China has the largest collection of lost cultural relics.
According to the data of UNESCO, as many as 6.5438+0.64 million pieces of cultural relics have been lost in China, which are collected by 47 museums around the world. The British Museum has the largest collection of lost cultural relics in China. The history of its collection of China cultural relics can be traced back to the period when it was built in 1753. At present, it has a collection of 23,000 China cultural relics, about 2,000 of which have been exhibited for a long time. Together with the collections of ancient Greece and Egypt, these collections have become the most important and precious human cultural heritage in the museum. Hall 33 of the British Museum is a permanent exhibition hall dedicated to China's cultural relics. Like the exhibition halls of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and India, it is one of the few national exhibition halls in the museum. According to the reporter of the museum, the collection of China cultural relics in the museum covers the whole artistic category of China and spans the whole history of China, including prints, calligraphy and painting, jade articles, bronzes, pottery and decorations. After visiting the China Pavilion, we can see that the introduction of the museum is not a lie. Ancient stone tools, red pottery bowls and pointed pots in banpo village more than 6,000 years ago, jade cong he in Neolithic age, bronze statues and ding in Shang and Zhou dynasties, bronze mirrors, pottery, lacquerware and iron swords in Qin and Han dynasties, bronze buddhas in Six Dynasties, white marble buddhas in Sui Dynasty, tri-colored porcelains in Tang Dynasty, porcelains in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties and various gold and jade products. In short, ancient stone tools, Shang and Zhou bronzes, Buddhist scriptures in Wei and Jin Dynasties, paintings and calligraphy in Tang and Song Dynasties, porcelain in Ming and Qing Dynasties and other national treasures engraved with various cultural peaks in China history can be seen here, which can be described as complete and exquisite.
However, this is only a part of the 23,000 rare treasures of China in the British Museum, and the other nine tenths are kept in Room 10. Ordinary tourists are not allowed to meet unless they get special permission. Some collections, such as the Tang Dynasty manuscripts of Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, can only be feasted by specialized experts. As the earliest silk painting in China and one of the earliest works of professional painters in China, The Picture of Women's History is a milestone in the history of fine arts in China, and it has always been a treasure in the court collections of past dynasties. At present, there are only two in the world, one of which was copied by Song people and collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing. The brushwork color is not top grade. The other is this replica of the British Museum. Originally hidden in the Qing Palace, it was the favorite desk of Emperor Qianlong, and it was hidden in Yuanmingyuan. 1860, British and French forces invaded Beijing, and British captain Ji Yong stole it from Yuanmingyuan and took it abroad. 1903 was collected by the British Museum and became the most important oriental cultural relic in the museum. It is no exaggeration to call it "the treasure of the town hall". It is reported that Xie Chengshui, director of the Art Research Office of Dunhuang Studies Center of Nanjing Normal University, came across this replica in the secret room in 2002. At that time, only two Japanese people came to the scene to copy it in the register.
There are dozens of square meters of Dunhuang murals on the central wall of China Pavilion. Although the knife marks are still visible, it is difficult to hide their timeless freshness and the elegance of the three "rich and fat" bodhisattvas. There are thousands of Dunhuang scrolls and classics in the British Museum. Apart from this mural, other collections are hard to find in China Pavilion. From 1856 to 1932, many so-called "western explorers" went deep into the northwest of China for more than 60 times in the name of scientific investigation, taking away a large number of cultural relics each time. Among them, especially in 1907, the Hungarian Stein and the French Bosch looted the most cultural relics in the Dunhuang Tibetan Sutra Cave. Among the more than 40,000 manuscripts of Confucian classics in Dunhuang, the British Museum has a collection of10.3 million manuscripts, and only one third of them are in China, which makes the academic world lament that "Dunhuang scholars are the sad history of China's academics". Perhaps because of Stein's "great contribution", the British Museum specially named the China ancient painting storage room after Stein.
In addition, the earliest edition of China Paramita Classic, three-color portrait of Luohan in Song Dynasty, famous paintings in Song and Ming Dynasties, and 45 volumes of Yongle Dadian are all collected by the British Museum. It is said that if 1973 is incorporated into the British Library, there are more than 60,000 kinds of China books and periodicals in the library.
