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Adolfo Arranz

Many of the Forbidden City’s ancient treasures were evacuated from the Palace Museum in Beijing when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China.
The collection took to the road for 14 years, traversing some 75,000km. This is the harrowing journey that preserved one of humanity’s most important artistic legacies.
The wandering treasure of the Forbidden City
The Palace Museum in Beijing attracted the attention of scholars, researchers, writers and editors from around the world when it opened in October 1925. Many international universities made applications for academic research, and word of the collection’s outstanding beauty spread like wildfire.
The museum acquired an unparalleled reputation, and exhibitions organised overseas proved to be a great success.

But worldwide political instability and China’s domestic situation convince the museum’s curators – who know how vulnerable the valuables are to plunder – to hatch plans to safeguard them.
On September 18, 1931, the Japanese empire used the Mukden Incident — a staged bomb attempt on its South Manchuria Railway — as a pretext to justify a full-scale invasion of Manchuria.

The collection of treasures, which had survived despite centuries of looting and hostilities, was once again under threat from impending war.
Fearing the Japanese army would march south and cross the Great Wall, Palace Museum director Yi Peiji decided to move a substantial part of the collection out of Beijing for safekeeping.

Museum managers carefully selected the most important and valuable artefacts for relocation the moment it is deemed necessary.
An army of workers and experts embarked on an exhaustive exercise in packing the artworks by category: porcelain, jade, calligraphy, paintings, bronzes, rare books and other objects.

The artefacts were packed into 20,000 crates after an elaborate packaging process involving layers of wet paper, hemp rope and cotton padding.
Japanese troops reached the Great Wall’s Shanhaiguan Pass, with skirmishes breaking out within the vicinity.
Faced with the danger of Japanese troops reaching Beijing, the Palace Museum’s administrative council decided to begin the move south.
The crates were divided into five batches and readied for evacuation.

The treasure moves south
With a night curfew decreed, the heavy crates were moved from the Forbidden City on wooden carts under cover of darkness.
The rattle of the carts was heard nightly as they rumbled through the Qianmen Gate to the Western Railway Terminal.

They were loaded onto a train heavily guarded by police and soldiers.
The train headed south for Shanghai, far from the turmoil in the country’s northeast.

The cargo was temporarily deposited in several warehouses leased to the French and British concessions in Shanghai. The transfer of these relics, in five batches of 19,557 crates, took place over five months.
In December 1934, the museum's administrative council approved construction of an air-conditioned and ventilated reinforced cement repository to store the treasure in Nanjing. The building was completed in August 1936.
The crates were moved from Shanghai to Nanjing between December 9 and 22.

The treasure moves to the west
On July 7, 1937, a battle broke out at Beijing’s Marco Polo Bridge between Chinese and Japanese troops, triggering the second Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese army occupied the Chinese capital with ease and turned its attention south.
On August 13, Shanghai came under attack. The Japanese advance panicked those responsible for the treasure in Nanjing, and they began evacuation the following day.

The first shipment
The first batch of crates is taken by boat across the Yangtze River to Hankou (Wuhan), then by train to Changsha. After a few months they were relocated to Guangxi. A year later, the treasure is again moved, this time to a cave in Anshun, Sichuan province, where it would remain until 1947.
The second shipment
In November, Japanese troops closed in on Nanjing. Hundreds of workers hurriedly prepared the second batch of crates, some 9,369 in total, to be taken to the port and loaded onto steamships bound for Chongqing.

On the long journey, the treasure was stuck for months in Yichang, Hubei province, until the water level of the Yangtse River was high enough to be navigated. They then headed to the Three Gorges and Chongqing, the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government.
But by 1939, Chongqing was no longer safe, so the crates were ferried by small boats on a dangerous journey through rapids to Leshan in Sichuan province.

The third shipment
The evacuation of the remaining treasure began in December, a few days before the Japanese seized Nanjing. The most dangerous and difficult of three evacuations began with the transfer of 7,286 crates by train to Xuzhou.
Some 300 trucks loaded with crates started their getaway on long-forgotten roads.

