1937, the third batch of cultural relics moved south to the Forbidden City, passing through the Sichuan-Shaanxi Highway.
After the national treasure was moved to the station, it was temporarily placed in the Wufeng Beigou warehouse. The large wooden box in the picture was the original box used for the relocation. The old technician of the Forbidden City was moving the large wooden box. Source: Taiwan United Daily News
China News Service, January 23rd. The Palace Museum, which is separated by a thousand years ago, has recently moved towards the possibility of cooperation due to the thawing of cross-strait relations. 60 years ago, the vicissitudes of the national treasure moving to Taiwan became a hot topic again. Looking back on the past, how did the national treasures cross the sea safely when the troops were woe? Taiwan United Daily News published a set of reports on the 23rd to interpret the transportation process of national treasures for readers and listen to the old Forbidden City people’s story...
Big Three Links bring new opportunities for cross-strait relations and greatly increase the possibility of cooperation between the Forbidden City on the Cross-strait. At this critical moment, CCTV recently used the twelve-episode documentary "Taipei Forbidden City" to tell the behind-the-scenes story of treasures crossing the sea, bringing back memories of old Forbidden City people.
Antiquities move southward to witness harshly
In 1931, Japan launched the September 18th Incident, and the situation in the north was turbulent. The government that year intended to move the cultural relics of the Forbidden City southward. In 1933, the government began to divide troops into three groups to move national treasures south, transporting out 13,491 boxes of cultural relics in the Forbidden City, and 6,066 boxes of cultural relics stored in the Antiquities Exhibition Hall, the Summer Palace and the Imperial College, and temporarily stored in Shanghai and Nanjing. When the July 7 Incident broke out, the Forbidden City transported 80 of the fine iron boxes to Wuhan by ship, and then to Changsha, Guiyang, Anshun, and finally to Ba County, Sichuan.
The most important first batch of national treasures that he escorted all the way was the solemnity of his fresh graduate from Peking University's Department of Philosophy. Later, he served as vice president of the Forbidden City in Taipei. As the national treasure moved south, his four sons, Zhuang Shen, Zhuang Yin, Zhuang Zhe and Zhuang Ling, also became witnesses to the national treasure relocation.
hides from all over the world, and it is difficult for the Japanese army to attack
Zhuang Ling said that the Forbidden City originally intended to keep these treasures in Changsha forever, and planned to dig a cave here. Unexpectedly, the cave was bombed before it was excavated! The national treasure of the Forbidden City was temporarily in the Hunan University Library. The Forbidden City people urgently transported the national treasure away from this place. Less than a week after leaving Changsha, the Hunan University Library had been bombed into flat ground.
Another difficult journey was that at the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the young Zhuang Ling followed the adults along the Sichuan-Guizhou Highway to Sichuan. When passing the Wujiang Bridge built with wood, he was worried that the old wooden bridge would be too much to bear the load, so he asked everyone to get off the car and walk. Only Zhuang Ling enjoys the privilege of taking a car because of his youth.
He still remembers that when the convoy set off, refugees on both sides supported the elderly and the young were endless; near Zunyi, he was also frightened to find Japanese reconnaissance planes hovering at low altitudes.
1956, Zhuang Yan, who was then the director of the Forbidden City Antiquities Museum, inspected the porcelain and jade treasures collected by the Forbidden City in Wufeng Beigou Warehouse. A foreign reporter took this historical footage. (Source: Taiwan United Daily News)
The Forbidden City colleagues sorted out rare books in Wufeng Beigou warehouse in the 1950s. (Source: Taiwan United Daily News)
The ship is magical. Everything is safe.
