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posted Wednesday, 15 March 2006
When most people are asked about China, there are a number of images that people think of, and one of the most prominent is that of China being a country with a long and proud history.
However, one of the reasons that this image comes so readily to mind is not because of any effort of the Chinese people. Instead, it is largely due to the fact that a many of the physical epitaphs of this long and proud history have been systematically removed from China, by generations of foreign interlopers, and have been put on display in museums and private collections around the world.
Naturally, this is something that a lot of Chinese are none to happy about.
This is where the 'the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program' steps up to the plate.
The Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program?
The Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program is a Mainland Chinese NGO and subsidiary of the China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture.
It was founded in October 2002 and has since dedicated itself to locating Chinese cultural artifacts that were taken by foreigners, and to raising the funds necessary to return them to the Mainland..
As part of this ongoing mission, the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program have, this week, announced that they are about to embark on a substantial artifact cataloging program.
Although details are sketchy at present, organization representatives have announced that they are to begin searching overseas antique and antiquities expositions in order better assess the market for Chinese relics, with the eventual aim of locating artifacts that are 'of significant importance' and returning them to China.
According to Niu Xianfeng, a senior figure with the group, the expedition will begin in Asia this May before expanding to cover Europe and potentially the US.
In addition to seeking out and retrieving lost relics, the group is also to be accompanied by a group of Chinese antiquities and craft experts, who will be providing advice and information on Chinese arts and crafts.
What Came Before?
China and Chinese groups have previously made a number of formal and informal requests for the return of Chinese artifacts from overseas collections, but have, for the largest part, been turned down or met with requests to pay the market price for artifacts.
The most notable of these occasions was in 2002, shortly after the founding of the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program, when curators and officials from 18 international institutes issued a joint declaration in which they declined calls for the wholesale return of Chinese artifacts in their possession.
China had claimed that artifacts in the museums possession had been stolen or looted from China, by foreigners, and thus should be returned. Stating that refusal to return artifacts was in breach of a United Nations treaty (Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property), which mandates signatory nations to return artifacts that were plundered during times of war.
Legally, however, the treaty is only binding for items obtained after 1970, and does not cover most Chinese relics.
Institutes involved in the joint declaration included France's Louvre, America's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Spain's Prado Museum.
Buying back History
While relatively unknown outside of interested circles, the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program is not alone in its endeavors to return Chinese artifacts to China.
In recent years, a number of Chinese businesses and business men have made a concerted effort to recover Chinese artifacts, and have repeatedly moved to use their new found wealth in order to 'buy back' culturally important items as they appear in auction around the world.
At the forefront of this effort have been organizations like the China-Poly Group, which, in 2000, famously 'brought back' three 18th century bronze Zodiac statues at auctions.
The statues, a Boar's head brought at the Sotheby's auction house, and an Ox and a Monkey's head brought at the Christie's auction house, were originally part of a water feature at the the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
They were stolen by British and French soldiers when they sacked the site in the 1860s.
A fourth Zodiac statue in the set, a Tiger's head, was later brought at auction, from a New York collection, by Macao based Casino millionaire Stanley Ho
Ho later donated the statue to China-Poly as a 'gesture of good will'.
Accounts of the prices paid for these artifacts vary.
Some sources put the combined values of the Pig, Ox and Monkey heads at half a million US Dollars, and the Tiger's head at three quarters of a million US Dollars.
Other sources have, however, put the three statue's purchase price at between $US4 and $US5 Million and the Tiger's head at $US1 Million.
The lower of the two figures is converted from Hong Kong Dollars.
Why should Chinese buy back what is already theirs?
While many wealthy Chinese have coveted the face and attention borough to them by publicly 'buying back' China's heritage, others in China have suggested that they might be doing more harm than good. With some observers warning that the large amounts of money being expended by some groups may actually exasperate problems by driving up the price of Chinese artifacts on the open market.
A situation that would likely encourage the theft or sale of artifacts already in China, and would certainly push the price of many artifacts out of reach of less wealthy Mainland interests. Thus depriving China of harming efforts to keep relics in China and damaging efforts to return lost relics.
Other observers have also voiced that Beijing should be engaged in rigorous legal actions action, rather than sitting back and allowing business to take the lead, and have condemned what they see China 'buying back' items that rightfully belonged to the Chinese people anyway.
