Deciphering | 50 years of cultural relics diplomacy, how can China and the world "exhibit" and "see" each other?
China News Service, Beijing, 4 January Title: After 50 years of cultural relics diplomacy, how can China and the world "exhibit" and "see" each other?
China News Weekly reporter Bao Anqi
In 1971, China, which was still in a closed state, began to prepare for the exhibition of cultural relics unearthed in the People's Republic of China, and in the process established the "Overseas Cultural Relics Exhibition Studio", the predecessor of the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center. Since then, China's "cultural relics diplomacy" has gone through 50 years. How China interacts with the world through the special cultural and aesthetic carrier of cultural relics, The China News Agency's "East and West Question" interviewed a number of "people who have jumped into the game" to try to depict a picture that spans half a century.
Data map: The Palace Museum in Beijing. Photo by Du Yang, a reporter from China News Service
Exhibition of excavated artifacts from the 1970s
Cultural relics diplomacy originated in July 1971 at the Cining Palace of the Forbidden City, "Exhibition of Some Excavated Cultural Relics Since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". The exhibition opened on the eve of Kissinger's secret visit to China, and was a cultural relics card played by Zhou Enlai.
On December 4 of that year, Wang Yeqiu, then the head of the State Council's Tubokou and later appointed director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, came to the Wuying Hall of the Forbidden City to mobilize all the staff of the preparatory group for the overseas exhibition.
He said that after the foreign guests saw the exhibition of excavated cultural relics held at the Forbidden City, the response was very strong. The Japanese side proposed to Premier Zhou Enlai that it hoped that the excavated cultural relics would be exhibited to Japan, but Zhou Enlai did not agree, saying that he would wait until after the collapse of the anti-China Sato cabinet. The French parliamentary delegation and others also made such a request, and Zhou Enlai agreed, saying that the de Gaulle government was very friendly to China, and that we could go to the exhibition of cultural relics, and if we wanted to go, it would be real, and it would be interesting to go to the reproduction.
Wang Yeqiu also said that it is necessary to do a good job in the exhibition and refute the fallacy of the imperialists slandering Chinese destroying cultural relics. Some people have proposed that foreigners should be charged ticket fees, and Wang Yeqiu said that this time we are "cultural relics diplomacy" and we must consider it from a political point of view and do not charge entrance fees.
The first stop of the exhibition is France, the second stop is the United Kingdom, with a total of 493 cultural relics, 27 reproductions and 135 auxiliary exhibits. Considering that it is to go to Western countries for exhibitions, the selection criteria are more artistic. The most eye-catching of the exhibits are the golden jade clothes of Liu Sheng, the King of Zhongshan Jing, and Queen Dou Xuan, excavated from the Han Tomb in Mancheng, Hebei Province, and the "Ma Ta Fei Yan" newly excavated from the Leitai Han Tomb in Wuwei, Gansu.
Fang Yi, minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation, Qiao Guanhua and Yu Zhan, vice ministers of foreign affairs, and Wu Qingtong, secretary of Premier Zhou Enlai, made a final review of the exhibition.
On May 8, 1973, the "Exhibition of Excavated Cultural Relics of the People's Republic of China" was first opened at the Small Palace of the Musée des Artes de Paris. Just before the opening ceremony, Su Bai, a member of the delegation, suddenly found that the map of China in the exhibition hall and in the catalogue was based on the McMahon Line as the boundary between China and India. The Chinese side immediately negotiated, proposing that if the map was not removed, the door would not be opened on the same day, and the two sides had a long stalemate, and finally the French side made concessions.
The exhibition lasted for four months and reached 365,000 visitors. A second stop was then held at the Royal College of Art in London. Both Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Heath visited the exhibition.
After that, the exhibits were diverted to North America and exhibited in Canada and the United States. The exhibition in the United States lasted more than eight months and reached 1.8 million people, making it the largest in this round of exhibitions.
The "Exhibition of Cultural Relics Unearthed by the People's Republic of China" is divided into two sets of exhibits, one set went to Europe and the United States, and the other set went to Japan after the restoration of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. The exhibition spanned 15 countries and territories until 1978.
"I feel a little ridiculous about the amount of money"
At the end of the 1970s, the tide of reform and opening up came, and the cultural relics diplomacy model of the "national system" was difficult to sustain.
In 1979, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage issued a request for instructions to the State Council. The report said that the incomplete statistics of the audience of cultural relics exhibitions abroad reached more than eight million person-times, which played a positive role in publicizing and developing friendly relations with foreign countries, but the cost was also very large, and it generally cost 40,000 to 50,000 yuan to prepare an exhibition, and 300,000 to 400,000 yuan to bear international freight. The report suggests that in the future, it is necessary to organize exhibitions of cultural relics abroad for a fee, so as to meet the needs of national modernization and earn foreign exchange for the country.
