Sights, sounds and scents from a sparkling thread

They can also study the star maps used by ancient Chinese for celestial navigation in their next life, she said. A Han Dynasty bronze, labeled "Star and Cloud Mirror", contains on its patinated sphere constellations of rising and setting stars, with the central knob presenting the polar star, the star of all stars for ancient Chinese astronomers.

"Or, they can trade superpowers like what they do with their Pokemon cards," Beningson said, pointing to the "Immortal Jar", a fine celadon porcelain around whose big belly the images of eight immortal friends from Chinese folklore are depicted.

"We put on explanatory notes detailing the magic each of them has, and we plan to issue trading cards… The whole thing is really geared toward our young visitors."

The museum's education department, with a grant from the Freeman Foundation, is putting together a brochure on Chinese, Japanese and Korean art for teachers based on the museum's collection. The brochure will be in three languages: English, Chinese and Spanish, reflecting the diverse ethnic communities in Brooklyn.

"There will be a lot of background information－the list of dynasties and maps of the Silk Road, for example－in brochures to help teachers when they teach that unit," Beningson said.

"We'll talk about the difference between porcelain and earthenware, as well as the difference between Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoism," she said, referring to the interconnected religions and thoughts that shaped societies in East Asia.

The Japan Gallery had a joint opening with the China Gallery two years after the reopening of the Korean Gallery in 2017. The three adjacent galleries, reachable through a staircase from the great hall, make Brooklyn Museum "one of the few museums in the US that has given prominent location to non-Western arts", said David Berliner, the museum's president and chief operating officer.

Two other things that Beningson is keen to get across through the China Gallery is the creativity and diversity of Chinese culture.

"People talk about China as if it's a monolith, but it's not a monolith," she said.

She sets out to debunk the myth by pairing ancient ritual bronzes unearthed from the central plains with those excavated from the empire's peripheries on the far north and south, and by juxtaposing the sober, demure-looking Song Dynasty porcelain with a shimmering silver saddle, engraved and repoussed with phoenix motif, from the Empire of Liao (916-1125), whose horse-mounted troops harassed and pillaged the Song borders in the 10th century. The inspiration for the saddle came as much from Silk Road silver as from the Song people's love of high-relief ornaments on metalwares.