and we run Chinese language web pages and knowledge exchanges with Chinese library partners. Michael Wood's many books and television series will be well known to you but I'd first like to introduce you to your host for this evening Lijia Zhang. Lijia is a London based writer, columnist and commentator but she was bored into a working class family in Nanjing and worked for 10 years at a military factory before teaching herself English and literature moving to London to study. Her book of oral history China Remembers was followed in 2011 by Socialism is Great, a Worker's Memoir of the New China published in eight countries and the novel Lotus. We're delighted that Lijia can join Michael this evening. During the event you can post your questions using the form below the screen and Lijia and Michael will endeavour to answer as many as possible during the event and you can also pick up a copy of Michael's book The Story of China published last year by visiting the books tab at the top of the screen. Please enjoy the event. Thank you John for the kind introduction. The story of China is not short, 600 pages long. I must say that I wasn't particularly looking forward to reading it which covers history which I thought I knew a little bit about but I enjoyed enormously I really did because it's so well written, lively written and well structured and it's a joy to read. Many people on the audience might have watched your China documentaries. The book is just as engaging, warm and charming. Michael you said you hoped that some of the cinematic verb comes over in those pages and it did indeed. As in the documentary the book starts with the freezing winter night in 1899, two days before the winter sos tis, the Dongzhi the Emperor Guangxi heads to the temple of heaven to pray in a colorful procession under steel blue twilight sky. You set the scene for us with vivid description of emperor's yellow gown with blue dragons the procession that lay out of Tata city. Then you go on to describe the historical background the European war the failed hundred days reform China's temp to modernize itself. I just got hooked from the beginning. I really like the structure of the book not a typical dry history book with a set of dates and events. It roughly follows the historical order the different dynasties but also a certain interesting scene concepts like mandate of heaven Tianming and apart from offering a sweeping view you also give us some close-up for example the story of the letter from a touching letter from a homesick soldier in the Qing army or the story of the Bao family the salt merchant in Anhui in the Yuan dynasty. Personally I think the book is even better than the documentary because you have the space to explore things in depth. In your TV series you described a story for China is one of the one of the fabulous creativity intense drama and deep humanity. I think that's the fitting description of this book too so my hearty congratulations Michael. Before we hear Michael here's a found short film introducing his TV series the story of China to give a taste and hopefully bring a smile to your face. In this series for the first time on TV we're going to tell the story of China from its ancient roots to the present day the events and the ideas that have shaped the Chinese people. I'm Michael Wood and we're here in China at a great farmers festival in the plain of the Yellow River with a million people all around me. China's the country that we all want to know about today but if you want to understand China now you need to know about its history and it's an astonishing history of incredible drama and triumphs and tragedies. China has been a unified state for more than 2,000 years far longer than anywhere else on the planet. China as the world's first centralized bureaucratic empire begins here and in this series we'll show you how that tradition developed will tell the tale of the great rulers who shaped China. It was suspicious, coarse, brutal, utterly ruthless, but a creative genius. The scientists and inventors who lived before the rise of the West. And the Chinese people themselves will help us tell the tale. We can take you into the streets of China a thousand years ago and right into its most famous restaurants. As historical sources go this is one of the most fabulous that exist in the world. It's a scroll, a portrait of the life of the city. But China's story is also a cycle of revolution and war. Just imagine the scene. Inside the walls of the inner city are hundreds of thousands of terrified citizens of Kaifeng still resisting hopelessly and the government try to buy off the invaders but there's no cards left to play when they give gold the invaders want more and they want people they want craftsmen but especially they want women. China's view of the world has been molded by war and foreign invasion but its people have always come through. It's a four-thousand-year epic of invention and creativity. There are six mosques the tallest one is 38 meters. Great sea voyages long before America was discovered and brilliant arts and sciences long before the renaissance in Europe. You know here is the dragon. It's a China you've never seen before. A portrait of a nation of crucial importance to the world whose history is the key to understanding its people today. So come with us on this great adventure. The story of China. This is just the beginning. I should probably explain what you've just been seeing it's we actually made that promo for a big TV conference in America the annual conference for television in which was in Los Angeles and you can imagine the scene you're in a great conference hall there's two thousand hard-bitten American TV journalists who've got to sit through days of speeches and talks and clips and you've got to kind of cut through all that and so you're asked to make what they call a sizzle reel and that was a sizzle reel now you know if you've learned one thing tonight but I hope it conveys some of the excitement of the story which we we felt greatly making it and it's lovely to be here tonight thank you for inviting me it's lovely to be back at the dear old BL even if only electronically and one longs for those wonderful evenings where we're all live together but thank you for inviting me to speak though I had visited imaginary landscapes of China when I was in my teens I didn't go for the first time until the early 80s the first films I made there in the late 80s and in the last seven years made about a dozen films in China so a lot of time a lot of time there many of my friends last time I came back last year was saying oh you must be so glad to see the back of China and I said no no actually I always love being there it's a people are wonderfully hospitable and fantastically sociable so long experience of making films in China so I'm I'm well aware of how bold and dangerous it is what temerity there is in trying to write a book on the history of China it is as Li Jia said such a huge subject huge subject and especially great temerity if