BBC：Taiwan's museum of treasures - 博物館

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6335469.stm


Taiwan's museum of treasures
By Caroline Gluck
BBC News, Taipei



Taiwan's National Palace Museum - which boasts some of the most important
treasures collected by China's ancient emperors - reopens on Thursday after a
three year, $21m renovation designed to make its buildings more relevant and
user-friendly.

There are more public areas, larger gallery spaces displaying items that are
now chronologically arranged, a dramatic light-filled lobby, several new
restaurants and a larger gift shop as well as digital displays.

The museum's collection has always been world class, but the renovations now
place the museum itself on a world class footing.

"The Chinese collections housed at the National Palace Museum are
unrivalled," according to director Lin Mun-lee, who said one of her top
priorities was to make a connection between the museum and people.

"But the museum not only has a legacy, it also has a boundless future. Its
future will definitely be closely tied to Taiwan and its people," she said.


● Sensitive relations


The museum's collection traces its roots to 1933, as Japan prepared to invade
China.

China's Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek decided to move thousands of
treasures originally kept inside Beijing's Forbidden City. They were
carefully packed up and secretly transported across China to protect them.

And it was on Chiang's orders that more than 3,000 crates of treasures were
eventually shipped to Taiwan, where the Nationalists fled to in the final
months of the Chinese civil war in 1948 and 1949.

That historical legacy means some of the museum's changes have also proved
controversial.

China's state-run media has criticised plans approved by Taiwan's cabinet to
remove references to the Chinese provenance of artefacts in the museum's
governing charter.


China says it is part of attempts by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's
independence-leaning government to try to deny the island's historical roots
to the mainland.

Lin Mun-lee flatly denied that claim, saying the 20-year-old charter needed
an overhaul and historical references should play no part of its
organisational structure.

She also denied suggestions that the museum was planning to remove labels
explaining that many exhibits originally came from Beijing's Forbidden City,
later renamed the Palace Museum.

The controversies show just how sensitive relations between the two rivals
remain - even when it comes to art.

Even so, the museum in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, is a powerful magnet
for Chinese tourists.

Those numbers are likely to surge later this year with an expected agreement
on relaxing restrictions on visits by mainland tourists.


●Rare view

The Taipei museum contains more than 650,000 objects - a collection so vast
that less than 1% can be viewed at any one time.

But it carefully guards its treasures.

Overseas loans are rare since the museum insists any host country must first
pass immunity from judicial seizure laws - to prevent China from taking legal
action to reclaim any of the works.

While visitors can only see a fraction of the treasures, the rest is kept in
temperature controlled basement vaults.

But about a thousand more crates are kept in another area - off limits to all
but a handful of museum staff - in one of two tunnels carved into the
mountainside behind the museum, designed to protect the treasures if China
ever attacked Taiwan.

We entered through three elaborately sealed and locked doors, accompanied by
two security guards and five museum staff. On either side were black steel
crates, all numbered and stacked on top of each other. One group of boxes
were the original wooden crates used to ship the treasures from China.

Kao Ren-chun, now 84, helped transport the artefacts from China to Taiwan to
prevent them falling into the hands of the communists.

"Our mission was to transport these 5,000-year-old Chinese relics and to
safeguard them. We could not allow any loss or damage to the pieces. It was a
very important job," he said.

"Nobody thought about their own safety. There was just one goal and that was
to move these objects which were so important for Chinese culture, and the
world's."

Despite the drama of that time, Mr Kao did not hesitate when asked what he
thought about calls by Beijing to have the artworks returned.

"You can put these pieces anywhere. The most important thing is that they can
get shown to the public - and can spread this culture, to share it with the
rest of the world, and let people know about Chinese arts and culture," he
said.

A Chinese tourist visiting the museum gave almost exactly the same answer.

Gao Yonglin, from Henan province, said he was happy to see the treasures so
well preserved.

"My view is different from the conservative attitude of people born in the
1940s and 1950s who still want these objects to be returned to China," he
said.

"No matter where these things are kept, they are still promoting Chinese
culture."


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