As such, these groups have called on Beijing to formally step up efforts to demand the wholesale return of relics, and to use both the legal system, and political, pressure to force foreign museums and collectors to 'hand-over' Chinese relics.
As would be expected, this suggestion has caused a great deal of concern in some circles, and have lead to fears that Beijing might soon launch 'a legal crusade' in an attempt to force private collectors and historical institutions to return artifacts that it believes were wrongfully taken.
Property and Propriety
While agreeing that China does have an indisputable and inalienable right to have looted artifacts returned to it, observers have warned that a program of legal claims, calling for the return of artifacts, has the potential to turn into an accusation filled farce because of two simple facts:
1) A substantive proportion of 'stolen Chinese artifacts' were not considered to have been stolen at the time that they were removed from China.
2) The origins of many artifacts, particularly smaller items, are not clear, or are disputed.
Indeed, although invading Japanese soldiers and colonial western imperialists did unlawfully remove many Chinese treasures, many other artifacts were traded legally by merchants and even brought by colonists and 'free spending imperialist soldiers' looking for trinkets to send home as souvenirs.
Many more artifacts were also sold under duress, sold by parties whom historians feel had no right to sell them, or have disputed origins. All of which make it almost impossible to tell if many artifacts were looted or if they were legally exported.
In this light, critics have warned that, were China to take wholesale legal action, disputes could break out that have the potential to substantively tarnish the relationships between Chinese and foreign institutes. Damaging China's image in the eyes of the foreign public, and making collectors and museums less likely to reach acceptable compromises on the return of relics in the future.
While largely speculative at present, such concerns are not without their presidents.
For decades, the British Museum, one of Europe's most prestigious institutions, has been engaged in a bitter dispute with Greece over a number of statues, known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles, which were borough legally and transported to Britain during a time when the marbles held little value to Greece, but which were demanded back later when their cultural value was more greatly appreciated.
Similarly, there are many outstanding cases in Europe and the US regarding artworks and cultural treasures that were claimed to have been looted by the Nazi during WWII.
Some of which have been resold many times since their original theft, with the current owners being unwilling to part with relics on the grounds that they brought them legally and were unaware of their status as 'war booty', and others voicing that many artifacts are being illegally claimed, without the promise of financial compensation, by greedy descendants of their original owners seeking to reclaim property that was sold or traded legally, rather than stolen.
Naturally, many of these fears, of disputes over artifacts, center on Japan and Britain. Both of which are known to have looted a great many cultural items from China during their respective colonial periods, but both of which are also known to have historically coveted Chinese artifacts as a sign of cultural advancement, and to have had a long trading relationship with China during which time they legally imported many artifacts.
Buying History, or Buying Hatred?
In addition to fears over potential acrimony if China were to launch a legal campaign, some observers have also criticized moves to 'return Chinese artifacts to China', as being a sign of China's growing nationalism and, as such, have accused proponents of this cause of supporting it in order to create 'a sense of united outrage' designed specifically to rouse nationalist sentiment, and of promoting the idea of 'looted treasures' in order further the mindset that all of China's present day problems are the result of 'wicked and exploitative foreigners'.
Claims of links between relic recovery and China's growing nationalism have however been vigorously denied by some academics, who have voiced that China is simply moving to protect its own heritage, as any country would, and who have proffered the suggestion that recent returns result from increased awareness of the problem of 'cultural leakage', as well as from the increased ability of Chinese business and businessmen to actively 'buy back' items that were previously out of their price range.
Though disputed, the idea of this being a nationalist backed move has been given particular validity, in the eyes of some, by the fact that the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program has chosen to launch its 'cataloging drive' in the cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. All of which are located in neighboring Japan.
For historically understandable reasons, Japan's past transgressions against China are commonly targeted by Chinese nationalists seeking to rally support.
Ironically though, while Japan was probably chosen as a starting point by the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program because it is far easier for Chinese to travel there than countries like the US, which is currently using the threat of Arab terrorism to place draconian visa restrictions on Chinese, and because has a long history of legally and illegally collecting and trading in Chinese artifacts, not to mention because of possible nationalist ties, Japan is actually home to very few of the items at the top of China's repatriation list.
