Chinese collectors’ bid to purchase nine calligraphy works by prominent philologist Tung Tso-pin (董作賓) has been thwarted by Taiwanese billionaire hotelier Lee Li-yu (李麗裕), who bought them on behalf of Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology.
The collection of nine works by Tung includes two rare pieces written in oracle bone script, an ancient writing system in which Tung was an important pioneer researcher, Museum of the Institute of History and Philosophy curator Li Zong-kun (李宗焜) said.
Li said Tung participated in the excavation and research of ancient divination inscriptions on bones and turtle shells — from which the oracular bone script derives its name — found in an archeological site in Yinxu (殷墟) in China’s Henan Province.
Tung was one of the first research fellows employed by Academia Sinica, where he later became the Institute of History and Philology’s second president.
Li said that the two works in oracle bone script are Chinese couplets which are very valuable, especially a longevity poem he gave to his friend, Tai Ching-nung (臺靜農), a classmate at Peking University and a colleague at National Taiwan University’s Department of Chinese Literature.
Tung manipulated the oracle bone numeric characters of the longevity couplet, which reads: “Philology acquires 540 radicals; The long-living may obtain 18,000 years (小學分五百四十目,上壽得一萬八千年),” in such a way that the eight character lines were compacted to just six characters, making it very distinctive, Li said.
Li said he was informed that the previous owner of the nine calligraphy works planned to sell them through a Chinese auction house.
To prevent them being lost to the nation, he contacted his university classmate, Ho Hsiu-chen (何秀貞), wife of Le Midi Hotel general manager Lee.
Convinced by his wife of the collection’s value, Lee Li-yu purchased the works from their previous owner for “between 2 to 3 million New Taiwan dollars,” (US$61,123 to US$91,684), and donated them to the institute, Li said.
Tung Ming (董敏), the 78-year-old son of Tung Tso-pin, on Thursday last week attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition of his father’s calligraphy at the museum.
“My father was a very decorous man and he gave his friends only his best calligraphy,” Tung Ming said, adding that he was glad his father’s works have been “returned” to their “most ideal home” at the museum.
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