Emma Leighton, the 25-year-old curator of Chinese and Oriental civilisations at Glasgow Museums, is a self-confessed Sinophile. At her first attempt she has produced the Burrell Collection's most successful temporary exhibition ever.
One Million Days in China, which covers 4,500 years of Chinese history, opened in July last year and attracted 70,000 visitors in its first seven weeks. By Christmas it had topped 170,000.
The figures are all the more impressive considering that the Burrell Collection is in the middle of a country park, a good bus ride from the centre of Glasgow, followed by either a ten-minute walk up the driveway or a wait for one of the twice-hourly buses.
But the effervescent Leighton was never in doubt it was going to be popular: 'I always thought it would be successful, as Scottish people have been in China for so many years, so I didn't care if the exhibition was in the city centre or here. I just didn't think it would be this popular.'
The £150,000 exhibition, funded by the Scottish Executive, combines thematic and chronological approaches and features 150 objects, including earthenware, bronzes, ceramics and jades, as well as painting and textiles, arranged in six sections.
Most of the works are from Sir William Burrell's Chinese collection, with many on display for the first time. Others are on loan from the National Museum of Scotland and the Oriental Museum in Durham.
The exhibition's first section is on Burrell himself, a prolific collector and not just of Chinese objects. He started his collection of 9,000 objects in 1879, when he was 18, and gave them to Glasgow in 1944.
No one knows where Burrell's interest in China came from: he never visited the country and built his collection by buying at auctions and from art dealers, amassing 1,740 objects by the time he died in 1958.
Though the exhibition covers 4,500 years, its title refers to the first bronze piece that Burrell bought, which is 2,769 years old. It was chosen as the focal point as it is such a significant piece in Chinese history, marking the use of bronze-age technology, the introduction of important religious beliefs and the invention of the Chinese writing system.
After the section on Burrell, the exhibition moves on to an exploration of archaeology in ancient China (pottery); communication between heaven and earth (bronzes); the arrival of philosophies and religions; trade and transport; and finally, China and the west.
These sections follow each other chronologically, and to help the audience connect with them, Leighton has a timeline running around the top of the cases.
'Normally Chinese history is told through Dynastic history, which is OK for [someone like] me, but I wanted to reach out to as many people as possible,' she says. 'So I took these objects and thought about what was happening in Britain and the rest of the world at the time. I've had a big thumbs up from teachers [who have seen the exhibition].'
Leighton started working at the Burrell Collection in early 2002, researching and cataloguing the Chinese collection. There hadn't been a curator of Chinese and Oriental civilisations for eight years and when she was appointed to the post she was told she had two weeks to put forward two exhibition proposals, a challenge she accepted with relish.
'I thought it was wonderful, I couldn't have wished for anything more,' she remembers. 'It was something I'd had in my heart all my life.' One Million Days was the exhibition that was chosen - the other was on the theme of Chinese beliefs from birth to burial - and Leighton was immediately made project manager and curator, responsible for a team of 18 people.
The idea behind the exhibition was to introduce people to William Burrell's collection as well as Chinese history and China's approach to art, which is focused on its pre-determined message rather than an object's aesthetics.
The exhibition includes some interactives - you can try your hand at fortune- telling sticks, or writing Chinese characters - but they are all of a decidedly low-tech variety. 'I hate all those technology things,'
Leighton says. 'I like keeping it simple, using your mind rather than letting technology take you. I've always been like that. I only got my first CD-player two years ago.'
At this point Leighton sounds less like a trendy 25-year-old and more like an archetypal curator, and she admits rather sheepishly that she has been compared to the somewhat geeky palaeontologist Ross in the US sitcom Friends.
Like Ross, her interest in museums, and in her case China, goes back as far as she can remember. She was born in Glasgow in 1979, but because her father worked for a shipping company the family moved to Papua New Guinea when she was six and then to Hong Kong when she was 14. She returned to Scotland to go to boarding school when she was 15.
But it was her great-grandfather, who was Scottish but who had worked in China as a policeman, witnessing three revolutions before he left, who seems to have first sparked her interest in all things Chinese.
She says she was his favourite great-granddaughter, and in the years before he died, when he was aged 99 and Leighton was six, he would speak to her in Mandarin and tell her stories about China.
She maintained her passion for China through her school years and took a degree in Chinese archaeology and Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Leighton then got a scholarship to study in China and chose the north-west city of Xian (the city where the terracotta army is located), rather than Beijing or Shanghai. 'It was the most exciting city for archaeology, and I knew there would be no foreign students there,' she says.
