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How often do you dine with the dead?

It may seem a strange question,

but if you're Chinese it may not be quite so surprising because many

Chinese even today believe that deceased family members watch over them from the other side of

death and can help or hinder their fortunes.

When somebody dies, they're equipped for burial with all kinds of practical bits and pieces,

a toothbrush, for instance, money, food, water, possibly a credit card and a computer.

The Chinese afterlife often sounds depressingly, or perhaps I mean reassuringly like our own.

But there is one great difference.

The dead are paid huge respect.

A well-equipped send-off is just the beginning. Ritual feasting, holding banquets with

and for the ancestors, has been for centuries a part of Chinese life. The primary and most ancient religion in China

consists of preparing ceremonial meals for the dead.

In Chinese we it's ritual, particularly kind of banquets offering your ancestor food.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. Bronze Guay, a ritual food vessel from Western China, approximately 10.50 BC.

Today's program is about a spectacular bronze bowl, which around 3,000 years ago was used for feasting in the company of both the ancestors and the gods.

Families offered food and drink to their watchful dead, while governments offered to the mighty gods.

This is a vessel that addresses the next world but emphatically asserts authority in this one,

and around a thousand B. thousand BC at a troubled transitional moment for China

the link between heavenly and earthly authority was all.

From the Mediterranean to the Pacific around 3,000 years ago, existing societies collapsed and were replaced by new powers.

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