. A strange thing that the late former vice president of the Forbidden City, Na Zhiliang, once recorded, was even more dumbfounded. It was necessary to pass a waterway from Yibin to Leshan. At that time, due to the rapid flow of water, the boatman could only use a wooden boat to pull the ancient goods to transport the goods to the warehouse. Who knew that the rope was broken halfway, and the boat immediately changed to the direction and turned backwards. If it rushed into the river and hit the foot of the Leshan Buddha, the ship would definitely be broken, the treasure was buried, and the person would be killed. At this time, the ship suddenly came over and stranded on the beach and stopped moving. People, boats and treasures are safe.
In addition, on the way to Yunbao to Sichuan and Shaanxi, a car actually fell from the bridge. Fortunately, when Na Zhiliang rushed to the scene of the crash, he found that the car was equipped with document files that were not afraid of falling. Fortunately, the place where the overturned was nearly 1 meter away from the watery river. Although the files were landed, they were not soaked in water, and they were all safe. Na Zhiliang attributed all this to "ancient objects have spirits."
escort process. I have seen all the vicissitudes of life and
Despite this, there are still some minor mistakes in the process of escaping.According to the archives of the Forbidden City, in 1937, the third batch of cultural relics from the Forbidden City were transported from Baoji to the warehouse, and an accident occurred when a train hit a car. After detailed inspection, fortunately, only one yellow porcelain plate was broken and one clock glass cover was damaged.
In addition, during the storage of the third batch of cultural relics, a grenade of a guard soldier accidentally fell to the ground and exploded. In addition to killing three soldiers on duty on the spot, it also affected the cultural relics placed by the window, smashing a Qianlong white-ground blue and white porcelain vase and hurting a dragon-patterned porcelain vase.
Fortunately, these minor accidents did not damage important national treasures, but instead were like a mirror in the war, allowing people to see that troublesome autumn.
The road to transfer of national treasures in the war-torn era
1930s, under the iron hooves of the Japanese army, the national treasures of the Forbidden City have been spread all the way south since 1933. These national treasures settled in Taiwan in 1948 and 1949, and are the most unusual page in the history of world museums.
During the war, the Forbidden City transported national treasures in three routes. Among them, the cultural relics that were shipped in 80 iron boxes in London, England in 1935 were the most important. This batch of national treasures, which were escorted by Zhuang Yan, Na Zhiliang and others, was the first dawn for Westerners to encounter Chinese cultural relics, and it was also the first batch of national treasures that left the palace and moved to Shanghai and Nanjing.
In January 1937, the Forbidden City established a branch in Nanjing. Later, due to the Japanese army's quarrel in Shanghai, the situation in Nanjing was in a hurry. The Forbidden City decided to move these fine products westward to Changsha, then to Guiyang and Anshun, and finally transport them to Ba County, Sichuan. This is the first way.
After the failure of the Shanghai war, the Forbidden City snatched more than 16,000 boxes of cultural relics from Nanjing, evacuated from water and land respectively, and transported to Sichuan.
In 1945, the Japanese army surrendered; the Forbidden City successively collected cultural relics from Ba County, Emei and Leshan to Chongqing, and then transported them to Nanjing. Subsequently, due to the reversal of the civil war situation, the National Government decided to select the fine cultural relics from the Forbidden City and the Central Library, the Institute of History and Language of the Central Academy of Research, and the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum to transport them to Taiwan.
1948 and 1949, the Forbidden City has transported 2,972 boxes of cultural relics to Taiwan in three batches by warships and merchant ships. Although it was only 22% of the number of boxes of cultural relics moved south from Beijing (13,491 boxes), it is known as the national treasure among national treasures and the finest among high-quality products.
When these cultural relics first came to Taiwan, some of them were temporarily in the railway bureau warehouse of Yangmei, and then lived in the Taichung Sugar Factory for a year. In order to take into account the safety of cultural relics, the government built another mountain warehouse and air raid shelter in Wufeng North Gul. In 1950, all national treasures were moved to Wufeng.
In 1965, the newly built Palace Museum in Waishuangxi, Taipei was completed, and the national treasure that had been wandering for many years finally got a home.