The year studying at the North West University and working at the Shaanxi History Museum, also in Xian, opened her eyes to a new China.
'I'd always seen China from the five-star hotel perspective. Being in a dormitory, having power cuts every few days and getting used to having chickens' feet for breakfast - it was daunting at the beginning. But once I made friends, it was really good, and it certainly made me a stronger person.'
The experience of connecting with the real China was important when it came to the One Million Days exhibition. Scotland has a Chinese community of more than 10,000, the majority of whom live in Glasgow.
Many of them came to Scotland in the 1960s. Now there are second- and third-generation Chinese people, some who don't speak Chinese and have never been to China. Leighton says the exhibition was a way of bringing China closer to this section of the population.
She says the first thing she did when the project started was to make contact with Glasgow's Chinese community. She worked closely with a centre for elderly Chinese people and the city's Chinese school to find out what they wanted to see in the display and what questions they would ask about the objects.
She also asked three generations of one family to choose an object each and say what they felt about it. Pictures of the family, the objects they chose and their thoughts are displayed in the exhibition.
Leighton says she has been overwhelmed by the response to the exhibition. One man came up to her almost in tears saying he'd been waiting for an exhibition like this for his whole life.
Many others have told her their memories of China and growing up in Britain, and for her next project she wants to do something to record these, perhaps to coincide with the next Olympic Games, which is in China in 2008.
For now, she has the less exciting task of taking down the exhibition. A large proportion of the objects won't go back into storage, but will replace objects currently on show, while other parts of the display will be used by different voluntary groups, including the centre for the elderly Chinese people.
Leighton says she chaired a meeting about the end of the exhibition earlier in the week. 'I'm nearly always hyper, but it was a very sombre meeting,' she says.
And it seems she won't be the only one to miss it when it's gone. As we're walking around one of the gallery guides, Frank, collars her to ask something about the exhibition. A former exhibition builder, Frank says that One Million Days will be missed because it has that elusive quality good exhibitions need.
'You can spend £150,000 on an exhibition, but if it doesn't capture the atmosphere, it won't work,' Frank says. 'And this captures the atmosphere - you get the vibes. And the public like that.'
One Million Days in China is at the Burrell Collection, Pollok Country Park, 2060 Pollokshaws Rd, Glasgow, G43 1AT
tel: 0141 287 2550
www.glasgowmuseums.com
One Million Days in China, which covers 4,500 years of Chinese history, opened in July last year and attracted 70,000 visitors in its first seven weeks. By Christmas it had topped 170,000.
The figures are all the more impressive considering that the Burrell Collection is in the middle of a country park, a good bus ride from the centre of Glasgow, followed by either a ten-minute walk up the driveway or a wait for one of the twice-hourly buses.
But the effervescent Leighton was never in doubt it was going to be popular: 'I always thought it would be successful, as Scottish people have been in China for so many years, so I didn't care if the exhibition was in the city centre or here. I just didn't think it would be this popular.'
The £150,000 exhibition, funded by the Scottish Executive, combines thematic and chronological approaches and features 150 objects, including earthenware, bronzes, ceramics and jades, as well as painting and textiles, arranged in six sections.
Most of the works are from Sir William Burrell's Chinese collection, with many on display for the first time. Others are on loan from the National Museum of Scotland and the Oriental Museum in Durham.
The exhibition's first section is on Burrell himself, a prolific collector and not just of Chinese objects. He started his collection of 9,000 objects in 1879, when he was 18, and gave them to Glasgow in 1944.
No one knows where Burrell's interest in China came from: he never visited the country and built his collection by buying at auctions and from art dealers, amassing 1,740 objects by the time he died in 1958.
Though the exhibition covers 4,500 years, its title refers to the first bronze piece that Burrell bought, which is 2,769 years old. It was chosen as the focal point as it is such a significant piece in Chinese history, marking the use of bronze-age technology, the introduction of important religious beliefs and the invention of the Chinese writing system.
After the section on Burrell, the exhibition moves on to an exploration of archaeology in ancient China (pottery); communication between heaven and earth (bronzes); the arrival of philosophies and religions; trade and transport; and finally, China and the west.
These sections follow each other chronologically, and to help the audience connect with them, Leighton has a timeline running around the top of the cases.
'Normally Chinese history is told through Dynastic history, which is OK for [someone like] me, but I wanted to reach out to as many people as possible,' she says. 'So I took these objects and thought about what was happening in Britain and the rest of the world at the time. I've had a big thumbs up from teachers [who have seen the exhibition].'