In reality, many of the 'looted' items that China most desires to be return home, including the paintings, jade carvings and bronze works of the Chinese 'Imperial collection', and the Bronze Horse head statue that accompanies the Zodiac bronzes brought by China-Polly, are currently located in Chinese-Taiwan rather than Japan.
Leaving the artifacts within 'greater China' as claimed by Beijing, but still outside of direct Mainland control. Effectively putting them in 'foreign hands' withouth them actually being in foreign hands.
Other items, including the much coveted Bronze Rabbit and Mouse head Zodiac statues, from the Old Summer Palaice, are currently located in France. While many more items are located in Museums in Britain and the US.
Leaving Japan as little more of a convenient 'market sample', and a nationalist rallying point, than a means to an end.
Coincidentally, and in the face of claims that the return of artifacts has little to do with nationalism, some China watchers have felt compelled to direct observers attention towards China-Polly's involvement in the return of artifacts..
While it lists itself as being a communications and development group, China-Polly is better known as an arm dealer which was spun off from the PLA in 1999.
A fact which gives it solid nationalist credentials.
The Numbers
According to statistics touted by the Chinese Government, there are currently over 16 million Chinese 'cultural relics' in foreign hands.
Approximately 10 percent of these artifacts are believed to be housed in museums around the world while the rest are thought to be owned by private collectors and or to be in the hands of retailers.
These statistics are, however, disputed and do not extensively distinguish between artifacts which were stolen by invaders and occupiers, artifacts which were legitimately sold by their owners or creators, and artifacts that were made exclusively for export and thus hold no cultural/historical value or significance to the Chinese people.
Irony and Infamy
Ironically, while China is making increased efforts to reclaim artifacts that it believes were stolen from it by foreigners, many of the most recent artifacts to have left China were, and still are being, stolen by native Chinese, and then sold on to both knowing and unknowing foreigners.
Many such items are taken from temples, tombs, and archaeological, excavation each year.
In some instances, those stealing Chinese artifacts, and selling them on to foreigners, have even been found to be those assigned with the task of protecting them.
In 2002, Li Haitao, was detained after being found to have stolen 158 artifacts from the 外八廟
(Waibamiao/ Eight outer temples) museum, 承德 (Chengde). At the time, Li was the Head of Security for the complex.
Li was later sentenced to death. Two men, Wang Xiaoguang, Yan Feng, who accused of helping him to smuggle and sell the stole artifcats, were sentenced to 7 and 5 years imprisonment while another two accomplices, Zhang Huazhang and Chen Fengwei were sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.
Many of the items stolen by Li are believed to have been sold through western auction houses operating out of Hong Kong.
Additionally, a significant portion of the artifact, demarcated as being Chinese artifacts in foreign hands, are not in fact Chinese, but are instead of Tibetan origin, and were, again, looted and sold on by Chinese.
However, one of the reasons that this image comes so readily to mind is not because of any effort of the Chinese people. Instead, it is largely due to the fact that a many of the physical epitaphs of this long and proud history have been systematically removed from China, by generations of foreign interlopers, and have been put on display in museums and private collections around the world.
Naturally, this is something that a lot of Chinese are none to happy about.
This is where the 'the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program' steps up to the plate.
The Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program?
The Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program is a Mainland Chinese NGO and subsidiary of the China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture.
It was founded in October 2002 and has since dedicated itself to locating Chinese cultural artifacts that were taken by foreigners, and to raising the funds necessary to return them to the Mainland..
| "We want to retrieve the lost artworks, because they belong to this country and its culture. They originated in China, and China is where they should be, forever. Their cultural value can be appreciated by the world, but they should be preserved in their home countries" Zhang Yongnian, Director, Lost cultural relics recovery program (2003) |
As part of this ongoing mission, the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program have, this week, announced that they are about to embark on a substantial artifact cataloging program.
Although details are sketchy at present, organization representatives have announced that they are to begin searching overseas antique and antiquities expositions in order better assess the market for Chinese relics, with the eventual aim of locating artifacts that are 'of significant importance' and returning them to China.
According to Niu Xianfeng, a senior figure with the group, the expedition will begin in Asia this May before expanding to cover Europe and potentially the US.
In addition to seeking out and retrieving lost relics, the group is also to be accompanied by a group of Chinese antiquities and craft experts, who will be providing advice and information on Chinese arts and crafts.
What Came Before?