you're not a sinologist which I'm not but I've always felt both as a filmmaker and as a historian that there has to be a space between the work of the great scholars and specialists in the subject and what I call the dear general audience out there who have such a thirst to know to have what television sometimes can do very well which is to open doors to worlds that you'd never really imagined and and that's the space that we popularizers and explainers inhabit I think it's that space between the great scholars and the general public if I can give you one example there was a wonderful book written by a great Chinese scholar works in America now it's British Ronald Egan on the life of the poet Li Qingjiao she was one of China's greatest poets she lived in the 12th century and it's an absolutely brilliant and incredibly affecting book about her life her feelings her brilliant mind her she even analyzes her marriage and her brutal second marriage and above all criticizes the politicians and the terrible disasters that were happening in her time in the 1130s and Egan's book is a wonderful book but one one worries will only be read by the specialists in Chinese history and culture people who are interested in Chinese poetry perhaps but what you can do in TV or in a popular book like this is you can look at a story like that and see what incredible humanity and brilliance there is in it and and bring it to a wider audience and that's that's the area that we we inhabit I think as program makers and and and in a popular book like this too and maybe it will draw a few readers back to Egan's book I think we've all had that feeling don't you think that you've you touch on a book and it does open the door into a world that you never imagined and you remember it for the rest of your life certainly what happened to me when I first read AC Graham's Penguin edition of the Poems of the Late Town when I was at school these things stay with you forever so I think with these those kind of moments magic moments in mind I set out after we'd made the films to to write a book the kind of book that I I'd wanted to read about China but I couldn't find to try to tell by selection this very rich and complex story as a as a dramatic tale almost of a living organism over time as in a sense great civilization is but before I have a chat with Lidia and I'm just giving an eye on the time here I just thought I'd say a few things about what I was trying to do with the book that it's written with historians discipline I hope but it's written with a filmmaker's eye as Lidia said yeah lifetime of making films you can't get rid of those kind of habits good and bad but you know there's a grand sweep narrative has to hold the whole thing together with China it is the world's oldest state Chinese person once said to me the thing is you westerners you see the history as the rise and fall of many different civilizations here in China we see history as the rise and fall of one civilization so there is that grand narrative and I think we tend to view Chinese history as almost immorally stable but dynasties unfolding sedately one after another of course it's not like that at all it's incredibly dramatic and violent history and sometimes the the periods of breakdown are almost more interesting than the periods of the golden ages certainly are to me China could several times in its history have ended up as Europe has as 20 different countries but it didn't and that's an interesting question in itself as to why why that happened I think one of the things I wanted to underline was that Chinese history a lot of people think is is is inaccessible in some ways and I wanted people to feel that it isn't if you if you it's full of human stories and drama intense drama the larger than live characters to set beside any in the west the leonardos the napoleans that you name it the truly great characters and I wanted the story of the book to be populated by these great characters not just the emperors but the poets and the writers and the scientists and the travelers men and women and if possible I wanted to hear their own words I'll come to that in a moment um grand sweep then the big picture but of course as in films the wide shots really get there they come to life when you have the close-ups as well and one of the things I chose to do in the book was to give you close-ups all through the book our little sections that I call the view from the village where at grassroots you feel what it was like in the two multi-use events around them and the inspiration for that was partly a series that I made a few years ago in England actually called the story of England focusing on one village in Leicestershire seeing history from the bottom up from the story of the people not the rulers an intense feeling of locality and and I wanted to get that in China too so we tried tried hard for that linked up with some old clans in the middle of China and I never forget the feeling when we were filming of sitting there in a crumbling old mansion in Anhui where the head of the family with his woodblock block printed family book would start to unfold the story of what had happened to the family during the Taiping rebellion in the 19th century 1850 since worst war of the 19th century 20 million people die and the story of how one of the family members had saved the family documents and a great rolled up scroll carrying a painting done by a court painter of their ancestors from previous century and how they'd been ambushed on the road by bandits and and the family member had offered his life rather than lose that picture and the the bandit leader said you are a you are a pious son and he stamped his boot on the scroll the mark is still there and he let them go take it away and then only a few weeks later another family member told the story of how they'd saved the scroll again in the cultural revolution when you were ordered to destroy all these kind of family heirlooms and grandma came in in the middle of the night and she said come here my boy take the scroll take the books and out we went to the vegetable patch she said and we dug a big hole we wrapped it up we buried it we put the vegetables back on top we tamped it down and we did our great job he said when the red guards came next day to destroy everything we just gave them a bit of old written stuff and they it was saved you know so that intense sense of the local it was something that came out so brilliantly in the films that when I when I came to writing the book I actually got back in touch with the families to ask them more tell me this tell me that I think they got fed up with in the end but oral history very very important and and with it the landscapes and social history as a whole in that sizzle reel that you saw is that amazing scene at the beginning at a shrine in the depths of rural Hernan where a million ordinary farmers had come to worship at the shrine of the goddess new war and there's much more on this in the book because this is part of the revival of religion in