Sun, Sep 25, 2016 page6

• EDITORIAL: Museum power could be a weapon

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  The National Palace Museum is a potent symbol of the Republic of China’s (ROC) connection with China and its imperial past. It holds a collection of cultural artifacts that belonged to the Qing Dynasty. Its name refers to the original Palace Museum, established in 1925 after the fall of the Qing Dynasty and which still exists, in Beijing’s Forbidden City. The epithet “national” that distinguishes it from the original museum speaks volumes.

  The National Palace Museum has recently been the focus of two controversies.

  First, in December last year, then-National Palace Museum director Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) accepted replicas of bronze zodiac sculptures from Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan (成龍) at the opening of the long-awaited National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Chiayi County. The original sculptures had been part of a water clock fountain in the Old Summer Palace imperial residence outside Beijing. They were looted by British and French forces in 1860 during the Second Opium War.

  That the replicas were donated by Chan, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is problematic. On accepting the donation, Feng said they were examples of “excellent contemporary craftsmanship.”

  The second controversy also involves Feng, who is now a research adviser for Beijing’s Palace Museum. She has traveled to China several times since her retirement in May, despite travel restrictions on civil servants. Democratic Progressive Party legislators have voiced concerns over her new position, citing national security. While the travel restriction threshold was recently reduced from three years to three months, it was Feng who requested the reduction.

  Feng worked at the National Palace Museum for more than 30 years. Serving as an adviser to Beijing’s Palace Museum has obvious professional attractions.

  There is a feeling that Feng has been taken advantage of. Someone in Beijing has taken aim at a potent symbol of Chinese nationalist interest and pride, and a persistent sore point for a regime still smarting from China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers.

  Hundreds of thousands of the most valuable pieces of the Qing imperial collection were removed from the Palace Museum in 1931 — on the orders of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — to keep them safe from the invading Imperial Japanese Army. In 1949, after being moved several times around China to protect them from damage or destruction during the Chinese Civil War, some of the collection’s most prized articles were evacuated to Taiwan when it was becoming clear that the Chinese Communist Party was gaining the upper hand.

  The symbolism of donating replicas of treasures plundered by foreign powers to an institution holding works of significant historical, cultural, artistic and symbolic value that Beijing believes were plundered by the ROC government almost 70 years ago is clear.

  Many were quick to criticize the donation and exhibition of the replicas, as well as Chan’s invitation to the opening, as an example of China’s “united front” tactics.

  Nor was it was lost on 19-year-old Chen Miao-ting (陳妙婷) or 33-year-old Chen Yi-ting (陳儀庭) — who defaced some of the replicas within days of their being placed outside the National Palace Museum Southern Branch — that the statues insinuated that Taiwan itself is China’s “lost property.”

  On Thursday, National Palace Museum Director Lin Jeng-yi (林正儀) announced that the museum would remove the replicas, citing the controversy over Chinese attempts at “cultural unification” and recognizing that the political nature of the sculptures had been understood.

  Whether the National Palace Museum’s treasures should be returned to China is a complicated issue, and it should not be addressed without an understanding of the historical context.

  Politicians and museum directors need to be vigilant of Beijing’s attempts to exploit the National Palace Museum’s symbolic power. One place to start might be to revisit why it is called the National Palace Museum.
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