China and Chinese groups have previously made a number of formal and informal requests for the return of Chinese artifacts from overseas collections, but have, for the largest part, been turned down or met with requests to pay the market price for artifacts.
The most notable of these occasions was in 2002, shortly after the founding of the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program, when curators and officials from 18 international institutes issued a joint declaration in which they declined calls for the wholesale return of Chinese artifacts in their possession.
| "The objects and monumental works that were installed decades and even centuries ago in museums throughout Europe and America were acquired under conditions that are not comparable with current ones" Joint Declaration (19 December 2002) |
China had claimed that artifacts in the museums possession had been stolen or looted from China, by foreigners, and thus should be returned. Stating that refusal to return artifacts was in breach of a United Nations treaty (Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property), which mandates signatory nations to return artifacts that were plundered during times of war.
| “If the relic is stolen or was taken out of China illegally then it clearly should be returned to the motherland" Forbidden City Museum, Beijing |
Legally, however, the treaty is only binding for items obtained after 1970, and does not cover most Chinese relics.
Institutes involved in the joint declaration included France's Louvre, America's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Spain's Prado Museum.
Buying back History
While relatively unknown outside of interested circles, the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program is not alone in its endeavors to return Chinese artifacts to China.
In recent years, a number of Chinese businesses and business men have made a concerted effort to recover Chinese artifacts, and have repeatedly moved to use their new found wealth in order to 'buy back' culturally important items as they appear in auction around the world.
At the forefront of this effort have been organizations like the China-Poly Group, which, in 2000, famously 'brought back' three 18th century bronze Zodiac statues at auctions.
The statues, a Boar's head brought at the Sotheby's auction house, and an Ox and a Monkey's head brought at the Christie's auction house, were originally part of a water feature at the the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
They were stolen by British and French soldiers when they sacked the site in the 1860s.
A fourth Zodiac statue in the set, a Tiger's head, was later brought at auction, from a New York collection, by Macao based Casino millionaire Stanley Ho
Ho later donated the statue to China-Poly as a 'gesture of good will'.
Accounts of the prices paid for these artifacts vary.
Some sources put the combined values of the Pig, Ox and Monkey heads at half a million US Dollars, and the Tiger's head at three quarters of a million US Dollars.
Other sources have, however, put the three statue's purchase price at between $US4 and $US5 Million and the Tiger's head at $US1 Million.
The lower of the two figures is converted from Hong Kong Dollars.
Why should Chinese buy back what is already theirs?
While many wealthy Chinese have coveted the face and attention borough to them by publicly 'buying back' China's heritage, others in China have suggested that they might be doing more harm than good. With some observers warning that the large amounts of money being expended by some groups may actually exasperate problems by driving up the price of Chinese artifacts on the open market.
A situation that would likely encourage the theft or sale of artifacts already in China, and would certainly push the price of many artifacts out of reach of less wealthy Mainland interests. Thus depriving China of harming efforts to keep relics in China and damaging efforts to return lost relics.
| "money can only stimulate illegal relics dealing" Wang Shixiang, scholar |
Other observers have also voiced that Beijing should be engaged in rigorous legal actions action, rather than sitting back and allowing business to take the lead, and have condemned what they see China 'buying back' items that rightfully belonged to the Chinese people anyway.
As such, these groups have called on Beijing to formally step up efforts to demand the wholesale return of relics, and to use both the legal system, and political, pressure to force foreign museums and collectors to 'hand-over' Chinese relics.
| "I think we should show the world just how determined we are to regain our relics as we have lost so many throughout history. We need them to preserve our traditional culture and so future generations can marvel at their beauty. We should therefore do everything in our power to get them back" Li Xueqin, Director, Study Center on Ancient Culture, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences |
As would be expected, this suggestion has caused a great deal of concern in some circles, and have lead to fears that Beijing might soon launch 'a legal crusade' in an attempt to force private collectors and historical institutions to return artifacts that it believes were wrongfully taken.
Property and Propriety
While agreeing that China does have an indisputable and inalienable right to have looted artifacts returned to it, observers have warned that a program of legal claims, calling for the return of artifacts, has the potential to turn into an accusation filled farce because of two simple facts:
1) A substantive proportion of 'stolen Chinese artifacts' were not considered to have been stolen at the time that they were removed from China.
2) The origins of many artifacts, particularly smaller items, are not clear, or are disputed.
