China tries to foster national pride with art

Forgers could pass off their copies as the original partly because the original was repeatedly stolen or misappropriated from the imperial collection, starting as early as the 1340s. It kept showing up in the hands of wealthy, influential families, from whom emperors repeatedly recovered it when they confiscated estates during disputes.

Qiu Ying (仇英), a 16th-century artist, established a reputation for painting beautiful copies of Qingming Festival, prompting forgers even to begin producing forgeries of his copies.

The Nationalists moved the cream of the imperial collection to Taiwan shortly before losing the civil war to the communists in 1949. But through a quirk of history, Qingming Festival had been separated from the rest of the collection and stayed in China.

The last emperor, Pu Yi (溥儀), took the painting with him when forced to leave the Forbidden City in 1924. The Japanese military later installed him as the puppet ruler of Manchuria; at the end of World War II, he still had the painting.

The Soviets handed over the painting to a bank in northeastern China for safekeeping. It stayed there until 1950, when it was transferred to a nearby museum and later to Beijing.