today's China a very big aspect of the revival of culture revival of religion so the living culture was very important to me too three more points before we talk it was essential that the book was as up to date as possible and of course that's very difficult with China given how many amazing discoveries especially in archaeology are being made all the time it's absolutely staggering what turns up and in the last three years some astounding documents have finally been printed in academic editions from the early Qing dynasty third century BC legal cases actual descriptions of murders and thefts and court cases in the in the Chinese countryside and as Lijia mentioned an incredible series of letters from ordinary soldiers in the Qin army that was that very point unifying China under the first emperor so these are the real life people behind the the terracotta army if you like and they're as vivid as the the Vindalanda tablets from Hadrian's wall in Britain except there's much more to the texts they give you much more and let me let me just read you a little bit of one of these to give you a sense of the richness of materials coming out now this is a Qin dynasty soldier writing home in the 230s BC dear mum our unit is about to attack a rebel stronghold in Henan how long will it take how many of us will be captured or wounded nobody knows you'll notice in writing home to mum he doesn't mention the possibility that he might be killed but when you get this letter mum can you look in An Lu market and get some cheap silk cloth and if you have time run me up an unlined skirt and a shirt and send it with the cash that I asked for if the cloth is too expensive just send it with the cash and I'll run the clothes up myself p.s how's auntie sister aunt gushu is that marriage still happening wonderful wonderful isn't it documents like that to me are the magic of history and above all it's the people's voices don't you think when all of us when when all of us study history we search in the past most of all we want to hear the voices of the people of the past in what way were they like us even though they live in China and we live in Britain what what way were they like us in what way were they different how did they respond to the tremendous events of their time like those soldiers unification of China so the voices were important fourth of my five points I wanted the book to be strong on women's history we view China as a patriarchal civilization but the the incredible riches of women's history are being explored especially the last 40 or 50 years by scholars in China in the west I mentioned Li Qing Zhao the great 12th century poet in the book you'll find her in her own words looking at herself and her marriage and her culture government and her society you'll find other fascinating figures some figures I discovered through anthologies of women's poetry and as you explore them you realize that their lives unfold in all kinds of other directions Fang Wei Yi in the 17th century a poet but also an editor a critic an anthologist of women's literature foster parent of China's greatest 17th century scientist an astounding figure who observed the fall of the of the Ming dynasty from her own perspective in in rural Anhui and the moment you look in a Chinese phone book and you look for the Feng family in Dongcheng where she came from of course they're still there and China being China you contact them and in no time at all a flood of material comes your way photographs from the family's ceremony at her grave she was buried in the 1660s you know the flowers at the grave the monument and so on even more incredible Zhang Yunuan who was a poet who died and a mother died aged 30 in 1350s in the battles civil war that followed the collapse of the Mongol dynasty in China and the triumph of the Ming and she died tragically young in bad health and her manuscripts of her poems were saved by the family in the a draw in the family schoolroom and they were printed 200 years later in the 1500s and she's an astonishing figure and I know a Chinese woman a friend of mine called Zhang of the family named Zhang in Manchester and one day I said to you're not that clan are you young wen and she said oh yes she said yes even though Yuan Duan married out to a different clan the the Zhang family love her and love her poetry and none of the women in the Zhang family would ever forget her we all we all still know her poems today and that's somebody who teaches in 21st century Manchester talking so so those clan stories are wonderful and the women's stories are wonderful too and 18th century biography biographies epistolary novels there are many wonderful parallels with European and British literature in that time because amazingly creative time culture so there's a long prehistory to the feminist movement in China which you may be surprised to know starts just the same time as the suffragettes do in Britain right and it's great heroes heroines Jiujin executed in the town square of her hometown Shaoxing for a rebellion against the state activist poet now a star of star of Chinese culture isn't she I think Li Jia I'm interested even replayed as a kind of kung fu heroine in a recent Chinese movie blockbuster and Her Zhen another astounding feminist in China working at the same time as the suffragettes who published a feminist manifesto called on the question of women's liberation in 1907 I'm going to read you a tiny bit of that and then we probably should start having a chat shouldn't we this is Her Zhen's feminist manifesto for thousands of years the world has been dominated by the rule of man this rule is marked by class disjunctions in which men and men only exert proprietary rights to rectify these wrongs we must first abolish the rule of men and introduce equality among men and women that means the world must belong equally to men and women the goal of equality cannot be achieved except through women's liberation you read a text like that and you hardly believe that it's it's from from so far back the late imperial age in China other aspects I'll draw this to a close of the book that were very important to me one of the most important is poetry poetry of course is a great great tradition in China 3000 years of surviving poetry the oldest poems in the book of songs are older than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey so this is a longest continuous poetic tradition in the world and and the poets are a great way of of understanding the history because the poets were always the witnesses of history and the greatest poets like Du Fu their lives were bound up in some of the cataclysms of Chinese history and they wrote about them more authentically and more powerfully and with greater acumen than the historians did so these are people again you can compare with some of the great figures in European literature in making our film about Du Fu I was very struck by you know the first world war poets Freud's great essay on mourning and melancholia in 1915 is the ideals of western civilization seem