40 years of Sino-Irish friendship celebrated in art exhibition

Works by a quintet of Chinese and Irish artists on display in Beijing celebrate cultural collaboration and the 40 years of diplomatic relations between the Middle Kingdom and the Emerald Isle.

Odyssey: The Return, on show until April 22 at the Dong Yue Art Museum, is inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the greatest novels in world literature.

Ulysses is a complex book that takes place in the course of a day in June 1904. It's set in Dublin and based on Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, a classic masterpiece of ancient Greek literature that chronicles the 10-year journey home of the legendary Odysseus, king of Ithaca, following the fall of Troy.

The Odyssey's major theme is that of a journey, and the works in Odyssey: The Return reflect that.