Photo: SCMP Pictures

Cover Page : Photo: SCMP Pictures

Taiwan threatens to cancel crown jewels exhibit in Japan over publicity mistake PUBLISHED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 8:32pm

UPDATED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 11:10pm

Lawrence Chung in Taipei lawrence.chung@scmp.com

The National Palace Museum in Taipei. Photo: EPA

A furious Taiwan yesterday threatened to cancel a long-planned exhibition of the islands

treasures in Japan after Tokyo organisers dropped the word national from the National Palace

Museums name in publicity materials.

Taipei interpreted the move as a refusal to recognise Taiwans claimed sovereignty and an

adherence to Beijings one China policy, which declares Taiwan as Chinese territory, subject to

eventual reunification.

President Ma Ying-jeou has been greatly concerned over the case and demanded that if the

Japanese side fails to react positively, all such exhibition activities in Japan must be scrapped,

Ma said in a statement.

First lady Christine Chow Mei-ching would also call off her plan to attend the opening ceremony

of the exhibition, the statement said.

Chow was originally scheduled to lead a delegation to Japan on Sunday for the opening

ceremony of the exhibition next Monday.

The show will have 231 valuable art objects on display from June to November at the Tokyo

National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum.

It would mark the first time Taiwans National Palace Museum has ever loaned its valuable

collection, including its so-called crown jewels, the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat-

Shaped Stone, for exhibitions elsewhere in Asia.

The events chief organiser, the Tokyo National Museum, had agreed to use the full title of the

Taipei museum in the publicity but neglected to add the word national in its promotion

materials.

Publicity materials failed to include the Taipei museum's full name. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Ma stressed that the National Palace Museum was its official name and that the government would not accept

any other names that hurt Taiwans dignity.

Taiwans foreign ministry said it set a deadline of 11pm tomorrow for the correction to be made.

Taiwan and the mainland were bitter rivals since the end of a civil war in 1949. There relations

have improved only after Ma became president in 2008 and adopted a policy to engage Beijing.

The Nationalists were reported to have shipped more than 650,000 precious artefacts, originally

housed by the National Palace Museum in Beijing, to Taiwan shortly before they were defeated

by the Communists.

In 1965, the Nationalist government had the palace museum relocated to Taipei, and it was

only until after 2008 that the two palace museums began exchanges and cooperation.

But up to now, the Taiwan museum has declined to loan its treasures for exhibitions on the

mainland on the grounds that Beijing has not enacted any law guaranteeing their safe return.

Taiwans National Palace Museum since the 1990s has loaned its artefacts to the United States,

France, Germany and Austria, all of which used the word national in its name.

PUBLISHED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 8:32pm

UPDATED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 11:10pm

Lawrence Chung in Taipei

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Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures

Concerning a civilization, five thousand years of continuous existence speak for themselves.

Splendors of ImperialChina, and the catalogue volumes issued to commemorate it, should generate a true sense of admiration and respect for a culture and civilization little known in

the West, but from which there is a great deal to be learned. China is becoming the World

First Economy in very near future

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to the history of Chinas culture, to the dif-ferent philosophical currents thatemerged, and to technological achieve-ments, inventions, and discoveriesamong them, for example, the gloriousinvention of paper. In these five thousand

years, there were conflictsbetween Confucianism,Legalism, Taoism, andBuddhism, and great peri-ods of cultural renaissance,such as that of the Twelfth-century A.D. ConfucianRenaissance under theSung Dynasty. This enor-mous history, which wouldrequire many years ofstudy to begin to compre-hend, could be at leastappreciated though theexhibit Splendors ofImperial China: Treasuresfrom the National PalaceMuseum, Taipei, whichcompleted a year-long U.S.tour in April at the Nation-al Gallery of Art in Wash-ington, D.C., after appear-ing in New York, Chicago,and San Francisco.