to be disappearing in the mud of the western front that's just what Du Fu wrote about as the great ideals of Tang civilization collapsed in the An Duxiang war with as many as 30 million died from disease and famine and war in that time so the poets too are the witnesses to the book and wonderful witnesses so those are those are some of the the themes that I've tried to bring out the witnesses as you can tell and being a filmmaker as well as a historian that's my and would my bent you're always looking for the voices and those are some of the elements in the book I hope I've given you a flavour of its 500 pages what I've tried to do really is to weave those lives and voices in the way that a historical novel would and so I was tickled pink three or four weeks ago when a Brazilian reader sent me an email saying oh it was just like a great novel and that's what you strive for you know writing history on this scale and I've written local histories as well as you know something as ambitious as this um you're trying to create that sense many layeredness of history the great events the lesser events the story of people's lives the local communities what's happening at the centre and you're trying to weave them into a narrative which makes sense as a story so I hope it does and I'm going to hand over to you Leija well done I think the Brazilian reader is absolutely right and your presentation is just spot on and as sizzling as a short film um before we start the conversation I just want to remind everybody and after conversation there will be time for question answer so please do send in your questions so now my turn to ask you I'm so flattered and so Michael everyone who has watched your documentary or even just a short introduction will be impressed by your esusism you generously use the actives extraordinary story incredible achievement and you used your hands to emphasize your point and you nodded vigorously to your interweaves so my first question is how did you become interested in China in fact fascinated of his China poetry well um it all goes back to my school days in Manchester Leija and this is what I meant about and I'm sure everybody who's watching tonight will have had a similar experience where you open a book for some reason and it just opens a world that you never dreamed existed and for me it was I think I was about 16 the Penguin published a translation of some late-tongue dynasty poetry which began with one of the most amazing sequences of poems in world literature the autumn wastes of doofu and I read this a couple of pages of it and I thought this is incredible I had no idea you know all we ever heard about in the late 60s of course was miles China the cultural revolution everything else and here is a world of such unbelievable sophistication and brilliance and I brought that book and I've given it as a present to many people ever since and that sparked the interest and then I was very lucky I was when I was I did modern history at Oxford but as a graduate student I was studying doing a research for a doctorate on 10th century the west and I shared a house with a German guy an scholar who became an eminent sinologist and this guy was a really brilliant scholar of Chinese and and he would forever be saying you should read this he would shove a shove books my way and say read this it's great you love it and the other brilliant thing about our house in the Abingdon Road was because Christoph was a great Chinese scholar very interesting Chinese scholars and people came through our kitchen and to give you one example one day in our kitchen at our kitchen table was sitting a kind of rangy white haired bearded guy who was fascinating character and he was called David Hawkes and he had been and I said after a bit I said so what do you do then David and he said well I used to be the professor of Chinese here in the University of Oxford but I gave it up to translate the novel of the millennium which is the dream of the red chamber right yes we are rare to yes the favorite book of all Chinese people and and five volumes in Penguin the exists in Penguin and of course beloved of Chinese people numerous TV adaptations or low leisure you probably can tell me isn't it the 70s or 80s version which Chinese people love it's a bit like the it's a bit like the old TV version of Pride and Prejudice here in the UK you know that's the one everybody loves but anyway Hawkes who'd been in Tiananmen Square in in October 1949 he was a great translator wrote a really fantastic book on Doofu edited some of the songs of the south I think and but translated The Dream of the Red Chamber so what a wonderful story I mean to be so I become interesting in China because of poetry yeah so you know you can't believe it and Hawkes had done this book called A Little Primer of Doofu and he took the there's about 30 Doofu poems which are in the famous anthology of the 300 great poems of the Tang Dynasty which was made in the 18th century you can still buy it in every man and he took those 30 poems and he did a book where he put the poem in Chinese script in transliteration in Chinese then a literal translation and then an English straightforward English translation and each one he gave a little commentary on it he told you how the poem worked how does it work in Chinese how do we translate this and so he would would never have known had any reason to think it but you have an inspiration like that and you never forget it so and I know you went on to make a documentary about the poetry Doofu yeah yeah we did we did yes people were a little surprised you know because these days you know it's not the kind of thing even on BBC4 you have that that often but we did after we filmed the the story of China we did a sequence on Doofu in the story of China series and I said to my colleagues at our little film company wouldn't it be great to do a film about Doofu and we just made a film about Ovid the great Roman poet Ovid for the 2000 anniversary of Ovid with Sir Simon Russell Beale reading the poems and the Ovid poems are autobiographical and of course the great thing about Doofu is the poems are autobiographical the I mean everything is really but he even tells the story of his life through poetry you know how what I my first poem I wrote when I was eight and and you know by the time I was 14 the grown-ups thought I was a genius and you know and you know and he mocks himself as well of course but so so they were made for autobiography so and we asked Sir Ian McKellen you know who was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings great Shakespearean would he read them and he agreed that he would and we were slightly in two minds as to whether it should have been a Chinese actor reading them or whether it was okay but it was very difficult to imagine how it could be done and the Chinese CCTV they thought Ian McKellen was a fantastic idea and actually funnily enough the Chinese audiences who responded to the film very warmly a lot of them said and isn't it amazing Ian McKellen looks