The phrase "appearances can be deceiving" has never been more apropos than at a recent auction. A simple ceramic dish that resembles an ordinary cereal bowl just sold for a whopping $37.7 million (£28 million) at Sotheby's Hong Kong's Important Chinese Ceramics auction. The bowl is in fact a rare, 1,000-year-old piece of Chinese porcelain and has broken the auction record for Chinese porcelain, Sotheby's Auction House reported. The pale blue bowl was made during the Song dynasty, which means it was created some time between 960 and 1127 AD.Originally made to wash paint brushes, the bowl had very modest beginnings, so it's a complete rags-to-riches narrative. The bidding began at $10.2 million but quickly rose to $37.7 million for the small bowl, measuring only 13 centimeters in diameter. The successful bidder is thought to be a Chinese business tycoon. The sale broke the previous record for the most expensive porcelain auction sale, which was of a Ming dynasty cup that sold for $36 million in 2014."We didn't expect quite that price, but we knew there was going to be a fight," Sotheby's Head of Chinese Art, Nicolas Chow, said."Every time there is a piece of Ru-ware, which is an extremely unusual occurrence, there's always a battle, because it is the most talked about, the most celebrated of all wares in the history of Chinese ceramics."