Two-thirds of thenearly 450 rare objects inthe exhibition, many clas-sified as national treasures,have never before beenshown in the U.S. On onlythree previous occasionshave masterpieces fromthe National Palace Muse-um travelled to the West:to London in 1935-1936,to the United States in1961-1962, and again in1991-1992, where theywere included in theNational Gallerys famousCirca 1492 exhibitioncommemorating the dis-

Chinese culture has been in continu-ous, uninterrupted existence formore than five thousand years, making itunique: the oldest civilization in theworld. In these five thousand years, therise and fall of dynasties was closely linked

88

Treasures from China Relate Five-Thousand Year History

EXHIBITS

Fan Kuan (c.980-1050), Travelling Amid Streams andMountains.

Wang Meng, Forest Chamber Grotto atCh-ch (after 1365).

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covery of the Americas.Organized chronologically, the

objects in the show presented the greatartistic traditions of Chinese civilizationover millennia, from the Neolithic periodthrough the Eighteenth century A.D.Beginning with a room dedicated to theNeolithic and Bronze Ages, the exhibi-tion progressed into the later dynasties,the Tang (A.D. 618-907), Sung (960-1279), Yan (1272-1368), Ming (1368-1644), and Ching (1644-1911). This orga-nization, which allowed the viewer tocompare the advances (or, in some cases,declines) not only of the levels of techno-logical achievement (e.g., in the produc-tion of porcelain and the development ofthe glazes, or in the pictorial techniquesused to represent space), but also of worldoutlook, depending upon which philo-sophical current was favored by the rul-ing imperial strata. Such a change leapsout, for example, when comparing paint-ings from the Imperial Painting Acade-my created under the Sung Dynasty,with ones produced during the subse-quent Yan, after the Mongols invadedand occupied China, and the ConfucianRenaissance was destroyed by the expan-sion of Taoist influence.

Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1997

1997 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.

89

Government Promotion of the ArtsDuring the Sung Dynasty, painting wasorganized under the auspices of a cen-tralized Imperial Painting Academy,and painters were recruited by the newgovernment from all parts of theEmpire to serve the needs of the imperi-al court. Over time, the traditions repre-sented by this group of artists becamewhat is known today as the Sung acade-mic manner, the culmination of cen-turies of achievement in mastering anaturalistic, closely descriptive and con-vincing portrayal of the physical world,in the words of Maxwell K. Hearn,author of the catalogue The Splendors ofImperial China.

Under the Emperor Hui-tsung(1101-1125), himself an accomplishedpainter and calligrapher, the arts weredeveloped to the point where theybecame the example for all succeedingacademies. Aside from landscape paint-ing, Hui-tsungs academicians special-ized in religious figures, historical nar-ratives, genre painting, flowers, birds,and animals, all keenly observed andmeticulously rendered.

Many of the paintings from this peri-od remind a Western viewer of draw-ings and watercolors on the same sub-jects by later, great Western masters,such as Albrecht Drer and Leonardoda Vinci. One of the most beautifulexamples is the hanging scroll WinterPlay [SEE front cover, this issue], attrib-uted to Su Han-chen (c.1130-60s), apreeminent painter of children at the

Southern Sung court. This painting ispart of a set of hanging scrolls that prob-ably showed children in each of the fourseasons. The portrayal of a young girland her slightly younger playmate, is astrong indication that children of bothsexes were prized in the imperial world.The children are depicted at play, bat-tling a pretend-dragon kitten, using,as their weapon, a banner adorned witha peacock feather.

The Imperial Painting Academy wasclosed during the reign of the first Yanemperor, Khubilai Khan (1215-1294),the grandson of Genghis Khan. Pictorialrepresentation became introspective,and realistic representation as a productof the observation of nature practicallydisappeared. The sense of aerial (atmos-pheric) perspective achieved by the Sungpainters, where the white spaces arenot empty, but full of space, was lost.Compare, for example, such examples ofSung artistry as Travelling AmidStreams and Mountains of Fan Kuan(c.980-1050), with the Yan artist WangMengs (c.1308-1385) Forest ChamberGrotto at Ch-ch, where the painterabandons all suggestion of spatial reces-sion, and confronts the viewer with adensely textured wall of rock and water. . . creating a vision of an enclosed andsequestered environment that lies out-side of the real world.