exactly like Doofu. Yes which is a long beard of his this is imposing way. I mean poetry just a wonderful window to see a civilization isn't it and that just reminds me and another great writer Vikram said, Indian writer, he become interested in China because of a one-way poem. That's right and he went to China to study Chinese because he was not happy with the translation. We have to move on Michael and if I can add one thing to that of course and Vikram said published a book of translations of Chinese poetry but he was right of course because the great thing about Chinese poetry is is the amount of interpretation that is needed and there's a wonderful writer in New York called Elliot Weinberger and he he wrote a little book called 19 ways of translating Wang Wei and he takes one very short poem and he gives you 19 different published translations and he looks at them and he says well is this does this convey that for that and then he's recently done a new edition with another 15 so you can see there is no definitive translation of a Chinese poem. But again history also there are many ways to interpret Chinese history too. Anyway we must carry on. I have lots of questions for you Michael. You know I worked as a fixer for foreign TV production team so I know what time and effort it takes to produce a decent documentary in China applying for approval to shoot at a certain location especially places like temples and parks so you and your team did a really remarkable job. I just wonder what sorts of different challenge you faced when you wrote up this book. Yes writing up the book is a much more difficult thing and how you shape a book like this. The degree to which you have detailed documentation of stories and the degree to which you popularized to the point where it was made accessible. You know you've got 500 pages you've got thousands of Chinese names and which present a barrier to many readers. So you've got to find a way of telling this where the you know it's not so complicated that people lose track of where you are. So I think there are technical issues about writing a story like that. But the biggest issue of all is what narrative are you going to tell? What selection are you going to make? Which bits do you not deal with because you can't deal with them all. No, no. You're not going to become Smacian. Yes, my gosh, that's a long book. But so it was a very big challenge and also as I'm not a sinologist it was a really big challenge to make sure that even where the learning was worn lightly that you did always keep it anchored in the scholarship. You know and you might read some great book by Bill Rowe or somebody like that on the Qing dynasty and you might only be using a few lines of the idea but it must be anchored in reality of the scholarship. So it's a mix of obviously travel, landscape, living culture, oral tradition. I mean to give you one example which was very important to me as it turned out in 2017 to 18 I think went back to China to do a film about the dung shopping's reform and opening up. What happened in China in the late 70s after Mao was dead? How did China make that shift where they abandoned Orthodox communism, they abandoned the rural communes and they went for the market. What actually happened and I spoke to eyewitnesses and so on and we asked for permission to film in a little village in Anhui called Xiaogang and there in November 1978 the 18 farmers who were heads of household had in despair and on the edge of starvation after 30 years of Maoism decided that they were going to make a pact between themselves to break with the commune system, to provide the communist party with its quota but to sell their surplus and they promised that the ringleaders if they were executed that their children would be brought up by the others and it's seen as a great moment in the in in the story because when the local their region had suffered which is Fangyang which is notorious for starvation and famine through Chinese history you know half the village had died in Mao's great famine in the 1960s they'd suffered unbelievable things I interviewed somebody from that region. Oh did you? Yes yes which is included in my the book. In your oral history? Sorry I interrupted you but anyway. No no brilliant brilliant well you know exactly what it's like that famine country of Anhui as it was I mean it's quite lush farming country now but terrible deprivation and we asked to go there and we were given permission to go there and actually the local authority were very helpful and we interviewed two of the farmers now in old age you know who'd been young men in 1978 who told the story and it was one of the most powerful moments I've ever experienced in making films really and so that fed into you know one of the big difficulties in doing a book like this of course when you come to the modern age is you know where what you're going to draw draw upon for sources and because of that trip over those three or four weeks that summer I am I gathered a whole series of interviews of people who'd been there at that moment people who've been working in the farm fields in 1978 and have sat in the university exams for the first time the farmers in Anhui so it's a fine line as you know having written you know two books that have closely observed that period but yeah. So I'm just saying that you mentioned that you you went to Shogang which now in China now for Chinese is quite a well-known place it started the reform and opening up and 10 shop is still too courage for 10 shopping to induce the reform opening up policy which transformed China way beyond the economic field so my next question is that China is rising rapidly in likely or not China is going to play a major role on the roads on the world stage so Michael you made the point that to understand today's China just have to understand its past could you possibly elaborate on that? Yes it's a very big question and you've only got to look at the speeches of President Xi Jinping at the moment to see how his conception of China becoming by 2050 the leading power in the world this is what they are aiming for now this is a serious competitive you know not only are they talking about the betterment of the Chinese people but international power and so on and that is coupled in President Xi's eyes with the greatness of the Chinese past and Chinese culture and everything that he talks about draws on his interpretation of Chinese history when you when anybody travels through China I think we'll notice certain things which which connect with this that is the spirit of the collective you know we see ourselves as individualistic in the west don't we the goal of politics is personal freedom in China the goal is the collective good and there are many things in the past which seem to still be there today you know they haven't they didn't in 1949 throw off the the basic picture of an authoritarian centralised bureaucratic society when you read the books of great western scholars in the 1950s and 60s they all comment on how