In the antiques collecting community, to pay ‘tuition fees’ is to say that one has bought a modern reproduction or a wrongly dated piece and has learnt a lesson from it. Many Chinese antiques collectors have inevitably paid ‘tuition fees’ during the initiation stages of their collecting hobby, and Dr. Chiew Seen Kong is one of them.

Today, he probably has the world’s largest falangcai Yixing teapot collection and boasts of a vast array of Chinese antiquities consisting of ritual jade mirrors, Chinese emperors’ collections of porcelain plates, Song Chinese tea bowls and other ornaments and domestic wares that date back to various dynasties of ancient China.

In this book, Dr. Chiew Seen Kong, the master of the subject recounts his very own true adventures–and misadventures–in episodes, of how he collected and studied Chinese antiques. In this entertaining journey, the reader will find him or herself learning to identify modern reproductions and dating antiques and in the process, unveil the ancient cultures in Chinese history. And of course, will eventually learn to reduce the amount of ‘tuition fees’!