East and West Unified

A substantial portion of the treasures ofthe National Museum derive from the

imperial collections of the ChingDynasty (1644-1911).

It was during the Ching Dynasty,established when the Manchus over-threw the Ming in 1644, that the Jesuitmissionaries, whose first arrival inChina had been Matteo Ricci in 1581,fully established themselves at the impe-rial court. The relations between theJesuits and the first emperors of theChing Dynasty were such, that Jesuitsshared responsibility for the educationof the prince, along with his classicalConfucian tutors. This prince wouldlater become the famous emperor KangHsi, under whom the collaborationbetween East and West achieved itshighest level, a collaboration organized,on its European side, by the great Ger-man philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz.The science of Europes Golden Renais-sance, coupled with Chinas tradition ofthe Twelfth-century Confucian Renais-sance of the philosopher Chu Hsi,engendered an era of extraordinary sci-entific and technological advance.Under Kang Hsi, official art workshopswere reestablished in the capital and inregional centers. The Imperial KilnComplex in Ching-te-chuen was rebuilt,and became a renewed center of porce-lain production.

One of the exhibits finest examplesof East-West collaboration, is the silkhandscroll One Hundred Horses, fin-ished in 1728, which gave birth to a newstyle by merging the best pictorial tech-niques of Europe and China. It waspainted by Giuseppe Castiglione, aJesuit missionary, who arrived in Chinaat the age of twenty-seven. After severalyears of work at a glazing workshop,Castiglione took the Chinese name ofLang Shih-ning. Upon seeing OneHundred Horses for the first time, theEmperor Chien-lung named Cas-tiglione principal court painter. Boththis handscroll, and another one by Cas-tiglione entitled Assembled Blessings,are made in the traditional technique ofChinese painting in ink and mineral col-ors on silk, and the themes are also tra-ditionally Chinese, but both have athree-dimensional quality accomplishedby the subtle use of the Western tech-nique of chiaroscuro, and Renaissance-developed perspective.Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione), One Hundred Horses (detail) (1728).

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90

Minimum and Maximum in BrushworkAlmost all the pieces in paper or silk,and also some of the bronzes, wereaccompanied by calligraphic poems, acrucial aspect of Chinese painting to beunderstood by the West. Confucianteachings considered writing to be themoral act of a man who fulfilled hisresponsibilities to society as a wholepast, present, and futureas it wasembodied in the person of the emperor,in his own family, or in a specific clan.Writing was also a prerequisite for theindividual to be considered one of theliterati (wen-ren), since, among otherthings, the need to memorize the com-position of thousands of calligraphiccharacters and their meanings, requiredmany years of study. Lifelong dedicationand practice were necessary to be able towrite skillfully.

Each calligraphic character is a com-position in itself, sometimes requiring asmany as twenty-four brushstrokes.Aside from being part of the group ofcharacters, each is an individual entitywith intrinsic value. Chinese calligraphyhas passed through many stages in itsdevelopment to the present.

Five masterpieces of calligraphy andpainting on silk and paper from theTang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279)Dynasties were displayed, includingPoems Written at Huang-chou on theCold Food Festival, a handscroll by the

most famous poet and callig-rapher, Su Shih (1037-1101),and Bamboo, by WenTung (1018-1079), an earlyexample of a subject that con-tinues to be a Chinese fa-vorite. The identity of theartistic idea in these two works, onepainting, the other calligraphy, isevident. Many beautiful examples of cal-ligraphy from later periods were exhib-ited, including ones by Shen Chou,patriarch of the literati in Soochow dur-ing the Ming Dynasty.

Shen Chous sixteen ink and colorworks on paper, entitledDrawings from Life(1494), are a group of cal-ligraphic paintings,where the essential char-acteristics and forms ofthe subject are represent-ed with a minimum ofbrushstrokes, but withtotal freedom. When theNational Gallery exhibit-ed some of these draw-ings in the Circa 1492show in 1992, the publicwas able to comparethem with drawings andwatercolors from theItalian Renaissance. Thistime, an exhibition ofworks on paper entitledSix Artists, Six Cen-turies, was also on dis-

play at the museum, so it was againpossible to compare watercolors byDrer with these extraordinary Chi-nese paintings.

