On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1949, Nanjing was rainy and cold. Now the war situation has become more and more clear, and the situation has been decided! Many people are busy at Nanjing's Xiaguan Wharf, and countless boxes are heavily guarded around the rain cloth, which is in stark contrast to the festive atmosphere of the New Year.
Many people saw a large ship docked at the dockside, and the stevedores at the dock had already held a strike for several days, in order to get the boxes loaded on the ship as soon as possible and leave the port.
The ship's final stop was Taiwan, and the boxes on board were some of the treasures that Chiang Kai-shek had moved out of the Forbidden City. Why didn't Chiang Kai-shek move all the treasures to Taiwan? Thanks also to his illiterate secretary.
History of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Travel to Taiwan, in addition to Alishan, Sun Moon Lake and other attractions to Taipei National Palace is also a very important itinerary, even if many people who have been to the Forbidden City in Beijing will definitely go to Taipei National Palace after going to Taiwan to punch the clock. According to a 2015 data, more than 3 million mainland visitors visited Taipei's National Palace in this year alone.
Compared with the 600-700-year-old history of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the National Palace museum is very young, and most of the collections are treasures that Chiang Kai-shek moved to Taiwan. For more than a year from 1948 to 1949, Chiang Kai-shek sent people to bring more than 300,000 treasures and some precious archives to Taiwan. It was on the basis of these cultural relics that the National Palace museum in Taipei was established.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek attached great importance to the construction of the National Palace in Taipei, and at the beginning a large number of cultural relics were stored in a warehouse in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Song Meiling often went to the warehouse to inspect the cultural relics, and also supervised the construction process of the Taipei National Palace.
The cultural relics of the Forbidden City have been relocated many times
As the Forbidden City that embodies the 5,000-year-old civilization of China, the cultural relics in the collection were relocated many times during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In order to avoid these precious cultural relics and historical materials from being ravaged by war, countless benevolent people have fought with wisdom and courage to protect these cultural relics with their lives so that these cultural relics can avoid war damage.
The size of the Forbidden City today is inseparable from the two receptions of cultural relics. In 1914, the Forbidden City accepted more than 230,000 cultural relics. In 1925, 1.17 million cultural relics were accepted, and it is worth mentioning that this time the cultural relics were received from Ouchi. The Forbidden City, where the emperor lived after the Xinhai Revolution, became a state-owned museum.
Since the 1930s, the situation has gradually become tense. The Events of September 18 became the fuse of war. In order to protect these cultural relics, some of the staff in charge of the Forbidden City advocated moving the cultural relics south, but some people believed that these cultural relics would not be properly protected once they left the Forbidden City.
To this end, the two sides even held a heated discussion, especially some local staff in Beijing are extremely opposed to the southward relocation of cultural relics. When they decided to move south, these people did not cooperate, packing up some useless waste paper and cultural relics of low historical value.
It was not until the war became more and more tense that a consensus was reached on the relocation of cultural relics to the south.
In February 1933, the staff of the Forbidden City packed up many precious cultural relics and moved south. In order to prevent cultural relics from being robbed and damaged, they were not only strictly guarded along the way but also detoured many times, and finally the cultural relics were temporarily stored in Shanghai.
However, after the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, Shanghai fell for a while, and the staff decided to move the cultural relics of the Forbidden City to the west.
In the summer of 1937, a large number of cultural relics had to be hidden in various places due to war, some of which stayed in Changsha, Guiyang and other places for six years.
It is precisely because of the efforts of these staff that a large number of precious collections of the Forbidden City have survived. The westward cultural relics began to be gradually returned to Nanjing in 1946.
Chiang Kai-shek removed the treasure
After 1946, the situation gradually became clear until the overall situation was decided in 1947, and the People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek like a bamboo. Seeing that the general situation was gone, Chiang Kai-shek recognized the reality and planned to hide in Hainan or Taiwan, and after consulting with his staff, decided to flee to Taiwan.
In addition to the personnel arrangements, Chiang Kai-shek and his son began to discuss how to transfer more gold, silver and treasure to Taiwan. The Forbidden City has a large collection of cultural relics, all of which are rare treasures of great value, and Chiang Kai-shek naturally will not let them go.
Including nearly 1,000 boxes of cultural relics moved away on the eve of the Spring Festival in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek has transported nearly 3,000 boxes of cultural relics to Taiwan. The 3,000 boxes of cultural relics were only shipped from a museum in the Forbidden City.
Chiang Kai-shek also removed five cultural relics protection units, including the Central Museum and the Central Library, and shipped out more than 2,400 boxes of cultural relics.
Some of these artifacts are priceless, even unique. This is also why some people once thought that the collection value of the National Palace in Taipei was higher than that of the Forbidden City in Beijing.
Illiterate secretaries do not know treasures
Many people praised the National Palace in Taipei. There are rumors that Taipei's collection is all high-quality cultural relics. Indeed, the true works of Yan Zhenqing, Su Shi, Huai Su and other monks are all in the National Palace in Taipei. These anti-heavenly cultural relics bear witness to China's 5,000 years of splendid civilization.
But it's an exaggeration to say that good things are in Taipei's Forbidden City, as many people say. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek loaded more than 13,700 boxes of cultural relics, but only 20% of them were transported to Taiwan, and the vast majority of precious cultural relics were not transported, thanks to Chiang Kai-shek's illiterate secretary.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek assigned all the work of transporting cultural relics to Hang Liwu. Hang Liwu graduated from the well-known University of London in that era, but he did not know much about cultural relics. The key is to pack so many cultural relics, and it cannot be completed by Hang Liwu alone.
Some Secretariat staff members are also responsible for helping with the packing. Although these people are highly educated, it does not mean that they understand cultural relics, and they can only take away which treasure according to their own feelings, which treasure is valuable.
At that time, the situation was chaotic, and some of the nationalist troops and their families were panicked and desperate to flee for their lives. Another important reason is that the People's Liberation Army is so overwhelming that some cultural relics have not been packed.
The third reason is that some artifacts are too laborious to pack, and there is no way to pack them. At that time it was decided that most of the artifacts were transported by water and air.
Cultural relics are too large and too heavy to transport is extremely inconvenient, so they are not packed. Chiang Kai-shek's father and son's favorite stepmother, Peng Ding, was eventually dumped at the airport because she could not be transported away.
People who say taipei's cultural relics are more valuable obviously don't know history or cultural relics. First of all, the buildings of the Palace Museum in Beijing are themselves cultural relics and have high artistic value.
Secondly, when Chiang Kai-shek fled Taiwan, he took away only a small number of cultural relics, and although some of them were rare treasures, the illiterate secretary who did not know the treasures left most of the more valuable cultural relics.
summary
Emperor Chiang Kai-shek fled in a hurry and removed some of the treasures of the Forbidden City, but in Taiwan, these treasures were properly preserved and cared for, and the National Palace Museum in Taipei was established, which echoed the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Nanjing Museum. These treasures belong to China and have witnessed 5,000 years of splendid Chinese civilization.