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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to

journalists, experts and long-time China

watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering

of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the

Chinese see these issues? By the 1800s, the mechanical clock had become a status symbol for wealthy Chinese.

Merchant families display their clocks like Europeans have showed off pineapples.

They decorated clothing with buttons that look like clock faces,

and one family even embroidered a clock onto their baby's silk bib.

This is just one example of the cultural fusion that happened in the Qing dynasty's

dying century. You can see these exhibits in the British Museum's ongoing show, China's hidden

century. This era is commonly known in China as a century of humiliation, but the exhibition

reveals a time that was more than just about national suffering. Foreignists brought gumboats and opium with them,

but there was also an ongoing conversation between the Qing and the foreign,

the Chinese and the Western, in culture, fashion, politics, ideas.

The experiences of this century were integral to China becoming a modern state in the 20th century.

I reviewed the exhibition in the spectator last month

and I also recorded a live Chinese whispers at the British Museum for a small audience of exhibition

goers. My guests were the historian Geoffrey Wusserstrom and journalist Isabel Hilton. You can hear

our discussion about the contradictions and complexities of the period here.

I was born in China. I grew up there and I studied there until probably halfway through

primary schools. I had a lot of CCP education and history. My idea of that last century of the

...