Concerning a civilization, five thou-sand years of continuous existence speakfor themselves. Splendors of ImperialChina, and the catalogue volumesissued to commemorate it, should gener-ate a true sense of admiration andrespect for a culture and civilization lit-tle known in the West, but from whichthere is a great deal to be learned.

Ana Mara Mendoza

Two catalogue volumes have been pub-lished to commemorate the exhibit. Thefull catalogue, Possessing the Past: Trea-sures from the National Palace Museum,Taipei, by Wen C. Fong and James C.Y.Wyatt, is 648 pages long, and is priced at$85. Splendors of Imperial China: Trea-sures from the National Palace Museum,Taipei, by Maxwell K. Hearn, is a beau-tiful, shorter (144 page) report of the exhib-it, priced at $35. Both volumes are pub-lished by The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, N.Y. and the National Palace Muse-um, Taipei, and may be available in locallibraries.

Shen Chou, one of sixteen drawings from Drawings fromLife (detail) (1494).

Left: Su Shih, Poems Written at Huang-chou on theCold Food Festival (detail) (1082). Below: WenTung, Bamboo (detail) (c.1070).

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Rival Museums Retrace Route of Chinas Imperial Treasures

Courtesy of Zhuang Ling

A photograph showing the difficulties the imperial treasures sometimes encountered on the road to their hiding place

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: July 6, 2010

CHONGQING, China On a sweltering morning last month, a white-haired guide

trudged up a muddy path, leading a group of scholars toward a bamboo grove on the

outskirts of this western Chinese city. The site, he said, was where a large portion

of Chinas imperial treasures were once hidden inside several big wooden sheds.

Slide Show

The Imperial Treasure Route, Then and Now

Courtesy of Zhuang Ling

Members of the palace museum staff who helped move the artifacts to Chongqing.

They were stored right about here, Hu Changjian, a local museum official, said of the

artifacts, an unparalleled collection of more than a million objects from the Forbidden

City in Beijing, including fine paintings, calligraphy, jade and porcelain dating back

centuries. He added, We think they dug caves in the hills behind us to store some of the

treasures.

Photographers and documentary filmmakers traveling with the group of scholars

recorded the scene, as the scholars, clutching notepads, scampered up a hill in search of

caves.

The scholars, from mainland China and Taiwan, were taking part in an extraordinary

two-week research project, retracing the routes taken by the imperial treasures in the

1930s and 1940s, when they were being safeguarded from the ravages of civil war and

Japanese aggression, not to mention floods, bandits and warlords.

The project is extraordinary because it was organized by rival museums, the Palace

Museum of Beijing and theNational Palace Museum in Taiwan, each of which claims to

be the rightful home of the artifacts.

The original Palace Museum in Beijing was split in two its staff as well as its collection

in 1949, when the Nationalist government fell to the Communists and retreated to the

island of Taiwan with thousands of supporters and a huge cargo of museum pieces.

For decades there has been debate about ownership of the divided treasures. But in

recent years the two museums have begun to collaborate on exhibitions in a stunning

show of cross-Strait cooperation. On the scholars journey this summer, the talk was not

of unification but of shared history and of a common desire to understand the

remarkable events that both preserved the treasures and eventually led to their division.

We had a rough idea of how things happened, but we didnt know the details, said Li

Wenru, deputy director at the Palace Museum in Beijing. But we knew it was a miracle

that in wartime over a million treasures were moved 10,000 kilometers, on roads, in

water, by air, and nothing was lost.

The museum staff members who protected the artifacts on that 16-year odyssey, hiding

them in bunkers, caves, temples, warehouses and even private homes, have all died. But

some of their children were invited to participate in this years trip.

Zhuang Ling, 72, says his father, who had been a cataloger of the collection, was one of

the staff members charged with guarding the imperial treasures. He recalls living and

traveling with them as a child, in the mountains outside Chongqing.

