A string of recent stories in the Chinese press have sparked a new wave of public scrutiny of Beijing’s Palace Museum, home to a number of relics considered precious in China, further complicating a contentious debate around whether or not the many artifacts that have been taken or smuggled out of the country should be returned.
An article by Chinese business magazine Caixin this week alleging that the Palace Museum, better known outside China as the Forbidden City, covered up an accident involving the immersion of a Qing Dynasty wooden screen in water—which the museum denies— has stirred a new round of controversy less than two weeks after museum officials acknowledged that a 1,000-year-old porcelain plate was damaged by mistake while being examined.
When asked about the wooden screen, a public relations official at the Palace Museum told The Wall Street Journal Thursday that “we have confirmed that the screen is now at our cultural relic technology department for regular restoration and dust abatement, and no damage has been made as far as we know.”
Still, the reports prompted doubts of the government’s ability to protect relics from China’s past, many of which are centuries old. “When I look at those shabby doors in the Forbidden City, I feel it’s lucky that there are Chinese items in the Louvre and the British Museum. Though they don’t belong to us, at least they are still there,” wrote Qing Xin Ya Xuan, a user of Twitter-like microblogging website, Sina Weibo.
The British Museum, which has a large collection of Chinese artifacts, has been accused by Chinese state media of being one of the world leaders in acquisitions of artifacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace.
“Maybe they’ve covered up many similar mistakes, who knows?” wrote Sina Weibo user Qing Qi Lu Luo. “Relics preserved in the Palace Museum don’t just belong to the museum, but to all Chinese people,” wrote another, Chufeng72. “It embodies too much historical heritage and culture,” the user wrote, adding that those responsible for damaging such artifacts should be severely punished.
The Palace Museum “oversees national treasures, but who oversees them?” wrote a user called Royal Dudu. “Could it be that our future generations will have to learn our history from pictures?” wrote one called Mei’er_ling. The relics “managed to outlast time, but were damaged by pigs,” said another, Shanwei People in Shantou.
The Palace Museum was founded in 1925 and receives millions of visitors a year, mostly from within China. Though it is said to house more than a million cultural relics, a vast number of items are scattered in museums across the globe – including in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan — which Chinese officials and collectors are keen to have returned to China.
The Chinese government has accused auction houses of selling questionable objects, including a controversy in 2000 over the auction of bronze animal heads looted by British and French forces in the nineteenth century. Some of bronze heads were eventually purchased by state-owned Poly Group and have been repatriated. In 2009, Chinese auction house founder Cai Mingchao bid $40 million for two of the bronze sculptures and refused to pay for them, saying it was a gesture to express his belief that the works should be returned to China for free. The art dealer was praised by some at the time as a national hero.
The latest controversy seems likely to lend ammunition to critics who argue the missing relics are better off staying where they are, though some feel that outrage over the treatment of cultural objects is an overreaction. Microblog user Skinny Waist wrote: “For people in this country, there is no security for our livelihood or survival, why make a big deal over some stupid broken plate?”
