Republic of China Taiwan National Palace Museum(國立故宮博物院).

Cultural Artifacts Move to the South

In July 1932 the Japanese army invaded Jehe, with the intention of taking over northern China. In order to ensure the safety of the Museum's collection, the Executive Directors of the National Palace Museum instructed that significant artifacts of the collection be stored in crates in readiness for evacuation at any time. By February 1933 the situation in northern China had reached a crisis point, and the first group of works were relocated south to Shanghai. By May 1933 five groups with a total of 19,557 crates were relocated, including the 6,066 crates of objects from the Exhibition Office of Ancient Artifacts, the I-ho-yüan summer palace and the Han-lin-yüan imperial academy. In February 1934 the Nationalist government promulgated the "National Palace Museum in Bei-ping Provisional Organization Statute", which appointed the Executive Yuan as the authority over the Museum, and appointed Ma Heng as Director of the Museum. During this period, the Museum began to prepare an inventory of the items relocated to Shanghai or remaining in Beijing. In 1935 a group of more than 1,000 treasured works from the Palace Museum's collection was sent to London for the "International Exhibition of Chinese Art".

 

In December of 1936, the objects in Shanghai were moved again to the Taoist monastery Ch'ao-t'ien-kung in Nanking. In January of the following year, the Nanking Branch of the Palace Museum was inaugurated. In August the Japanese army invaded Shanghai and Nanking was also no longer safe; Zhuang Shan-yen and others then relocated the first group of 80 crates west to Ch'ang-sha, and then to Kwei-yang and An-shun (and later to Pa-hsien in Szechwan when Kwei-yang fell in autumn 1944). After the fall of Sung-hu front in November 1937, the Nationalist government decided to relocate to Chungking, and the second group of artifacts from the Nanking Branch was moved west by water via Changkiang, Han-k'ou, I-ch'ang, Chungking and to Lo-shan. The third group traveled north overland via the Lung-hai Railway to Pao-chi, and from there trucks carried the precious cargo through Han-chung to Chengdu, finally arriving in O-mei, Szechwan. The national treasures could finally take a breather at this time, and in spite of the difficulties, in 1940~1941 one hundred selected pieces were even sent to Moscow and Leningrad for the "Exhibition of Chinese Art".

 

During the political upheaval, the artifacts displayed at the Exhibition Office of Ancient Artifacts in Bei-ping were also moved south along with other items in the Palace Museum's collection. A "Preparatory Office of the National Central Museum" was set up in Nanking in 1933, and when the situation in Nanking became dangerous, crates of cultural relics from the Preparatory Office of the National Central Museum were also shipped westward to Nan-xi in Szechwan. During the war, the staff of professionals in the Preparatory Office of the National Central Museum still continued to carry out a series of studies on the peoples of Szechwan and Hsi-k'ang as well as their traditional handicrafts, the history and geography of the northwestern region, and Han dynasty tombs and burial grounds in the P'eng-shan area. After relocation of the Nationalist government to Taiwan, the Preparatory Office of the National Central Museum and the National Palace Museum finally merged to become the National Palace Museum we know today.

 

When Japan was defeated in August 1945, the Nationalist government returned the various Japanese-ruled cultural and educational institutions to their original authorities, and the Palace Museum also began reassembling its collection from storage sites in Pa-hsien, O-mei, and Lo-shan, sending it to Chungking. In June 1947 the staff began shipping the collection of the Palace Museum back to Nanking, until the full collection was restored in December.

 

Website:www.npm.gov.tw/en/about/tradition.htm

 

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