Escape from the British Museum—tale of a teapot returning to China goes viral

The unlikely tale of a teapot that “escaped” from the British Museum has become a hit on social media, highlighting (in a quirky way) the clamour for Chinese objects housed at the august London institution to be returned to their original home. The three-part video series Escape from the British Museum tells the “story of a Chinese cultural relic escaping from the British Museum and looking for a way to return to its homeland”, says a YouTube blurb marking the release of episode one in August. In the series, the jade teapot (bear with me) turns into a woman who asks a Chinese journalist to help her get home. According to the Guardian, two social media influencers, who go by the nicknames Pancake Fruit and Summer Sister, are behind the series which has racked up more than 370 million views on the Douyin video-sharing platform. An animated, full-length version of the strange cultural heritage yarn is apparently in the pipeline which should please fans of the teapot saga.