They crossed the Qin Mountains through dangerous terrain, facing thick mud and the threat of landslides on the Thousand-Buddha Cliff.
A snowstorm left the caravan isolated and without supplies for several days. Finally, after being rescued by nationalist troops, they arrived at Hanzhong, in Sichuan, after 48 days.

After only one month of tranquillity, the government determined that they should move to another, safer place – Chengdu. Just after evacuating the Hanzhong boxes again, the Japanese bombed the place.
The route to the Sichuan capital was arduous – the crates had to cross rivers and be carried in boats that at times were pulled manually.

Once in Chengdu, the crates were taken to a temple on Mount Emei. During a decade of painful flight, not a single artefact was lost or damaged.
The war ended with the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945. The entire treasure trove was sent to Nanjing in a process that took longer than a year.
Collection divided into two parts
The treasure was piled up in the Nanjing repository in 1947, ready to be returned to the Palace Museum in the ancient Forbidden City, when the bloody civil war between the nationalists and communists engulfed the country. Both sides claimed the treasure as their own.

In 1948, with Beijing and Nanjing about to fall to Mao Zedong’s troops, the nationalists stationed in Nanjing planned their exit to Taiwan. They transferred the treasure remaining in Beijing to Nanjing, in order to transport the entire collection with them to the island.
Faced with threats of an imminent arrival of communist troops, the nationalists managed to send only three ship consignments to the port of Keelung. The midwinter journey was difficult in rough seas.

Finally, on February 22, 1949, the last ship arrived in Taiwan.
The nationalists managed to take only 3,824 boxes with them, much fewer than were transferred from Beijing when the objects took to the road. However, those boxes included a great deal of the most valuable objects.
A total of 16,176 crates went to the Palace Museum in Beijing.

The collection was now divided in two. The largest number of valuables remained on the mainland and was returned to the Palace Museum, where the collection was originally assembled by emperors over several centuries in the former Forbidden City. In Taipei, the National Palace Museum was built to house the objects spirited away to Taiwan.
This is an excerpt from Forbidden City treasures survived 14 years fleeing war before being split between Beijing and Taipei, a multimedia infographic


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Chinese history

How the Forbidden City’s treasures ended up divided between Beijing and Taipei

The trains headed away from turmoil, to Shanghai.

An exhaustive exercise was undertaken to pack the artworks by category.

The Japanese empire used the Mukden Incident as a pretext to justify a full-scale invasion of Manchuria.

The Hanzhong boxes were days from being bomed.

Word of the collection’s outstanding beauty spread like wildfire.

Dangerous terrain and landslides were among the hazards facing the convoy.

The collection remains divided between the Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Both sides of the civil war claimed the treasure as their own.

Heavy crates are moved from the Forbidden City under the cover of darkness.

The route taken by the treasures up to this point.

The treasures headed to the Three Gorges and Chongqing, the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government.

Crates were ferried by small boats on a dangerous journey through rapids to Leshan in Sichuan province.

The crates are divided into five batches and readied for evacuation.

The Japanese army occupied the Chinese capital with ease and turned its attention south.

A snowstorm hit the caravan.

Palace Museum director Yi Peiji decided to move a substantial part of the collection out of Beijing for safekeeping.

The harrowing journey undertaken by the Forbidden City's ancient treasures preserved one of humanity’s most important artistic legacies.

News

China

A harrowing, 14-year journey preserved one of humanity’s most important artistic legacies
When bloody civil war engulfed China, both nationalists and communists claimed the treasure as their own


Many of the Forbidden City’s ancient treasures were evacuated from the Palace Museum in Beijing when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China.


Infographics

Chinese culture

How the Forbidden City’s treasures ended up divided between Beijing and Taipei

A harrowing, 14-year journey preserved one of humanity’s most important artistic legacies When bloody civil war engulfed China, both nationalists and communists claimed the treasure as their own

A harrowing, 14-year journey preserved one of humanity’s most important artistic legacies

When bloody civil war engulfed China, both nationalists and communists claimed the treasure as their own