Works from several centuries past will be part of Sotheby's semiannual offering of Chinese art, Lin Qi reports.

Eleven classical Chinese paintings and calligraphic pieces, collected by a private library in Zhejiang province over a period from the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to the time of the Republic of China (1911-49), will go under the hammer in Hong Kong on May 30.

A highlight is The Lotus Sutra, a calligraphic set of seven albums of Buddhism inscriptions written in gold on blue paper by an anonymous artist of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).