uncannily Maoist China was replicating some of the structures of the government which they knew from the Qing dynasty and the Ming you know and I think so I think that runs very very deep in China in fact it's one of the reasons why China although it broke up several times always came back together so I think there are certain basic structural things you would say certain basic things about the the attitude of the people the very strong collective sense the real solidarity of the Chinese people the love of social sense social yeah social sense really crucial isn't the love of food you know you know some of these things are central to Chinese civilization but that as you've rightly just touched on then that sense that stability is to be sought at all costs yeah and when you look at the Chinese press looking at what's happening here you know when they look at brexit or what they look at Trump and all that they can't believe that we allowed our political systems to end danger our well-being in the way that they perceive we have done the stability is everything better a better a year of tyranny than a day of anarchy and China spent tons of money on men to call away when cost maintaining stability yeah and Michael I'm just so pleased there are books like yours you know it's a good read it's a popular book but it's also serious scholarship so we really need the books like this I think there's a growing fear about China and China's rise and I think if China appears in the news it's your negative story for example today yeah today's program and what the horrific treatment of vigours in Xinjiang and I can understand some of the fear but I still think some of the fear in the west is generated by ignorance so I think once you understand China there's more empathy and less fear so books like yours could certainly help people to understand China thank you very much and also help Chinese people to understand their own history better yeah I was just going to say actually when when the story of China films were shown here within 36 you know the Chinese are so slick at these things within 36 hours every episode was up pirated on all many channels online with full Chinese subtitling you know and and yeah they were and so many people are so interested in their history and one of the things they said people some people were saying I'd never thought of that you know woman wrote to me saying I was nearly in tears when Kai Feng fell in 1127 I never thought that would happen to me but um yeah no you are you're very thorough you know in the afterwards you even it's a sweeping history you know covering China's history and in the afterwards you even mentioned the Covid pandemic yeah and China's effort in controlling it and you wrote that the after that last you wrote that last summer just before the book went to press at that time things were quite uncertain and so after that China more or less went returned to normal yeah yeah it's incredible yeah and this year China again set the GDP growth at a rate as six percent probably the you know more than any other nation worth so if you are writing the afterwards now would you reach the same conclusion yes yes you must be you must have second sight Lidia because I sent a new version of the afterward on Friday did you Friday for the paperback no wonder you ignored my emails and I said exactly I said exactly that but the the you know the new growth figures you're almost talking about a post-covid economy aren't you and and it's very interesting but not just stop not also change of mood at first there was doubt and then now it's lots of Chinese seem to feel the benefit from a capable authoritarian regime yeah and they enjoy the stability and she's kind of setting himself up as a benevolent dictator that's right and his popularity is kind of increasing that's right and and the you know when you look at their response to covid of course initially people singled out the response of the local communist party in Wuhan and then even nationally you know that the hesitations the obfuscations and so on but the moment things really started incredible organization and incredible again that collective sense of the Chinese people that sense of solidarity of the Chinese people and they know it's it's remarkable and I agree with you I think President Xi looked as if he was a bit nervous a few you know a year or two ago but the last year beginning of our pandemic last year yeah but but he's growing more and more confident in his speeches now a very strong statement of future intent that obviously all the world is going to have to take notice of but America in particular I think they've underestimated the attractions of an authoritarian government which delivers that's a big a big thing for the people who've lived through you know the older generation I was talking to a friend's mum when I was staying down near Changsha last year and she was saying the thing is I lived through the great famine and look at me now with my clothes and the lovely restaurant we've just eaten in and you know that the government's delivered on those things so they there's there's a strong feeling that as long as this continues to deliver I think they will be able to to crush dissent and yeah the Chinese dream as Xi Jinping calls it he's now trying to integrate the whole of 20th century history into that you know he's virtually saying that was the ambition from the beginning so China strong again yeah I think also he's a very conscious of history he's a big reader of history and uh you know friend told me oh yeah he read Peter Francopan's silt road book he's read you know he's reader of history of course he has a serious reader of history and and he uh the the century of humiliation after the opium wars as a long mythology in China and uh some of my Chinese friends say it's time to move beyond that now you know let's forget about it's victim hood but my course also time for us to move on and I honestly I could spend the rest of your questions but I think we have to give our audience some time and so questions are coming and somebody said the brilliant as ever thank you you mentioned the violent and traumatic nature of China history do you regard so do you regard their current assertiveness on the world stage as another violent and dramatic stay dramatic um should we worried excited frightened or pragmatic about it well I think you know the American commentators who are advising Biden's government published some of their you know consultation papers online and they are definitely advising great care and and being pragmatic I think uh there was a lot of concern when Trump was in the concern especially over Taiwan that there's been um you know the the issues about Xinjiang are are separate in a way the the the border clashes with India in Ladakh were were very deeply unpleasant but um in a sense China is not acting any differently from the way that they did in the Qing dynasty or the Ming dynasty you know it's an authoritarian government and its chief goal is to um you know enforce its