Collector pays $36 million for tea cup

Liu Yiqian has yet to announce when the chicken cup - worth $36 million - will go on display at his private Long Museum, but the public has already seen plenty of the valuable porcelain.

Pictures of the Shanghainese millionaire happily sipping tea from the "holy grail" of Chinese ceramics have been widely published in China. He has been criticized for being "shallow" or "showing off", but others say he has every right to drink from the cup, after all, he paid dearly for it.

Liu, 51, ranked 200th on Forbes magazine's rich list in 2013. He bought the valuable cup by bidding over telephone at a Sotheby's auction in April, setting an auction world record for Chinese porcelain.