When the weather was good, theyd bring the paintings, calligraphy and books outside

to give them some fresh air because it was too humid inside, he said. I could even see

some of the landscape paintings.

The collection was put together by emperors, mostly in the centuries between the Song

dynasty (960-1276) and the brief reign of Pu Yi, Chinas last emperor, at the end of the

Qing dynasty (1644-1911). After the Qing fell, the imperial family kept the treasures. (In

1913 the family offered to sell them to the American industrialist and collector J. P.

Morgan for $4 million; Morgan died shortly after his staff received the telegrams.)

In 1924 the state expelled the imperial family from the Forbidden City, declared the

collection national property and made it the foundation of a new Palace Museum.

But after Japan invaded north China in 1931 and threatened to move toward Beijing, the

government, fearing the artifacts might be destroyed or carted off to Japan, shipped

them, in more than 19,000 wooden crates, south to Nanjing, the new capital, in early

1933. Then, just days before the Japanese destroyed Nanjing in 1937, they were divided

into three groups and sent into hiding along three separate routes. Some of the most

valuable objects ended up here in Chongqing, the wartime capital.

Last month this humid, mountainous city was the seventh stop for the Chinese and

Taiwanese scholars. They crowded into a rusted bank vault where some of the artifacts

had been stored (it now houses sewing machines); visited the old central library, which

had exhibited some of the treasures during the war; and trekked up to a warehouse that

had been deemed safe for the treasures, they were told, because it was adjacent to a

Buddhist temple and so unlikely to be attacked by Japanese forces.

Mr. Hu, the Chongqing guide, added new details to the record, even as he confessed to

having discovered only three of the four storage rooms at the warehouse site. Minutes

later Mr. Li, from the Beijing museum, followed a railroad track up a hill and discovered

what appeared to be the fourth warehouse space.

After Japan surrendered in 1945, the treasures returned to Nanjing. But the journey was

not over. Civil war between the Nationalist government and the Communists, which had

begun in the 1920s and abated during the Japanese occupation, resumed. In 1948, with

the Communists routing government forces in the north, Chiang Kai-shek, head of the

Nationalists, ordered the most valuable treasures shipped to Taiwan, along with much of

the nations gold supply.

The majority of the paintings from the imperial collection moved to Taiwan, said

Alfreda Murck, an authority on Chinese art at the Palace Museum in Beijing, though only

about 20 percent of the collection made its way there. They chose very well, she added.

Chiangs decision divided more than just the collection. Liang Jinsheng, 62, said his

father and grandfather helped protect the treasures in the 1930s and 40s. But after the

war, Mr. Liangs brother and grandfather accompanied some of the treasures to Taiwan

while Mr. Liangs father stayed behind in China, following another part of the collection

back to Beijing.

This trip made me realize how much my parents generation did, said Mr. Liang, who

catalogs artifacts at the Beijing museum and is a fifth-generation staff member there.

In Taiwan the treasures were stored in a cave for years, out of fear that the Communists

might invade or bomb the island; only in 1965 did the National Palace Museum of Taipei

open. In Beijing, meanwhile, the Palace Museum had few visitors in the 1950s and 60s.

But the treasures had enormous symbolic value in both places.

David Shambaugh, who with Jeannette Shambaugh Elliott wrote The Odyssey of

Chinas Imperial Art Treasures, said Chinese leaders had long viewed them as a means

of validating their power, even under Communism. During the Cultural Revolution,

when Red Guards tried to destroy anything associated with tradition, Mao ordered the

museum protected.

Every successive regime used the collection to legitimize themselves with elites, said

Professor Shambaugh, a China scholar at George Washington University. Mao and the

Communists saw themselves as the inheritors of 5,000 years of history.

There has been no dialogue between the two museums about whether the treasures

should be unified in one location, officials of both institutions say. And in Chongqing and

elsewhere on the trip, the subject of ownership was carefully avoided. Theres only one

palace museum, said Mr. Li of the Beijing museum, in that the two are one.