Indeed, although invading Japanese soldiers and colonial western imperialists did unlawfully remove many Chinese treasures, many other artifacts were traded legally by merchants and even brought by colonists and 'free spending imperialist soldiers' looking for trinkets to send home as souvenirs.
Many more artifacts were also sold under duress, sold by parties whom historians feel had no right to sell them, or have disputed origins. All of which make it almost impossible to tell if many artifacts were looted or if they were legally exported.
In this light, critics have warned that, were China to take wholesale legal action, disputes could break out that have the potential to substantively tarnish the relationships between Chinese and foreign institutes. Damaging China's image in the eyes of the foreign public, and making collectors and museums less likely to reach acceptable compromises on the return of relics in the future.
While largely speculative at present, such concerns are not without their presidents.
For decades, the British Museum, one of Europe's most prestigious institutions, has been engaged in a bitter dispute with Greece over a number of statues, known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles, which were borough legally and transported to Britain during a time when the marbles held little value to Greece, but which were demanded back later when their cultural value was more greatly appreciated.
Similarly, there are many outstanding cases in Europe and the US regarding artworks and cultural treasures that were claimed to have been looted by the Nazi during WWII.
Some of which have been resold many times since their original theft, with the current owners being unwilling to part with relics on the grounds that they brought them legally and were unaware of their status as 'war booty', and others voicing that many artifacts are being illegally claimed, without the promise of financial compensation, by greedy descendants of their original owners seeking to reclaim property that was sold or traded legally, rather than stolen.
Naturally, many of these fears, of disputes over artifacts, center on Japan and Britain. Both of which are known to have looted a great many cultural items from China during their respective colonial periods, but both of which are also known to have historically coveted Chinese artifacts as a sign of cultural advancement, and to have had a long trading relationship with China during which time they legally imported many artifacts.
Buying History, or Buying Hatred?
In addition to fears over potential acrimony if China were to launch a legal campaign, some observers have also criticized moves to 'return Chinese artifacts to China', as being a sign of China's growing nationalism and, as such, have accused proponents of this cause of supporting it in order to create 'a sense of united outrage' designed specifically to rouse nationalist sentiment, and of promoting the idea of 'looted treasures' in order further the mindset that all of China's present day problems are the result of 'wicked and exploitative foreigners'.
| "[Many of these artifacts] were looted at a time when China was at its weakest. We feel heartache about the weakness of the government at that time. We feel hatred and anger at that government and the forces that invaded us. It was a humiliation -- just like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was a disaster for Iraq's cultural relics. We just want to recover what is rightfully ours." Yang Laiyun, Director, Office for relics and history, Old Summer Palace, Beijing |
Claims of links between relic recovery and China's growing nationalism have however been vigorously denied by some academics, who have voiced that China is simply moving to protect its own heritage, as any country would, and who have proffered the suggestion that recent returns result from increased awareness of the problem of 'cultural leakage', as well as from the increased ability of Chinese business and businessmen to actively 'buy back' items that were previously out of their price range.
| "It's absolutely not ultra nationalism and, on the contrarily, we are just protecting our rights. Culture is the spirit of a nation and relics are the purveyors of culture" Li Xueqin |
Though disputed, the idea of this being a nationalist backed move has been given particular validity, in the eyes of some, by the fact that the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program has chosen to launch its 'cataloging drive' in the cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. All of which are located in neighboring Japan.
| "[These excursions] will be a good chance for us to get information on Chinese relics scattered around Japan" Niu Xianfeng, Initiative Leader, Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program, China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture |
For historically understandable reasons, Japan's past transgressions against China are commonly targeted by Chinese nationalists seeking to rally support.
Ironically though, while Japan was probably chosen as a starting point by the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program because it is far easier for Chinese to travel there than countries like the US, which is currently using the threat of Arab terrorism to place draconian visa restrictions on Chinese, and because has a long history of legally and illegally collecting and trading in Chinese artifacts, not to mention because of possible nationalist ties, Japan is actually home to very few of the items at the top of China's repatriation list.
In reality, many of the 'looted' items that China most desires to be return home, including the paintings, jade carvings and bronze works of the Chinese 'Imperial collection', and the Bronze Horse head statue that accompanies the Zodiac bronzes brought by China-Polly, are currently located in Chinese-Taiwan rather than Japan.
