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Published: 27 January, 2012

Chinatown is not the only place to get a flavour of the country this January.

Contemporary Chinese art, examining the effects of rapid modernisation on historical material culture is on show all over London.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an exhibition of ceramics and photographs by Ai Weiwei. Neolithic Chinese earthenware vessels dating from 5,000BC have been dipped into brightly coloured paint or branded the with Coca-Cola logo. These are shown alongside a short film of Weiwei producing his work.

An installation of life-size, hand-crafted ceramic sunflower seeds that were in the Tate Modern turbine hall last year will also be on show. A display of contemporary porcelain work by artists from China, Japan and the UK is also on show at the V&A.

The work has been made in collaboration with the small porcelain factories in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, known as “the porcelain city” because of its historical significance in the production of the material.

The Rokeby Gallery in Farringdon is showing work by one of Hong Kong’s leading artists, Leung Chi Wo. Through photos, videos and instal­lations, Wo ex­plores China’s post-1997 iden­tity and politics. He takes repaired bullet holes in one of the last remaining colonial struc­tures, the Legisla­tive Council, as a starting point.

See rural China at the Arthur Probsthain Bookshop in Blooms­bury, where woodblock prints of the prairies and woodlands of the North East are on display, as well as prints from Xi’an Province, home of the Terracotta Army. There is a special Chinese New Year event opening the exhibtion tomorrow (Saturday), from 2-4pm.

• Porcelain City: Jingdezhen, V&A, Cromwell Road, SW7, 0871 971 5939, until March 25; Ai Weiwei, until March 18.
• Leung Chi Wo, The Rokeby Gallery, 5-9 Hatton Wall, EC1, 020 7193 5034,to March 3.
• Chinese woodblock prints, Arthur Probsthain Bookshop, 41 Great Russell Street, WC1, 020 7636 1096.