Leighton started working at the Burrell Collection in early 2002, researching and cataloguing the Chinese collection. There hadn't been a curator of Chinese and Oriental civilisations for eight years and when she was appointed to the post she was told she had two weeks to put forward two exhibition proposals, a challenge she accepted with relish.
'I thought it was wonderful, I couldn't have wished for anything more,' she remembers. 'It was something I'd had in my heart all my life.' One Million Days was the exhibition that was chosen - the other was on the theme of Chinese beliefs from birth to burial - and Leighton was immediately made project manager and curator, responsible for a team of 18 people.
The idea behind the exhibition was to introduce people to William Burrell's collection as well as Chinese history and China's approach to art, which is focused on its pre-determined message rather than an object's aesthetics.
The exhibition includes some interactives - you can try your hand at fortune- telling sticks, or writing Chinese characters - but they are all of a decidedly low-tech variety. 'I hate all those technology things,'
Leighton says. 'I like keeping it simple, using your mind rather than letting technology take you. I've always been like that. I only got my first CD-player two years ago.'
At this point Leighton sounds less like a trendy 25-year-old and more like an archetypal curator, and she admits rather sheepishly that she has been compared to the somewhat geeky palaeontologist Ross in the US sitcom Friends.
Like Ross, her interest in museums, and in her case China, goes back as far as she can remember. She was born in Glasgow in 1979, but because her father worked for a shipping company the family moved to Papua New Guinea when she was six and then to Hong Kong when she was 14. She returned to Scotland to go to boarding school when she was 15.
But it was her great-grandfather, who was Scottish but who had worked in China as a policeman, witnessing three revolutions before he left, who seems to have first sparked her interest in all things Chinese.
She says she was his favourite great-granddaughter, and in the years before he died, when he was aged 99 and Leighton was six, he would speak to her in Mandarin and tell her stories about China.
She maintained her passion for China through her school years and took a degree in Chinese archaeology and Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Leighton then got a scholarship to study in China and chose the north-west city of Xian (the city where the terracotta army is located), rather than Beijing or Shanghai. 'It was the most exciting city for archaeology, and I knew there would be no foreign students there,' she says.
The year studying at the North West University and working at the Shaanxi History Museum, also in Xian, opened her eyes to a new China.
'I'd always seen China from the five-star hotel perspective. Being in a dormitory, having power cuts every few days and getting used to having chickens' feet for breakfast - it was daunting at the beginning. But once I made friends, it was really good, and it certainly made me a stronger person.'
The experience of connecting with the real China was important when it came to the One Million Days exhibition. Scotland has a Chinese community of more than 10,000, the majority of whom live in Glasgow.
Many of them came to Scotland in the 1960s. Now there are second- and third-generation Chinese people, some who don't speak Chinese and have never been to China. Leighton says the exhibition was a way of bringing China closer to this section of the population.
She says the first thing she did when the project started was to make contact with Glasgow's Chinese community. She worked closely with a centre for elderly Chinese people and the city's Chinese school to find out what they wanted to see in the display and what questions they would ask about the objects.
She also asked three generations of one family to choose an object each and say what they felt about it. Pictures of the family, the objects they chose and their thoughts are displayed in the exhibition.
Leighton says she has been overwhelmed by the response to the exhibition. One man came up to her almost in tears saying he'd been waiting for an exhibition like this for his whole life.
Many others have told her their memories of China and growing up in Britain, and for her next project she wants to do something to record these, perhaps to coincide with the next Olympic Games, which is in China in 2008.
For now, she has the less exciting task of taking down the exhibition. A large proportion of the objects won't go back into storage, but will replace objects currently on show, while other parts of the display will be used by different voluntary groups, including the centre for the elderly Chinese people.
Leighton says she chaired a meeting about the end of the exhibition earlier in the week. 'I'm nearly always hyper, but it was a very sombre meeting,' she says.
And it seems she won't be the only one to miss it when it's gone. As we're walking around one of the gallery guides, Frank, collars her to ask something about the exhibition. A former exhibition builder, Frank says that One Million Days will be missed because it has that elusive quality good exhibitions need.
'You can spend £150,000 on an exhibition, but if it doesn't capture the atmosphere, it won't work,' Frank says. 'And this captures the atmosphere - you get the vibes. And the public like that.'
One Million Days in China is at the Burrell Collection, Pollok Country Park, 2060 Pollokshaws Rd, Glasgow, G43 1AT
tel: 0141 287 2550
www.glasgowmuseums.com