Leaving the artifacts within 'greater China' as claimed by Beijing, but still outside of direct Mainland control. Effectively putting them in 'foreign hands' withouth them actually being in foreign hands.
Other items, including the much coveted Bronze Rabbit and Mouse head Zodiac statues, from the Old Summer Palaice, are currently located in France. While many more items are located in Museums in Britain and the US.
Leaving Japan as little more of a convenient 'market sample', and a nationalist rallying point, than a means to an end.
Coincidentally, and in the face of claims that the return of artifacts has little to do with nationalism, some China watchers have felt compelled to direct observers attention towards China-Polly's involvement in the return of artifacts..
While it lists itself as being a communications and development group, China-Polly is better known as an arm dealer which was spun off from the PLA in 1999.
A fact which gives it solid nationalist credentials.
The Numbers
According to statistics touted by the Chinese Government, there are currently over 16 million Chinese 'cultural relics' in foreign hands.
Approximately 10 percent of these artifacts are believed to be housed in museums around the world while the rest are thought to be owned by private collectors and or to be in the hands of retailers.
These statistics are, however, disputed and do not extensively distinguish between artifacts which were stolen by invaders and occupiers, artifacts which were legitimately sold by their owners or creators, and artifacts that were made exclusively for export and thus hold no cultural/historical value or significance to the Chinese people.
Irony and Infamy
Ironically, while China is making increased efforts to reclaim artifacts that it believes were stolen from it by foreigners, many of the most recent artifacts to have left China were, and still are being, stolen by native Chinese, and then sold on to both knowing and unknowing foreigners.
Many such items are taken from temples, tombs, and archaeological, excavation each year.
In some instances, those stealing Chinese artifacts, and selling them on to foreigners, have even been found to be those assigned with the task of protecting them.
In 2002, Li Haitao, was detained after being found to have stolen 158 artifacts from the 外八廟
(Waibamiao/ Eight outer temples) museum, 承德 (Chengde). At the time, Li was the Head of Security for the complex.
Li was later sentenced to death. Two men, Wang Xiaoguang, Yan Feng, who accused of helping him to smuggle and sell the stole artifcats, were sentenced to 7 and 5 years imprisonment while another two accomplices, Zhang Huazhang and Chen Fengwei were sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.
Many of the items stolen by Li are believed to have been sold through western auction houses operating out of Hong Kong.
Additionally, a significant portion of the artifact, demarcated as being Chinese artifacts in foreign hands, are not in fact Chinese, but are instead of Tibetan origin, and were, again, looted and sold on by Chinese.
| "During the Mao era, [Chinese] considered the artifacts dross and destroyed them. Now, they see them as merchandise and sell them. Speaking overall, either way, it is an abuse" Wang Lixiong, (Han) Author and Cultural scholar |
View Comments/Add a Comment (6)
1. saucy del mar left...
Thursday, 16 March 2006 1:02 pm
looted items in Taiwan? What happened to "one china"?
2. The Angry Chinese Blogger left...
Thursday, 16 March 2006 4:40 pm :: http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com
The nationalists and co took a lot of important artifacts with them To
Taiwan, and Taiwan's wealthy businessmen have been able to buy back quite a
lot of stuff from foreigners.
3. Johan left...
Thursday, 16 March 2006 8:52 pm
I'm not an historian, but I can imagine that many of these relics were
ironically saved from being destroyed by the mainland Chinese during the
cultural revolution. Particularly the treasures in Taiwan.
4. Claire left...
Monday, 26 March 2007 5:34 pm
hi angry,
I'm claire from california. i lived in shanghai two summers ago for 3
months. it was interesting. anyway, just wanted to say that i really
enjoyed your posting. and that i typed into google
5. David left...
Monday, 8 October 2007 6:23 am
After reading your comment, I wonder if most of those who major in "Chinese
studies" in the U.S. or even Chinese language courses tend to come from the
China-bashing corner of U.S. society. It is similar to Condi Rice having
majored in Soviet Studies, but couldn't be more hostile to that part of the
world. I have come across many of your type, so I have to wonder.
6. ACB left...
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 2:37 am
"In WWII, the Americans and the Brits tried to equate the Huns with the
Germans. Talk about being ridiculously "ethnocentric" and "prideful"!"