纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 064大卫对瓶（2）（在线收听）

The programmes this week look at high-status objects from all over the world around seven hundred years ago, objects which tell us about the taste and the ambitions - political and social, religious and intellectual - of the people who owned them. Thanks to the long Chinese habit of writing on objects, we know exactly who made the two blue-and-white porcelain vases in this programme, which gods they were offered to, and indeed the very day on which they were dedicated.

The importance of Chinese porcelain is hard to over-estimate. Admired and imitated for over a thousand years, it's influenced virtually every ceramic tradition in the world, and it's played a star role in cross-cultural exchanges. In Europe, blue-and-white porcelain is practically synonymous with China. And we've always associated it with the Ming Dynasty. But it was the David Vases, now in the British Museum, that made us re-think this history, for they predate the Ming and were in fact made under Qubilai Khan's Mongol Dynasty, known as the Yuan, who controlled all of China until the middle of the fourteenth century.