Story of China

The age of communism is over now in today's free market China, even though the Communist Party still runs the country as a one party state. Now there's just one place which is still communist in a sea of capitalism. Michael visits this strange throwback in rural Henan, where they still sing, "The East is Red" before work, and where pictures of Mao, Stalin, and Lenin still adorn the town square!

Michael Wood visits the monument to Qiu Jin in Shaoxing. This feminist poet and political activist founded a radical journal for women's voices and campaigned for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of a republic. She was executed in the middle of her home town. Local women in the street enthusiastically and movingly explain to Michael why she is still a hero today.

Michael Wood visits the room in Shanghai where the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party took place in 1921. Among the twelve delegates (from only fifty-seven members!) was the young Mao Zedong, the future Chairman Mao. Meanwhile, outside in Shanghai. the Jazz Age was in full swing. Michael takes tea in the fabulous Peninsula Hotel, one of the centers of Westernization in 1920's China.

Michael joins a traditional acting troupe on their bus to a tiny village near Yangzhou. They are going there to perform a traditional drama for a local woman's 90th birthday - in the icy outdoors! We watch the actors and musicians prepare the set, put on their makeup, and get into costume as the whole village turns out despite the freezing cold and snow –with Granny in the front row!

Michael Wood talks to Prof. Zheng Yangwen about the crippling social effects on China of the opium trade run by the British. "Where is your conscience?" the emperor asked Queen Victoria. In the late 1830's, the Chinese decided to do something about it and ordered the destruction of all the opium held in British workhouses. There would be tragic consequences for China in the First Opium War.

In the Great Mosque in Xi'an, Michael Wood shows us inscriptions in Chinese, Arabic and Farsi, which reveal the multi-cultural world of China 300 years ago under the Qing Dynasty. In Kaifeng, he is welcomed into a women-only mosque with a female imam – a Chinese tradition that originated in the Qing dynasty. After the ceremony, it's time for laughter and 'selfies!'

Survey the three great revolutions that gave birth to today’s China. Wood visits wild mountain villages; describes the fall of the empire; visits Jazz Age Shanghai; and stays in the last communist commune—before a celebration on Chinese New Year.

Discover the splendors of China’s last empire, the Qing. From China’s favorite novel to story-telling houses and all-female mosques, it’s an age full of surprises. Then came the fateful clash with the British in the First Opium War.

Hear the story of China’s most famous dynasty. Michael Wood visits the Great Wall and the Forbidden City; sails the South China Sea on a junk; visits a fabulous Chinese garden; and travels to Macao with the first Jesuit missionary to China.

Michael Wood arrives in the old Portuguese colony of Macao, the Europeans' first foothold in China. The Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci came here 1582, with the aim of converting the emperor and his people to Christianity. In today's cathedral in Beijing, Michael hears why Ricci is still so important to the 70 million Chinese Christians today.

We all know about Columbus, but what about the great Chinese ocean voyages that took place before his time? Michael Wood tells the story of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He and his voyages to the west. He asks too, why were they stopped? "Some say it would be like stopping moon exploration after Apollo 8," says Michael. "But the Chinese had a different view."

Harvard University's Dr. Lik Hang Tsui tells the tale of the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, the ruthless Yongle who kills his nephew to take power. In a purge of his enemies, a loyal minister speaks out and receives the cruelest punishment: Death by ten degrees.