Ming: 50 Years that Changed China review misleading and unhelpful

British Museum, London

Reframing a short period in Chinese history as the birth of modernism is ridiculous. Why must the British Museum persistently talk down to the public?

This is the new world that Christopher Columbus dreamed of. And yet it is a world lost in time, adrift from understanding.

When Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492, he was not looking for a continent in the west, but a route to China. By then Europeans had fairly accurate knowledge of what this distant land was like. They knew it was a mighty empire of stupendous wealth. The Venetian merchant Marco Polo went there and wrote about its wonders in the 13th century. But it took him three years to get to China overland. Columbus was looking for a quick route by sea.

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