About this programme

Isabel Hilton reports from China on the new boom in museum building and on a growing interest in contemporary history. As people make more money and find more leisure time, so China's cities have hurried to build more museums - a dramatic turnaround over the past 30 years. Isabel visits one of the world's most ambitious new ventures, a huge cluster of museums built on a former army base in Sichuan by local millionaire Fan Jianchuan. Here some of the big topics of the 20th century are up for re-evaluation including some, like the Cultural Revolution, that were previously considered highly sensitive. Isabel describes the impact of the 8-10 million objects from China's recent troubled past that are going on display in Sichuan and considers China's shifting relationship with its history and the way that it is displayed, taught and remembered in the popular imagination.