power at home but Taiwan and it's doing that with the Hong Kong situation but Taiwan is the one that worries everybody I think I'm not sufficiently well placed to tell you but I think that's what any news on that but you know there is a museum in Fujian being constructed for the to tell the story of the liberation of Taiwan so I think we should all take those sort of things quite seriously here but meanwhile I think we should still engage with China right I'm totally I mean I'm the president of Saku you know the Society for Anglican Chinese understanding and these are on one level unhappy times because of the of what's going on and especially the news from Xinjiang and also Hong Kong but we absolutely must engage and the South China Sea yes the South China Sea again they're picking up on what late Qing writers wrote about like where you are you know about how China has always ignored the South China Sea well they're not doing that anymore so that's reality on the ground but it's very important to engage I'm just agreeing with you really very important to engage especially as I think President Xi is very serious about climate yeah and without China the leader in green technology yeah President Michael President Michael the question who just I just read the question comes from a gentleman called Barry Winfield and there are other questions Paul Elchin I hope I pronounce your name properly sorry I'm I start teaching myself English when I was 22 and a half so um so Paul's question is how do you decide what to include and what not include from your book it's a nightmare it's a nightmare you know and the book reads like a dream and the process is nightmare uh entire well that that process entire libraries have been written almost on individual chapters in that in that book you know the Tang Dynasty for good and sake you know or the Qing um so in a sense you have to have an eye on what the scholars think are the crucial movements of the time you know the new currents in scholarship there's a big current to reassess the Qing dynasty you know the Manchu dynasty and there's a great period of China but you know you also have to follow your your own interests I think and there are a few excuse me there are a few um tangential stories perhaps which I couldn't resist you know I talked earlier about the how periods of breakdown can be as informative and interesting if not more so than golden ages and the one that fascinates me is the the five dynasties in other words the early 10th century up to the Tang dynasty had broken down and it's an incredibly interesting period with fascinating people in it and um you know there was an issue at one stage because you won't believe it we still had to cut quite a lot out of the book to reach the length but it is you know and there was an issue as to whether that chapter would stay and I said no we've got to have it we've got to have it but um you have to follow your interests and you have to try and find stories that exemplify the process of history you know which is why I was very interested in writers you know I chose in the in the 18th century one of the leading characters that I chose was Siles Suetshin who wrote um The Dream of the Red Chamber because he's right he's writing under the hard hard line regime who burn books and execute writers who cause them problems and so the story of his book is not only a wonderful insight into the culture of the time but it gives you you know his own family were persecuted and uh so it's a magical story fabulous story yes the Chairman Mao said you cannot cannot be qualified as a Chinese if you don't read this book yeah he the Chairman Mao claimed to have read it three or four times didn't you I think I'm never quite sure about his but maybe he had lots of time on his hands in Yanan or wherever and so Michael I want to say you just really just such a talented writer we have a phrase stock phrase in Chinese called Mengbi Shenghua describing somebody talented blessed with um like somebody talented writer as those who blessed with a magic pen and with flowers blossom under the pen oh my goodness me Miaobi Shenghua oh yes yes no it's absolutely great I want to ask a question on my behalf probably such abuse my position as I'm working on a historical novel inspired by feminist Chou Jing you went to his hometown I saw that yeah and who was beheaded in 1907 for trying to overthrow the mantra led government she was a larger than life character she cross-stressed she drunk like a fish she was into martial arts indeed I'm form-making and she's um and you know she is regarded national hero yeah but a little known outside China yeah wonderful yeah she played important role in the course both for the communist feminist course and a revolutionary course right she was a very little known outside China there's no biography of her so I'm you know I'm writing in the middle writing historical oh Lidia can't wait can't wait now are you telling it are you telling it in the third person or is she telling the story in your novel and it's mostly from her point of view but also and and other some sections narrated by people from other form for a former husband made and Japanese friend during the photographer so anyway my question to you is in this me too era do you think Western readers may show some interest in Chinese feminist icons such as Chou Jing well I really hope so we put a little sequence about Chou Jing in the story of China films and there's stuff on her in the book as well yeah great it's a really great story I went to Shao Sing and her house is still there and you can see where she was arrested and when the little cubby hole in the wall where her pistol was found and but she's an absolutely fantastic character why can't women be heroes too I remember I remember yeah you know that there's a monument to where she was executed and she's in the middle of street in the middle of Shao Sing and there's like a department store opposite and there were women coming out of the department store and I it was our first day filming on the story of China and I said to our fixer will anybody mind if we just go and talk to people they said no no no and of course you know everybody knew about her she was a real local hero in in Shao Sing but the other the other woman her gen I was fascinated by because she disappears we don't know what happened to her she was only in her 20s when she wrote the feminist manifesto and what happened to her how long afterwards did she live there's one story of a family friend who said she became a buddhist nun that was that's what I heard that she became but how long imagine what her diary would read like if she lived to 1949 you know but I can't wait to read your book on children children also wrote a very similar things and she ran this she ran a publication one of the first women's journal yeah and they were in touch with what struck me so strongly which I didn't know until I was looking at them is they were in touch with the radical movements in Europe you know her gen published for