The Two Palace Museums
How most of the emperors’ greatest treasures came to be in Taipei
It is surprising that any of the vast collection of art objects and antiquities assembled haphazardly by the emperors over many hundreds of years actually survived into the 21st century. The imperial collection was scattered among various residences but particularly at the former Qīng capital of Shěnyáng and the summer resort of Chéngdé. After the abdication, items began to show up in antiques markets around China, often pilfered by those supposed to be looking after them, or by senior government officials using them to buy favour elsewhere.
Within days of the Qīng abdication of 12 February 1912 there was talk of the creation of a museum, and it was decided for security reasons to begin by consolidating the various collections at the Forbidden City. This was carried out with remarkable rapidity, perhaps both because true republicans feared a restoration of the monarchy and wanted the important ceremonial halls of the Forbidden City occupied as an obstruction to that, and because the President, Yuán Shìkǎi (袁世凯) secretly wanted to get the imperial treasures under his own control as part of a plan to seat himself on the throne as the founder of a new dynasty, which he did indeed attempt in 1915–16.
By then 119,500 objects had arrived from Chéngdé and 114,600 from Shěnyáng. The German architect Curt Rothkegel, re-modeller of the Zhèngyáng Mén, was employed to connect together and refit the Hall of Martial Valour and the Hall of Respectful Thought using part of US$200,000 of Boxer Indemnity payments returned by the US government for the purpose of setting up the museum.
This opened as the Government Museum in 1914, before the work on the halls was even complete. The transported items were effectively on loan, since the government could not afford the purchase price, due to be decided by a third-party assessor and paid to the imperial family.
Those parts of the collection remaining in the residential quarters still occupied by the last emperor and his retinue were subject to theft by eunuchs, who at one point burned down a hall in the northwest section after Pǔyí threatened an inventory of its contents. The emperor himself and his family members squirrelled further items away to Tiānjīn as insurance against an unpredictable future, which turned out to be wise. In November 1924 he was suddenly ejected from the palace by a newly arrived warlord, and subsequently the articles of favourable treatment under which his abdication had taken place were unilaterally revised to hand what remained to the state without compensation.
A nine-month-long inventory was undertaken by Peking University professors and their students (who had to wear special pocketless jackets to prevent further thievery), and its completion in 1926 resulted in a 28-volume work listing more than 1.17 million items. Part of this collection went on display in halls at the north end of the complex in 1925 as the first Palace Museum. The two different museums within the confines of the palace were not united until 1948, and by then most of their collections had gone south.
In February 1933, with Japanese armies poised to occupy Běijīng, the Nationalist government decided to move a large part of the collection, amounting to a total of 19,557 crates. A long caravan of wheelbarrows wound its way to the railway station at Qián Mén, and the crates began a southbound trip by train and ship to Shànghǎi. They stayed in a warehouse until December 1936, before moving to a new exhibition hall in nearby Nánjīng, which had taken over from Běijīng as China’s capital.
But in 1937 the Japanese took Shànghǎi, too, and so the collection was divided into three parts, each setting off in a different direction, the last leaving Nánjīng by one gate as the Japanese entered by another.
A building that had housed part of the collection was bombed flat the day after it left. One group of 7000 boxes ended up in caves which proved too damp, and due to the shortage of trucks their removal to a safer location over snow-covered mountain passes took 48 days and 300 trips. Other boxes went west to Sìchuān Province, crossing five bridgeless rivers and taking two years to reach a safe haven.
Following the defeat of Japan there was just time to bring the three parts together for a quick exhibition in Nánjīng before the collection was re-crated and moved again, just ahead of communist advances, finally arriving in Táiwān with the remains of the Nationalist armies and government in 1949, some crates having been abandoned on the docks to make more room for refugees.
Despite bombings, termites, overturned trucks, and capsized boats, 13,484 cases reached Táiwān, and their contents form 90% of the collection at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which went on display in a new purpose-built facility in 1965, 32 years and more than 10,000km after leaving Beijing. What was left behind returned to Běijīng in 1950, was added to by the ‘donation’ of some collections and the purchase overseas of any items that came up for sale, lost again to sticky-fingered top Party officials, and regained along with the rest of their collections when they fell from power. Some sources say that 2221 cases still remain in storage in Nánjīng.
As a result, much of what is now on display in Běijīng’s Palace Museum is not of imperial origin but has been gathered from elsewhere. Only very recently have there been improvements in the presentation of a small proportion of the collection, much remaining ill-lit and hidden behind glass rendered nearly opaque by smears from the noses of every visitor since opening day. The total display areas are still woefully limited, especially considering that this is supposedly the world’s largest collection of Chinese art. Of maybe 1.8 million items, including perhaps 53,000 paintings, 75,000 works of calligraphy, 16,000 bronzes, and 10,000 sculptures, only about 1% is on display. The greatest collection of Chinese art is in Taipei.
Various displays highlight the patriotism of Chinese who donated their possessions, but much of the collection was acquired through force or given up from fear during various political campaigns against bourgeois things or aspects of traditional culture, such as the pò sì jiù (破四旧, smash the ‘Four Olds’) campaign during the wanton nationwide destruction of the 1966–76 Cultural Revolution. The same movement came close to destroying not only the museum’s collection but the palace itself.
Apologists for weak and vacillating then-Premier Zhōu Ēnlái (周恩来) credit him with responsibility for saving the collection from destruction by Red Guards, although the reality is more complicated. It is said that on 18 August 1966, after the carefully orchestrated mass demonstration in Tiān’ān Mén Square that launched the campaign to smash the ‘Four Olds’ (old ideology, old thought, old habits, and old customs), it was Zhōu who sent troops to prevent the destruction of the collection, although even his best-known biographer does not credit him with this. A plan to smash a lorry through the gates was also foiled the following year, after which an entire battalion took up residence in the palace. The museum remained shut (except for one night) until 5 July 1971, when it reopened in anticipation of a visit by US President Richard Nixon.
Nevertheless, top figures from both the People’s Liberation Army and the ‘Gang of Four’ running the Cultural Revolution helped themselves from the collection, with many items never returned.
The purpose-built National Palace Museum in Taipei holds the world’s second largest collection of Chinese art, including the finest ancient bronzes, calligraphy, and paintings on silk, with 7–8000 pieces from its 650,000-item collection on display at any one time.
That the imperial antiquities reside in Taipei and not Běijīng is a contentious political issue inextricably tied to the question of which is the real China, and whether Táiwān is a separate country. Possession of the collection is regarded by some as evidence of the Táiwān government’s right to rule all China as the original revolutionaries and true successors to the Qīng. The position of museum director brings with it a seat in the cabinet.
The celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Palace Museum in 2005 brought a limited rapprochement, with academics from Taipei attending a conference in Běijīng, and an exchange of catalogues. Talks in February 2009 agreed a limited loan of objects of historical rather than aesthetic value from Běijīng to Taipei, uniting items from the two collections for the first time in 60 years, despite the mainland’s refusal to recognise even the Taiwanese institution’s title of National Palace Museum.
And even during the reign of a fairly pro-Běijīng government in Táiwān there was little prospect of items from Taipei appearing in Běijīng, as this would face heated opposition in the island state, and fears that the treasures would never return.
Return to The Palace Museum or ‘Forbidden City’.
See Forbidden City stories:
Monumental Mismanagement
Where are They Now?
A Storm in a Coffee Cup
The End of the Emperors
The Last Occupant of the Forbidden City
Pride and a Fall
The Ends of the Eunuchs
Links to neighbouring sights around the Imperial City and Tiān’ān Mén Square. Or see Main Index to A Better Guide to Běijīng.
