Treat for museum fans

A marble statue of Mithras slaying the bull. JIANG DONG/CHINA DAILY

Since it started a global tour in 2014, the widely commended exhibition A History of the World in 100 Objects has attracted more than 1 million visitors in cities including Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and Canberra.

The exhibition, which evolved from a radio program jointly produced by the British Museum and British Broadcasting Corporation in 2010, is currently on at Beijing's National Museum of China, and is causing quite a stir.

Nine Chinese objects, including a 3,000-year-old bronze ritual vessel and a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) blue-and-white plate, are on show, although there is a disappointment about the absence of the Admonitions Scroll, a precious 6th-century Chinese painting, which was featured in the radio program.

The 100-episode radio series introduced one object from the London museum's collection in each show and navigated innovations in art, technology and industry spanning different cultures, over the course of 2 million years of human history.

When it was first broadcast, the program was followed by 11 million listeners. And now, you can download the broadcasts from a website devoted to the project.

Hartwig Fischer, the German director of the British Museum, says the exhibition shows forces that pushed humans beyond the horizon of Africa, and it shows that globalization is a "powerful development" and "a process that can not be turned back or halted".