After the report was approved by Hu Yaobang, the State Council approved it. The "Overseas Cultural Relics Exhibition Studio" was changed to "China Foreign Cultural Relics Exhibition Company", and since then, the organization has changed several times, and in 1992 it was renamed as the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, which is also the current name.
Yang Yang and Zhao Gushan graduated from the Department of Archaeology of Peking University in 1982 and 1985 respectively, and came to work in this unit of "blossoming outside the wall and incense outside the wall". The office is located in the Wuying Hall of the Forbidden City.
Exhibitions of cultural relics must be subordinated to the overall diplomatic situation. When going abroad to hold exhibitions, it is necessary to report to the local Chinese embassy.
Data map: Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes landmark building "nine floors". Photo by China News Service reporter Feng Zhijun
In July 1988, Zhao Gushan went abroad for the first time and went to Japan to participate in the "Dunhuang Western Xia Kingdom Exhibition". The exhibition was planned by the Japanese side to coincide with the tv series "Dunhuang", which was popular in Japan at the time and based on Yasushi Inoue's novel of the same name. In the 1980s and 1990s, Japan was the most active country in holding exhibitions of Chinese cultural relics. After the two sides negotiated, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage issued a letter of introduction, and the staff of the exchange center accompanied the Japanese guests to museums in Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and other places to select cultural relics from the Western Xia period.
At that time, to organize an outreach, the first thing to do was to transfer cultural relics from all over the country to Beijing. The enthusiasm of local museums is very high, one is to have extra-budgetary loan exhibition fee income, and the other is to have the opportunity to send accompanying personnel abroad.
Zhao Gushan recalled that the time to go to Japan to hold an exhibition was the richest time in Japan after the signing of the "Plaza Agreement", "so much money that the Japanese themselves feel a little ridiculous." The exhibition ticket is 1,000 yen, about 60 yuan, which is more than his monthly salary, but the Japanese are very enthusiastic and line up to buy tickets to see the exhibition.
"I think the Mentality of the Japanese at that time was looking down on us." Zhao Gushan said. However, the Japanese are very serious about their work, and the equipment is very advanced. At that time, the gap between China and Western countries was huge, and the shock to him was huge.
A benchmark exhibition
The "Chinese Five Thousand Years civilization art exhibition" held in the United States and Spain in 1998 can be described as a benchmark exhibition in the climax of outreach in the 1990s.
The exhibits came from 12 provinces and cities across the country, and the final total insurance valuation was 300 million US dollars, which was the highest valuation of China's cultural relics outreach insurance ever. Because the insurance valuation was too high, the United States applied for a government guarantee from the Art Committee under Congress.
On February 4, 1998, the "Chinese 5,000 Years of Civilization Art Exhibition" was officially opened in New York. Liu Zhongde, Minister of Culture, Li Daoyu, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, led the Chinese delegation, United Nations Secretary-General Annan and important political figures in the United States to attend the opening ceremony. Due to the large number of celebrities who asked to attend, the opening event alone was held for three days.
On opening day, the Guggenheim Museum was beautifully furnished. On all sides of the hall hung four Chinese banners of blue, white, black and red, on which were written in cursive the four sentences from Cao Zhi's "Divine Turtle Endowment": "The dragon is in Dongyue, the white tiger roars in Xigang, The Xuanwu is gathered in The Cold Gate, and the Suzaku inhabits Nanxiang." "In the middle of each table is a huge vase with Xifu begonias in it, and it is full of spring. Ancient Chinese artworks are displayed in each floor of the exhibition hall and spiral corridor, appearing mysterious and gorgeous under the carefully arranged background and lighting.
The exhibition lasted for four months and was visited by 450,000 people. As the Cultural Counsellor of the U.S. Embassy in China said, there were two major hot spots in Sino-US cultural exchanges in 1998, the screening of the American blockbuster "Titanic" in China and the exhibition of China's five-thousand-year civilization in the United States.
The exhibition closed in June, warming up clinton's visit to China. That month, Clinton led a huge delegation of 1,200 people to pay a state visit to China, which was a return visit to Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States in 1997 and marked a low point in Sino-US relations.
Subsequently, the exhibits were exhibited at the overseas branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which was also successful. The cultural relics returned to Beijing unscathed in the autumn of that year, achieving the "two million" results: the number of visitors exceeded 1 million, and the income exceeded 1 million US dollars.
