According to CCTV News, on April 17, local time, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage successfully recovered 38 lost cultural relics and artworks from the United States. The repatriation ceremony was held at the Chinese Consulate General in New York, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Manhattan handed over 38 pieces of seized Chinese cultural relics and artworks to the Chinese government.
After preliminary identification, experts judged that most of the cultural relics were Tibetan Buddhist cultural relics in the mainland during the Ming and Qing dynasties, involving pagodas, Buddha statues, Buddhist ornaments and other categories, covering copper, clay, ivory, wood and other materials, rich in content, well-preserved, and with important historical, artistic and scientific value.
Swipe left and right to view pictures of artifacts
Under the framework of international cooperation and law, the mainland has successfully facilitated the return of more than 300 batches and more than 150,000 pieces of lost overseas Chinese cultural relics through various methods such as law enforcement cooperation, judicial proceedings, negotiated donations, rescue and collection, etc., and has successfully contributed to the return of more than 300 batches and more than 150,000 pieces of lost overseas Chinese cultural relics since 1949.
The achievement is worth celebrating, but a stinging fact still needs to be remembered: according to incomplete statistics from UNESCO, among the 218 museums in 47 countries around the world, China has lost 1.67 million overseas cultural relics, and the number of Chinese cultural relics lost overseas by the diaspora is 10 times that of the museum.
In other words, the number of cultural relics that have been successfully repatriated so far accounts for only 0.8% of the total number of cultural relics lost overseas.
"I waited in line, waiting for the 'number plate' to 'go home'. ”
For those lost artifacts
Wind and rain
Maybe it's them
Keywords for the past 100 years
The British Museum in London, England, is one of the museums with the largest collection of lost cultural relics in China, with a collection of 23,000 Chinese cultural relics.
Among them, the most famous and heart-wrenching is the work of Gu Kaizhi, a painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
▲ "Female Historian" (detail) Biography of Gu Kai, Tang Dynasty facsimile, ink and color on silk, collection of the British Museum
In 1900, when the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing, Clauren Brown of the 1st Bengal Cavalry Regiment of the British Army stationed in the Summer Palace. Captain K. Johnson took advantage of the chaos to steal the "Female Historian". In 1902, the caretaker of the Painting Department of the British Museum bought the painting for £25 and it entered the British Museum in the 10s of the 20th century.
Since there were almost no Chinese art scholars or painting and calligraphy collection consultants in museums in Europe and the United States at that time, the British Museum "painted the cat and the tiger" and adopted the "Japanese folding screen technique" to preserve Japanese paintings: the original complete "Female Historian" was "dismembered" and framed into a flat plate for display.
▲The exhibition site of the British Museum's "Female Historian".
Although the museum later regretted this mistake 100 years ago, it is impossible to reverse the process even if the most advanced scientific and technological means can be used to analyze the damage.
It is not only "The Female Historian" who has been "dismembered". The "Three Bodhisattva Murals", originally stored in Qingliang Temple in Xingtang County, Hebei Province, was bought by the British in 1925 for 100,000 oceans, cut into 12 pieces and shipped to London, and later purchased by private collectors and collected in the British Museum in 1927.
▲The "Three Bodhisattvas Mural" now in the British Museum.
The Hamburg Museum of Ethnology has a Chinese lyre from 1789 that is housed in a much larger case, which predates the guqin by about 50 years. According to an old catalogue card from the time of its accession, a German soldier may have obtained the instrument and its case in the winter of 1900-1901. The catalogue card also reads: "There are seven musical instruments, and the rest are made into firewood." ”
......
In addition to these cultural relics that can be traced back to history with relative accuracy, how many other cultural relics lost overseas have been damaged and burned when they were looted? Although it is not yet known, we know that every time a new clue is discovered, it must be "weeping blood".
A weeping national treasure, always waiting for a ticket home.
At present, there are three main ways to return lost cultural relics in China, namely repurchase, donation and recourse.
Although more than 300 batches and more than 150,000 pieces of lost Chinese cultural relics have been returned, even so, the road of cultural relics "going home" is still long and bumpy: the return requests of the countries where the cultural relics were lost are either rejected, perfunctory, delayed, until they are not resolved.
For example, in 2002, a number of well-known museums in the West jointly issued the "Universal Museum Value Declaration" to resist the demand for cultural and cultural recourse abroad. This declaration was clearly opposed by a large number of cultural and cultural outlets, including China.
But even so, the state has not given up on recourse to cultural relics lost abroad.
In 2020, the Chinese government came to a successful conclusion in a 25-year cross-border recourse for cultural relics. Successfully recovered 68 pieces of smuggled cultural relics that had been lost in the UK for 25 years.
One day in February 1995, the Cultural Affairs Department of the Chinese Embassy in Britain learned that a large number of suspected Chinese cultural relics had been discovered in the course of solving an international cultural relics crime case. In March of the same year, the British police intercepted a total of seven truckloads of smuggled antiquities brought to the UK by an international smuggling syndicate. Later, it was identified by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China as smuggled Chinese cultural relics.
