The documentary "Needham and Ancient Chinese Technology" was broadcast

The humanistic and historical documentary "Needham and Ancient Chinese Science and Technology" is being broadcast on the CCTV Science and Education Channel. The film is divided into six themes: "To China", "Mr. Wind", "Civilization Highland", "Magical Creation", "Writing China", and "People Go to Take Pictures", which tells the experience of Joseph Needham, a scientist and historian of science and technology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who came to China from the 1940s to the 1980s to investigate, and spent more than half a century writing and compiling the history of science and technology.

Needham is known as "an old friend of the Chinese people", and his "History of Science and Technology in China" is the first huge work to comprehensively introduce the development process of Science and Technology in China with systematic and detailed information, and is considered to be one of the major academic achievements completed in the 20th century. In order to study Needham's life experience more comprehensively, the film crew traced Needham's footprints in China, and traveled to Britain and other places to obtain a large number of rare photographic materials, read thousands of needham's diary, notes, and materials, and reconstruct Needham's ideological process of understanding China and writing the History of Science and Technology in China.

The documentary "Needham and Ancient Chinese Science and Technology" sets the content framework from the perspective of the shooting of the biography, uses a large number of details and stories, comprehensively sorts out the trajectory of Needham's life, and creates an image of a scholar full of sense of justice, full of adventure and innovation, vigorous vitality and the spirit of great scientific internationalism. At the same time, this film borrows the eyes of Needham, stands at the height of history and human nature, traces the footprints of a group of Western international friends represented by Joseph Needham in China, peeks at the iron bones and outstanding wisdom of Chinese intellectuals during the war, and explores the glory and splendor of China's ancient scientific and technological culture.

It is worth mentioning that the program team cooperated deeply with the Needham Institute in Cambridge, England, received the assistance of authoritative historical research, and obtained more than a thousand old photos taken by Needham that had never been made public through television, which truly recorded the mental state of people from all walks of life in China during the most difficult years of the War of Resistance Against Japan.

Beijing Evening News reporter Qiu Wei