The Policy and Reality of Collection Exhibition
According to the statistics of the British Museum, it has 7 million cultural relics and receives 5 million tourists every year. It is difficult to count how many of them visited the China Pavilion. However, as long as you visit, it is not difficult to find that a considerable number of visitors to the China Pavilion are from China. Especially in recent years, more and more China delegations have visited Britain, and visiting the China Pavilion of the British Museum has become an indispensable activity for delegations in London. Tourists from other countries also have it. They often just glance at the China Pavilion at the end of the museum.
The reporter first visited the British Museum in June 5438 +2004 10, and has visited it four times so far. Every time he came, his interest decreased, because the exhibits in the hall remained basically unchanged. According to reports, due to the decrease in funding from the British government and the decrease in tourists, the museum's financial resources are tight. Since 1992, the cultural relics of China Pavilion have rarely been replaced. The shortage of financial resources has also led to the reduction of jobs, especially those related to cultural relics in China. The shortage of funds also makes it impossible for museums to carry out exhibitions and cultural exchanges of cultural relics in China. These conditions are contrary to the museum's policy, that is, the exhibits must be changed frequently so that the stored cultural relics can meet the public to ensure that the exhibition hall attracts repeat customers. The tight financial resources of the British Museum can be seen from one thing: 1990, Sir Sir Joseph Edward Hotung, a Hong Kong businessman, donated 2 million pounds to expand and transform the old China showroom, and the new China showroom now equipped with air conditioning and constant temperature display protection equipment. Otherwise, the priceless China cultural relics may still be left in the old Buddhist scriptures building for insects to eat and mice to bite.
The British Museum held its first exhibition in China in March this year, and the people of China could see its prestigious collection, but their wish came true. Although the collection is open to all the public, which is one of the three principles of the British Museum, it is difficult for an ordinary China person to visit the British Museum in London in terms of fees and visas. Unfortunately, this time they can't see the familiar cultural treasures of China.
In fact, this is just the beginning of the British Museum's exhibition in China. Last September, the British Museum and the Albert Victoria Museum, which has a large collection of China cultural relics, announced that they had signed a contract with China to establish a museum cooperation project. The British Museum plans to send collections from all over the world to China for exhibition, and China will send important cultural relics to Britain for exhibition. After the exhibition in Beijing, the British Museum will hold the exhibition "Assyrian Empire and Art: Ancient Assyrian Art Treasures Collected by the British Museum" in Shanghai Museum, and the exhibition "Britain and the World" in China National Museum in 2007, and will publish the collected Chinese paintings.
The British Museum defines itself as promoting the understanding and recognition of art, natural history and science on a global scale. Due to financial resources and other reasons, the cultural exchange activities of the British Museum are mainly concentrated in developed countries, and "showing the world to the whole world" is somewhat discounted. With the improvement of China's national strength in recent years, Britain has paid more and more attention to China, and there has been an unprecedented momentum in developing cultural exchanges with China. One of the details of the first exhibition held by the British Museum in China is that the exhibition was sponsored by a British bank that has been expanding its business in China in recent years. This kind of corporate public relations skill of establishing market image is understandable, but it is not interpreted enough.
The principle of original site protection and the possibility of cultural relics' return
Many China tourists can't help thinking when they see the masterpieces of their ancestors: When will they return to their hometown? After the news of "World Civilization Treasures Exhibition" was announced, people were asking: Why not include the China cultural relics, porcelain and the collection with disputed ownership in the British Museum?
According to reports, Mei Ninghua, director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, pointed out in response to media questions: "The British Museum has many cultural relics from all over the world, so it has been suing many countries. Maybe people have concerns. " However, the Guardian reported on March 3rd that Neil McGregor, director of the British Museum, said that the Chinese and British governments encouraged cultural exchanges, and Britain did not set any restrictions on the selection of exhibits. "We would be particularly happy to lend them these collections, but they didn't ask us. Our understanding is that they have better works of art in China than us. "
This is not a separate issue. Anyone who cares about cultural relics knows that the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Import, Export and Illegal Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property puts forward the principle of "in situ protection". In response to this convention, in 2002, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other 18 famous western museums issued a so-called "universal museum value" declaration, opposing the return of cultural relics and artworks acquired by abnormal means such as looting during the war to their original countries. Egypt, India, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries objected to this declaration, arguing that this cultural "globalization" practice is actually a remnant of imperialism, and those cultural relics scattered abroad have not been recognized by people today.