Subsequently, under the unified deployment of the State Council, multiple departments formed a joint team to recover these lost cultural relics through various forms such as law enforcement cooperation, civil litigation, and negotiation and negotiation. This also fired the first shot fired by the mainland at the national level to use legal means to recover the lost overseas Chinese cultural relics.
After more than three years, the Chinese side went through a complicated and arduous process of evidence collection, litigation and negotiation, and the criminal suspects agreed to return more than 3,000 cultural relics, which were shipped back to China in 1998. However, due to the complexity of the case, there were still 68 pieces of artifacts involved in the case that could not resolve the ownership dispute through legal means and had been detained in the British police warehouse.
In the more than 20 years since then, China has never given up its recourse to the 68 lost cultural relics. In January 2020, the London Metropolitan Police contacted the Chinese Embassy in the UK, informing them that the cultural relics involved in the case had been defined as ownerless because the whereabouts of the purchaser were unknown and the seizure time had exceeded the prosecution period, and offered to return the cultural relics to the Chinese government.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage immediately organized the resumption of the recourse mechanism and issued a letter of recourse to the British side, formally requesting the return on behalf of the Chinese government. On July 29, 2020, the Chinese side went to the British warehouse to conduct an on-site inventory, and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage finally determined that a total of 68 cultural relics had been recovered, and the London Metropolitan Police agreed to return all of them.
On the afternoon of October 20, 2020, these 68 cultural relics arrived safely at Beijing Capital International Airport on Air China flight CA938. That night, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage also organized relevant units to complete the inspection and storage and sealing work overnight. So far, these 68 cultural relics that have been adrift overseas for more than 20 years have finally officially returned to the motherland.
In addition to the recovery of cultural relics at the national level, there are also many "capable people" who promote the return of cultural relics to their homeland, and they use their own actions to help the lost cultural relics "return to their homeland":
Swipe up and down to read
▼▼
In 2018, the Chinese-American Wang Chunjie and his wife donated a statue of the king of the seventh cave of the Yungang Grottoes in the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Shanxi Museum, which is the second time that the two have donated the national treasures from the Yungang Grottoes back to the Jin Dynasty.
In the same year, an overseas buyer bought the lost bronze artifact "Tiger Ring" from the Old Summer Palace at the Canterbury Auction House in Kent, England for 410,000 pounds (about 3.66 million yuan), and donated the artifact to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage unconditionally. The "Tiger Ring", which has been living abroad for more than 100 years, has successfully "returned home".
In 2019, entrepreneur Stanley Ho officially donated the bronze statue of the horse's head that had been lost for 160 years to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and the Old Summer Palace ushered in the first important cultural relics lost overseas to "go home".
In 2021, Zhang Rong, a native of Hangzhou, donated the head of the Buddha on the north wall of the eighth cave of Tianlongshan Grottoes to China free of charge, and met the people of the whole country for the first time.
In the same year, Ms. Suzanne Fratus of California, USA, donated two Ming Dynasty terracotta figurines from mainland China to the Shanghai Museum, and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage hosted a donation ceremony.
Countless cultural relics that have been lost overseas are embarking on their way home in this way.
Changsha bullet library Chu silk book
Han Dynasty sword
Shang Hu cannibal 卣
Shang Shuangyang Zun
......
Forbidden weapons
Emperor and Empress Buddha Figure
Xiaoxiang lying tour map
Engraving of the title page of the Tang King Kong Sutra
A piece of national treasure lost overseas
He has experienced the humiliation of a weak China in modern times
It also tells the depth of Chinese culture
May all of them still drift away
Be able to return to their homeland as soon as possible
See us soon!
Resources
[1] "Baby Comes Home: 150,000 Pieces of Chinese Cultural Relics Lost Overseas Have Returned". CCTV News. 2024.4.18
[2] "How far is the road of the national treasure "home"?". Cultural and Museum Circle. 2023.9.18
[3] "Why was the 'Female Historian' Divided by the British Museum?". Oriental Morning Post. 2014.7.24
[4] "Expected to be Returned! German Museum Investigates Chinese Cultural Relics Looted by the Eight-Nation Alliance". Wenbo Shanxi. 2024.4.10
[5] "Nearly 10 Million Chinese Cultural Relics Lost Overseas, and the Homeland Is Hard to Return!Why Lost, How to Go Home". Qianjiang Evening News. 2023.9.10
[6] "The Bronze "Tiger Ring" Has Gone Home! How Much Do You Know About the National Treasures That Have Been Returned to China Over the Years?". People's Daily Online. 2018.12.13
END Editor: Ke Yinfan Review: Zhong Zhen Review: Liu Hao
▼Pay attention to "Youth Shenzhen" WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Station B, and Video Account