China is well known for porcelain and the variety is plentiful. One of the stars is polychrome porcelain.

And the most famous of this colorful china comes from Liling in southern Hunan province. Now, a masterpiece is given to UNESCO as a gift at the Shanghai Expo.

 

The most famous of this colorful china comes from Liling in southern Hunan province. Now, a masterpiece is given to UNESCO as a gift at the Shanghai Expo.

The porcelain vase is only half-meter tall, yet the flowers of over one-hundred countries are rooted and blossoming here. Behind the elaborate piece are four craftsmen ranked as national masters who spent one year to complete it especially for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Tian Shen, expert of Ministry of Culture, said, "The color is so rich and diverse. It's so hard to do it on one piece of porcelain. Many of the colors are difficult. All those difficulties were overcome in order to make the various national flowers come alive. It's a refined piece. The surface is smooth."

But the road to make it was not smooth. From the very beginning since the idea was suggested, the designers kept running into challenges.

The final piece was born after hundreds of tests, and the cost reached some 2-million yuan.

All this effort was carried out to let the world learn more about the history and culture of Chinese porcelain.

Source: CNTV

Editor: Xu Xinlei