Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects

from BBC Radio 4.

The rain is falling Eddie, the band is playing the pipe band of the Royal Hong Kong Police.

This is the music that was played at the ceremony marking Britain's handover of

Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. The choice of music on each side had some very interesting aspects.

The British played the last person on a bugle.

The Chinese especially composed piece of music called heaven, earth, mankind. Part of it played on a set of ancient

bells. On the European side, a solo instrument connected with war and conflict. the Chinese side a group of instruments playing in harmony.

It may be stretching it a bit, but I think you can see in that choice of instruments two very different views of how society works.

Bells in China go back thousands of years, and they carry great resonances for Chinese people.

So perhaps this was the Chinese leader's way of reminding Hong Kong

of the cultural and political traditions it would be rejoining. My object in this program is, as you will by now have guessed, a bell.

And through this bell, I'm going to be exploring Confucius' ideas of how a society can work in harmony.

What Confucius and the other political philosophers of the day were trying to do was to devise a philosophy that would establish the predominance and the unity of one ruler.

Every single bell truly does have its own unique voice. It's difficult to compare one to the other.

A history of the world, in a hundred objects. Bronze Bell from China,

from China, approximately 2,500

1,500 years old,

discovered in the Shanxi province. Our bell is about the same age as the bells that were played at the Hong Kong ceremony.

So have another listen. They're about 2,500 years old.

When those bills were first played in the 5th century B.C.

China was in military and political disarray,

...