Due to the sensational effect of this exhibition, museums across the United States have submitted applications to hold exhibitions of Chinese cultural relics. From 1999 to 2005, China held a series of exhibitions in various parts of the United States, such as "Chinese Archaeological Golden Age Exhibition", "Ancient Chinese Bronze Musical Instrument Exhibition", "Ancient Relics - Sichuan Sanxingdui Cultural Relics Exhibition", "Silk Road Exhibition", "Tibet Treasure Exhibition" and "Towards the Tang Dynasty Exhibition".
Infographic: Artifacts unearthed from Sanxingdui exhibit restored gold masks. China News Service reporter An Yuan photographed
In 1972, Wang Limei entered the Forbidden City, a guiding group set up specifically for receiving foreign guests, and in 1978, she entered the Foreign Affairs Department of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, serving as the director of the Foreign Affairs Office for many years, and was jokingly called the "Elder of the Seven Dynasties", reading through the ups and downs of China's cultural relics and foreign affairs work in the past 50 years. Wang Limei said that a successful cultural relics exhibition has such an influence that people did not expect, and the relevant domestic leaders have also become more aware of the great potential of cultural relics exhibitions in external publicity, and have paid more attention to this.
The new diplomatic situation of cultural relics is to be broken
The 1990s was a booming era of cultural heritage outreach, and there was also chaos. Wang Limei said that at that time, the enthusiasm of all localities to hold cultural relics exhibitions abroad was very high, and it was usually foreign parties who went directly to the localities to talk about the exhibition, and after the negotiations were made, they reported to the State Administration of Cultural Relics for approval. Localities are willing to come up with good things in order to carry out out outexplorability, and they often respond to foreign parties' requests, and sometimes even break through the bottom line, such as reporting first-class cultural relics as second-level cultural relics to avoid management.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage has organized expert discussions for many times, and in January 2002, it issued the Catalogue of the First Batch of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Going Abroad (Abroad) for Exhibition. In the past, 64 precious cultural relics (groups) such as Liu Sheng, king of Zhongshan Jing in Hebei Province, the wrong gold and silver four dragons and four phoenixes, and the bronze sacred tree and the big jade zhang of Sanxingdui, which had been exhibited abroad, were permanently banned from going abroad. In 2012 and 2013, the second and third batches of cultural relics prohibited from going abroad (abroad) were promulgated successively. The rules for the outreach of cultural relics have gradually matured.
The bigger change is that the limelight of the "inbound exhibition" has begun to overshadow the "outbound exhibition".
Zhao Gushan, who is now the director of the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, recalled that since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China has begun to hold exhibitions of foreign cultural relics in China. By around 2016, the exhibition gradually occupied the C position. Because the people have money, the museum also has a part of the funds to introduce foreign exhibitions, so the domestic demand is strong, and gradually formed a cultural "super".
He told reporters that the current foreign economy is generally sluggish, there is no part of the funds to invite China to hold exhibitions, and the domestic finance is also tightening, so the exchange center is now facing great difficulties.
He feels that what is most needed now is to calm down and calm down, show the latest archaeological discoveries and research results to foreign countries, and introduce China's core values and excellent traditional culture to foreign countries.
Tang Yisong, founder of Huaxie International Treasure Freight Service Co., Ltd., which specializes in the transportation of cultural relics and works of art, said that in the past six or seven years, the overseas market has shrunk, the traditional cultural relics outreach model has been reduced, and there are even cases where the Chinese side pays for exhibitions abroad. In terms of exhibitions in China, the introduction of a cultural relics exhibition is often not as attractive to young people as the introduction of a contemporary art exhibition.
Infographic: People visit the National Museum to visit the collection of Sanxingdui cultural relics "bronze mask". Photo by China News Service reporter Hou Yu
But he is still very optimistic about the future of the cultural relics exhibition market, "the current government attaches more importance to cultural relics than ever before." He believes that the current situation of international relations is not good, but cultural relics exhibitions will certainly develop in the future, because cultural relics exchanges have always been the most infectious, just as China's "cultural relics diplomacy" infected the people of the world 50 years ago.
Wang Limei also believes that the role of cultural relics exchange cannot be replaced by any other form of cultural exchange. After she retired as the director of the World Art Museum, she thought about how to attract more people, especially teenagers, into the museum to see the essence of world art. She said that we should let children contact and absorb the world's diverse cultures from an early age, because it is culture that determines our vision and thoughts, which is a subtle and silent force.
"General Secretary Xi Jinping recently proposed a very important concept called 'looking at the world at a glance'. We feel so much about that! Yang Yang, an expert on cultural relics outreach and former deputy director of the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, said. (End)