The Last Empire

Discover the splendors of China’s last empire, the Qing. From China’s favorite novel to story-telling houses and all-female mosques, it’s an age full of surprises. Then came the fateful clash with the British in the First Opium War.

In the Great Mosque in Xi'an, Michael Wood shows us inscriptions in Chinese, Arabic and Farsi, which reveal the multi-cultural world of China 300 years ago under the Qing Dynasty. In Kaifeng, he is welcomed into a women-only mosque with a female imam – a Chinese tradition that originated in the Qing dynasty. After the ceremony, it's time for laughter and 'selfies!'

Michael joins a traditional acting troupe on their bus to a tiny village near Yangzhou. They are going there to perform a traditional drama for a local woman's 90th birthday - in the icy outdoors! We watch the actors and musicians prepare the set, put on their makeup, and get into costume as the whole village turns out despite the freezing cold and snow –with Granny in the front row!

Michael Wood talks to Prof. Zheng Yangwen about the crippling social effects on China of the opium trade run by the British. "Where is your conscience?" the emperor asked Queen Victoria. In the late 1830's, the Chinese decided to do something about it and ordered the destruction of all the opium held in British workhouses. There would be tragic consequences for China in the First Opium War.