Documentary maker in talks with potential UK collaborators

Famous Chinese artifacts documentary National Treasure is in talks with potential British partners, including the British Museum and the BBC, the show’s executive producer revealed in London on Tuesday.

National Treasure, a 10-part series that features 27 significant historical objects from nine major museums, has created quite a buzz on social media in China, generating 1.7 billion discussion threads on Weibo, a Chinese platform that is similar to Twitter, and 800 million views on the internet.

Yu Lei, an executive producer with China Central Television’s Channel 3, which airs the documentary, said her team is in talks about either featuring Chinese objects collected by museums in Britain in the documentary’s second season, or exporting the documentary’s format to British production companies.

These partnership arrangements could coincide with the show’s second season, which is in the preparation stage. The show’s first season selected artifacts from Chinese museums, including the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, Hunan Provincial Museum, Shaanxi History Museum, and Liaoning Provincial Museum. The show drove up museum visits by 50 percent, according to CCTV.

However, details of the potential British partnerships are not yet available because talks are still in the early stages, Yu said.

Yu was speaking on Tuesday during a seminar at the British Museum to discuss China-UK cultural collaboration.

Other highlights of the seminar included a review of Kew Garden’s restoration of the China-influenced Great Pagoda, and an overview of the Oxford-based Ashmolean Museum’s Chinese art collections.