Picturing the past

However, as the first of its kind in China, the children's historical picture book turned out to be a very difficult one to produce.

"At first, our team found it impossible to draw the pictures to match the text provided by the NMC," Feng Ye, an art director at the CAFA, explains.

"We needed a very accurate description of the clothes, hairstyles, houses, tools, containers and surroundings of the ancient people, because this is an encyclopedic picture book based on historical fact," he notes.

In the volume about food, there is a picture about barns and wine-making.

"All the barns, the scenes of transporting grain and making spirits-and the bronze rhino-shaped wine container-are drawn according to historical fact or from cultural relics," Zhao says.

Apart from accuracy, the three sides agreed to employ a plain tone for the general style of the pictures, because "in general ancient Chinese people lived a simple life," Li points out.

Moreover, the NMC hopes to give young children a better chance to get closer to their precious collection of cultural relics by providing high-definition photos of them, Li says.