China cultural relics protection experts also published an open letter, denouncing that this declaration violated the principle of "in situ protection" proposed by UNESCO, violated justice and axioms, and trampled on the legitimate rights of the infringed countries and nations. They said that according to the data of UNESCO, there are as many as 6,543.8+0.64 million pieces of China cultural relics collected in 47 major museums in the world, and the number of China cultural relics lost to private hands in various countries is about 654.38+00 times this figure. Most of these cultural relics were lost abroad in the war. They put forward the method of classified claims, that is, the cultural relics lost in legal transactions are bought back at the expense of the state, and the looted cultural relics are returned free of charge.
Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Greece all asked the British Museum to return the cultural relics they thought belonged to their own countries. Although the British Museum is facing increasing international pressure, they still insist that these cultural relics should be kept in their own hands on the grounds that they can be better protected. A typical example of this dispute over the ownership of cultural relics is the ownership of 56 marble strips in the Parthenon in Athens, which is the most famous case among all the disputes over the ownership of cultural relics in recent years.
This cultural relic is part of the sculpture and architectural remains of the Parthenon with a history of 2,500 years. Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to Greece at that time, transported these cultural relics back to the British Museum in 18 16, and they were collected and permanently exhibited by the British Museum from 18 16, so they were also called "Elgin Marbles". 1829, Greece first asked the British Museum to return the sculptures of these temples. Since then, successive governments have repeatedly exerted diplomatic pressure on the British government and the British Museum, but all failed. After Athens' successful bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games, the Greek government and the non-governmental organization "British Committee for the Return of Marbles" further exerted strong political and public pressure on the British Museum, and proposed a solution of exchanging precious cultural relics for borrowing exhibitions, but the British Museum flatly refused as always. Curator McGregor said that Elgin Marbles will never be returned to Greece, nor will they be lent to Greece for exhibition. It is better to stay in the present place, which has a broader historical significance. He hoped that Greece would accept a copy with the help of computer technology. He said: "The British Museum is one of the great cultural achievements of mankind. It can preserve all the cultural achievements in the world. "
A complex feeling of pride and shame.
In recent years, the British media occasionally reported on China cultural relics. Apart from the phenomenon that China cultural relics are sought after by auction houses in London, there are also reports that cultural relics have been stolen and destroyed. For example, on June 4th, 2004, nine pieces of China cultural relics were stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, worth about 60,000 pounds, including a small sacrificial jar made in BC 1 000. On October 29th, 2004, 5 pieces of China cultural relics were stolen from British Museum/KLOC-0, all of which were made between 700 and 400 AD. A spokesman for the British Museum said, "They are obviously cultural relics with important historical value". On June 5438+1October, 2006, a man tripped over his shoelaces while visiting the Cambridge Museum, and smashed a set of China porcelain bottles worth 654.38+million pounds, which were produced at the end of17th century or the beginning of18th century. This porcelain bottle has always been a famous exhibit in the museum.
If you want to see China's cultural relics in Britain, you'd better go to the British Museum. China tourists are not only shocked by its complete collection, but also often accompanied by complicated feelings. A China person who has visited the British Museum once wrote that visiting here "reminds people of the disastrous fire in Yuanmingyuan, the rut plundered by British' adventurers' in front of the Mogao Grottoes, and the ups and downs of China treasures that have been lost overseas for 200 years". On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the British Museum, the Chinese Department of BBC held an online audience feedback program. Among many messages with different contents, one listener's message is quite representative: I went to the British Museum, and the whole exhibition hall was filled with China's things. After reading it, I have two feelings: one is proud that China once had such precious cultural relics, and the other is ashamed that I am from China, because both are from China.
In fact, the relics of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and other brilliant civilizations collected by the British Museum have a similar fate. The Taoist Wang of Dunhuang was accused by China people as a leaker of the Tibetan Sutra Cave. However, in the British Museum, journalists seem to see the shadow of "Taoist Wang" all over the world, and it is not only a specialty of China. Mr. Lu Xun once said that you can't protect your own people, and you can't protect the relics of your ancestors. It is not enough to only blame "Taoist Wang" for the reflection on the protection of cultural heritage. Now, the British Museum will hold an exhibition of treasures of world civilization in China. Isn't it a good inspiration for us to protect the splendid legacy of Chinese civilization for thousands of years?
Source: Guangming Daily