Ancient painting's sale sets record

Five Drunken Kings on Horses, a Chinese classical painting of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), sold for 303.6 million yuan ($44 million) at a Beijing auction on Sunday night, a record high for a Chinese painting so far this year.

The color painting drew a packed room of bidders at Beijing Poly Auction's sale of ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy. The bidding started at 68 million yuan and lasted about 40 minutes.

Zhao Xu, Poly Auction's executive director, said after the sale that the transaction price was far beyond expectations, given that the market for Chinese art has been in a slump over the past three years.