UK's interest in China boosted by latest BBC TV se

A new six-part television series celebrating stories of China's ancient history has begun showing on the UK's public broadcasting service, BBC Two. 

Written and presented by British historian, Professor Michael Wood, 'The Story of China' explores the development of Chinese civilization over more than four thousand years.

"China is the country we all want to know about today, and if you want to understand China you have to know about its history," Wood told China Daily.

"People have such set ideas about China, all you see on the news is high rise, mass industry, Gucci and Armani and yet what you don't realize is the amazing vitality, energy and diversity of the culture, and our job is to try and unfold that."

The six hour series, which took two years to make, takes Wood through some of China's most historic sites, including ruined cities of the Silk Road, desert oases and ancient capitals.

In the first episode, which aired on Thursday night, Wood meets the Qin family in Wuxi who trace their ancestors back to at least 1049.

"The TV audience in the West gets this privilege of being welcomed into a Chinese family before they even set off to think about the history," Wood says.

"Then when you start looking at the history things start coming up that you realize are still alive like family, the rituals and the food."

Throughout his travels, Wood visits temple festivals and ancestral celebrations, traditional storytellers and Buddhist musicians; uncovering some of the most remarkable stories about what makes China what it is today.

"One of the themes is how the Chinese, who invented so many things, teases a Western audience with the idea they invented football," Wood says.

"We have a bit of fun with that and we go to the crunch Premier League match of the season in Beijing."

'The Story of China' series debuted just six months after a ground-breaking three-part documentary on Chinese education which sparked a heated debate in China and the UK.

'Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School', which aired on the BBC last August, put 50 students from Bohunt School in Hampshire, southern England through their paces by being taught by five Chinese teachers in the Chinese way for a month.

Pupils were required to wear a special uniform, start school at 7 am, clean their own classrooms and focus on note-taking and repetition – a stark contrast to what they were used to.

The first episode was watched by 1.8 million viewers in the UK, almost ten percent of that evening's TV audience.

It also created a three-week long social media frenzy about varying education systems in both Britain and China.

Associate Producer of 'The Story of China', Tina Li, says that while Wood's documentary has already created a huge buzz in China online, the reaction will be somewhat different to 'Chinese School'.

"It's very spontaneous, there's no staging and it's very real and it's done with a lot of heart, not for shock value and it's not sensationalized."

Producer and Director of the program, Rebecca Dobbs, says they've tried to see things from the perspective of the Chinese.

"There's no point in us giving the history of China from the perspective of the West."

Wood, who made 12 trips to China for the series, is also a member of history's teaching staff within the Faculty of Humanities at The University of Manchester – one of President Xi Jinping's stops on his state visit to the UK last October.

▲UK Historian Professor Michael Wood (R) on location for his new six-part BBC2 series 'The Story of China'.

"Manchester University has rich Chinese connections - as we all saw when President Xi came up here in the autumn on his unprecedented visit - and I have been so grateful for the university's support during the two years or so of making this series," Wood says.

In episodes four and five, Wood is joined by his colleague from Manchester, Professor Yangwen Zheng, as they trace the birth of modern China from the 1700's.

Zheng, an expert in Chinese history, is one of many academics from various universities interviewed throughout the series.

'The Story of China' has been produced in cooperation between BBC Two and PBS in the US.

There are no plans for it to be aired in China yet, although it can be accessed online.

"There are things in it that most Chinese people will probably not have seen," Wood says.

"We'd love to see it in China."