a radical magazine in Paris you know so and of course they were in Japan weren't there's exiles for a while so you know they read the communist manifesto in a Japanese translation so they were they were trying to be internationalists and no they're really fascinating Japan was the center of the anti-China activity the the famous portrait of Cho Jin was that she was in Japan anyway there are more questions coming coming for you we have this a lady I think Brita Tempe so wonderful talk thank you what are your plans for the future in terms of your research and filmmaking thank you Michael that's a kind question to be honest we had been we had a lot of offers to do more films in China and we had been one film I wanted to do was about the 1793 British embassy to Chen Long to China and the McCartney embassy I wanted to do a film or even a mini series about this because it's the most remarkable meeting of two civilizations yeah but at the moment we've decided as a small film company to maybe it's not to do things that require Chinese co-production money so at the moment I'm thinking about other things but I am doing a little book called in the footsteps of Dufu which is full of photographs and full of lovely maps and the lots of nice poems and it's like a a travelogue of a journey around China in the poet's footsteps it's just a little thing that I scribble almost while I was doing it and then somebody said oh yes that'd be nice but the other things I'm working on are back in my academic subject which is early medieval history the Anglo-Saxons and all that stuff I'm just literally updating my book on the Dark Ages which I cannot believe this Lijia but was first published 40 years ago this year and still in print but I'm rewriting that and I've got a couple of other things coming up so we're just thinking about it I think for everybody the the COVID has made us reassess our lives don't you think you know and so just thinking but I hope there'll be more films oh yes definitely I mean so beautifully the cameraman someone I'm sure quite more than one can just so beautifully shot um so I also want to ask you a question about how the challenge faced by a western historian writing history yeah um about Chinese history you know yeah so that was Said it had a huge impact on western historian writing you know non-history western history yes that's right and relevant today as an anti-colonial yes yeah I mean I've reservations about some of Said's work especially about his accuracy as a scholar but there's no doubt that the broad idea is a very important idea that everybody needs to think about and and recent years that's been called for more China-centered history of China yeah and are you aware of this when you are yes yeah in fact strangely enough when we arrived to do our film about Deng Xiaoping's opening up our Chinese co-production producer had been to a big TV conference addressed by Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping talked about our films the story of China and said that you know we've done a good job but but we need to we need to learn to tell the story of China better what's his to Chinese filmmakers so and of course there is an issue about a white middle-age middle-class old bloke like me pontificating about other cultures and I remember being very struck by it forcibly 12 years ago 13 years ago when we did a series on the story of India now I think every academic every person who spoke in the film six films bar one was Indian and I just treated myself as being the the kind of friendly interlocutor who brought people together and talk you know and helped the story along but all the people of the scholars that the judgment on the British Empire for example which raised hattles in in Britain you know some people thought I was very unfair to the British the so the question is when we did the story of India I felt that the crucial thing was to put yourself in the shoes and so far as you could of the Indian people and if Indian people watched the films and thought that they were worthless then it's a total failure even if British people enjoyed them so and the same principle with China I think I agree with you in an ideal world and I don't think anybody would be commissioned any you know a non-Indian person now would be commissioned to do a series on the story of India really I'd be very surprised if that would happen if there was a if somebody could find a terrific Chinese front person to do more things on the history of China then they'd go for it. I think that there are space for both and let the flowers bloom. I agree and I think and I do think it's it's not it's not invalid to do that I mean I'm a member of a small film company and these films were not made because somebody high up in the BBC said oh give it to him these were made because we really wanted to do them you know sometimes we'd been trying for co-production money for 10 years before we got the story of India the Doofoo film was entirely due to me saying come on we can do this you know and so it's perfectly right that it would might have been great to have Chinese person fronting it or a great expert on Doofoo but you know I'm sure there are space space yeah in the market for books like yours the key thing is to break through and and I certainly felt that with the Doofoo film you know there'd never been a film on any Chinese poet outside China ever as far as I'm aware you know sort of maybe in Japan but so it was a first the film about Doofoo and and it's a big first because you know Stephen Owen says in the film there's Dante there's Shakespeare and there's Doofoo they they they were the poets who helped create the emotional vocabulary of their cultures you know so it's very important that that non-Chinese people should know something about Doofoo he's every person in China does Doofoo at school President Xi quotes him in his speeches and says that when he was doing hard labour in the countryside in Yanan he's Doofoo you know so so it's important and so I agree it's not ideal it would be better if the interpreter was Chinese or Indian but I think we need I think we need both certainly there are space for books like yours and I think we are actually run over time and thank you so much Michael it's a pleasure and thank you all um I'm just so flattered and I just Leach out we are all looking forward to your book on Xi Jinping this will be a great moment I hope you're all inspired by Michael's book I think you did a really grand job and your documentary you know the your portrait of Chinese people they're such worms and your portrait Chinese people it's fun fun loving people not just the people you know hard to read Chinese with hard to read yeah well done good job no thanks somebody said that online actually a Chinese person watching it online in China so look they're showing what we're really like that we're fun yes we are fun yes it's been really fun talking with you um Michael thanks a lot yeah thank you Nijia thank you Michael and thanks to all of you for watching good night