And Chu Huiliang of Taipei said, Both sides dont talk about this issue because were not

the ones who can resolve it.

The museum officials insisted that it wasnt important where the treasures were kept,

only that they were preserved. The two museums are teaming up for a joint exhibition in

Beijing later this year, about their travels following the route of the imperial treasures.

And in July 2011 they plan to hold a joint exhibition in Taipei, joining two parts of an

ancient painting from the Yuan dynasty that was divided when the Nationalists fled.

Still, for the moment, the Taipei museum has no plans to send any of its objects to

Beijing, and is unlikely to do so until the Beijing government formally agrees that it will

not seize artifacts lent by Taiwan. As hopeful as the new cooperation is, museum officials

on both sides acknowledge, it has its limits

With Compliments : the New York Times

Amblem of Wealth

Puyi was last remembered in the Movie ; The Last Emperor directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

, which grossed over USD 43,984,230 in Box office .

During the course before he was evicted from the imperial palace ,the Last Emperor of

China, described how his last few loyalties and eunuchs would settle their severance pensions

on their own by smuggling invaluable artifacts collected by his ancestors of the Qing dynasty for

sale. Although many have been stolen , lost but yet there are glimpse of hope as truly ,not

all are lost , as a massive 696,000 of these artifacts had actually been moved to Taiwan

secretly just after the Cultural Revolution period in China

In 2011 ,while the media were busy reporting on the lucky mystical powers of the Tibetan

Dragon Sutra which had been released for public viewing in year 2011 in Taiwan , not many

has remembered why and how did such a huge collection of artifacts had landed in Taiwan

. The "Dragon's Sutras, Tibetan language edition" was once housed in the Buddha Hall of the

Cining Palace inside the Forbidden City. Buddhists believe that someone who has the chance to

read the entire compilation would be blessed for seven generations of good luck

People were amazed and fancied only about how former President Chen Shui-bian took his last

opportunity to have his private viewing of the magical artifact shortly before he left his Taiwan

presidency office in 2008, no one seems to wonder why a copy of the sutra in now in China ,

with another portion in China .

How and why were all the artifacts moved to Taiwan ?

Does the museum has similar other artifacts with such Lucky Mystical Powers !

While Presidents are given quality time with original copies, and people with millions to spare

can have the next second best thing, the majority of the people are pretty much kept from it. Is

there another Mythical products that equalize to provide such blessing

Are there other artifacts or ancient mystic symbols which has such similar capacity as the

Dragon sutra collection

Can similar Prosperity symbols actually help you inbuilding wealth and bless the user with se

vengeneration of good luck also . Which could be the other Ancient Mystic symbols that eve

ry individual can be blessed to engage with ?

Can prosperity symbols actually help you in building Wealth with Abundance ?

Unlocking Wealth Luck Potential

The most important luck that all working

individual concern themselves with each and every day is of course WEALTH LUCK .

Since Ancient times ,there have been several myths and rituals for creating wealth over the

centuries and one of them is by the empowering of Mystic symbols and objects to attract

wealth and manifesting abundance

MONEY TROUBLES? LACK OF SUCCESS?

Will you be one of those who turns your Life around

with this ancient China 220 BC Mystic Symbol which attracts Wealth & Success

Today we will explore on the subject of some ancient symbols from China which is hardly

known in the West. This is a very ancient technique of welcoming wealth and success from the

orient which has been tried and tested there for hundreds of years.

Many tycoons in the Pacific Rim reputedly swear byit and many professional executives from S

outh

Asian economies are said to carry one with themor have them at home . For years this Mystic

Symbol has provided this amazing luck and wealthattraction mystic to orientals in an astoun

dinglysimple wealth creation technique but behind thatsimple exterior lies an ancient belief which

iscomplex and fully accords with old ancient China teaching since 220 B.C.

Ancient China Mystic 220 B.C Bestows Wealth with Abundance:

Find Out China's Well Kept Historiographic Tradition to Attracting Wealth

National Treasure.pdfPage 1

Amblem of Wealth Generalting Wealth Abundance.pdfPage 1