The History of the National Palace Museum

Before ROC

The history of the National Palace Museum started during the Sung Dynasty (960-1279), when Emperor Dai Cong decided that he wanted to monopolize China's art treasures. He sent teams of servants into the countryside to search for, and ultimately confiscate, paintings, sculptures, pottery, calligraphy scrolls, books, wood carvings and everything else the emperor would want. The tradition continued right up to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Throughout the years, the donations were shuttled back and forth numerous times between the various palaces of the emperors in Beijing and Nanjing. They finally came to rest in the 1400s when Emperor Yong Le of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) established Beijing's Forbidden City. The art collection was to remain there for the next 500 years, for the exclusive viewing of emperors and empresses along with some of their consorts.

Birth of New China

China's revolution of 1911 ended the Qing Dynasty and put the ROC Government in power. However, it was in 1924 that Emperor Puyi finally got his eviction notice and left the Forbidden City for good. In 1925, the gates of the Forbidden City were thrown open for the first time to ordinary Chinese citizens. The emperors' palace was thus transformed into the central showcase of China's new National Palace Museum.

War Against Japan

Unfortunately, the museum only had a life span of about eight years. In September 1931 the Japanese occupied the potentially wealthy but underdeveloped area of Manchuria (today's north-east China), setting up a puppet state with the last Qing Emperor, Puyi, as its symbolic head. Relations between China and Japan continued to go downhill since then, and in 1933 the ROC Government realized that war was increasingly likely.

The possibility of having the entire collection of the National Palace Museum fall into Japanese hands was something the Chinese could not take, so the art treasures were transferred to a warehouse in Shanghai. In 1937, the collection was transferred to Nanjing, just in time for the Japanese invasion of Beijing and Shanghai. These were the opening shots of China's entry into the World War II.

Some 7000 crates of the collection were shipped by rail southwards to Changsha, then to Guiyang, and finally to the ROC Government's wartime capital Chengdu. Even then, the crates were not safe -- Japanese bombers attacked Chengdu frequently. The crates were therefore moved to the remote village of Emei in 1939. Another 10,000 crates were sneaked out of Nanking on a boat just as the Japanese attacked the city by the end of 1937. The boat remained moored in the Yangtze River near Chongqing until the war ended.

Despite all the bombings and land battles, virtually the entire collection survived intact. In 1947, everything was moved to the ROC Government's capital of Nanking and a public exhibition was held in December.

Communist Rebellion

However, by January 1949, the communists had all but defeated the ROC Government's army in the north and were driving south. Thousands of crates were shipped out to the Taiwanese port of Keelung About 700 crates had to be left behind in nanjing during the ROC Government's hasty withdrawal.

ROC on Taiwan

The ROC Government expected the retreat to Taiwan to be a temporary affair. Plans to retake the mainland were under way, and the official policy was that the invasion would be launched within two years. Therefore, no plans were made to establish a museum in Taiwan and the national treasures were simply warehoused. However, as two years stretched to five, then a decade, some began to suggest that displaying the artifacts to the public was wiser than leaving everything in crates.

In 1965, the "temporary" National Palace Museum opened its doors in Taipei. Miraculously, in the 32 years that the collection was shuttled from Beijing's National Palace Museum to Taipei's, not a single piece was broken.

Although physical fighting between Taiwan and the mainland has ceased, the war of words continued. The Communists harshly criticized the ROC Government for "stealing" this priceless collection of Chinese treasures and demanded that it be returned. The ROC Government had an easy answer to that -- it is doubtful that much would have survived the mainland's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when rampaging Red Guards swept through the country destroying temples, antiques and all other reminders of China's "bourgeois past". The Communists have virtually extinguished China's cultural heritage, and the ROC Government felt justified in keeping these art treasures safe and sound for so many years. Thus, the artifacts remain in Taipei.

The National Palace Museum that one sees today in Beijing also has some art treasures, but many are re-creations or were gathered from other parts of China after the Cultural Revolution.