A Poem of Criticism and Moral Education in Imperial China

Throughout this week, Neil MacGregor has been exploring pleasure and recreation across the world of 200 years ago. Today he arrives in China to explore a painting based on a poem that attempts to define the proper behaviour for women during the tumultuous time that followed the collapse of the Han Empire. This eleven foot long scroll offers a guide to manners along well established Confucian principles. Neil MacGregor tells the story of the scroll and finds out what it is was about women's behaviour that was so worrying men of the period. The historian Shane McCausland, the politician Charles Powell, and the Chinese art expert Jan Stuart help paint the picture.

Producer: Anthony Denselow