In Brazil, little is known about the history of the most important and complete collection of Chinese art that exists: that of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. A sublime collection is formed by pieces that made up the Imperial Chinese collection, inherited and enriched over the generations of the “Sons of Heaven”, as the sovereigns of China were called.

The beginning of collectionism in China dates back to the Han of the West dynasty (206 to C. - 9), precisely from the era of the Emperor Han Wudi (r. 140-87 to.C.), according to documents of the period. Admirably, the collection resisted, during the millennia of the history of China, the changes of dynasties, wars and insurrections, the changes of cities and residences of the sovereigns, etc., constantly increasing the number of objects.

What we find in the National Palace Museum in Taipei is essentially the imperial collection of the last Chinese dynasty: the Qing (1644-1911), and more precisely the collection of the Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795). The collection consists of more than 650,000 pieces, of which approximately 93,000 are objects of art and the remainder are ancient books and documents of very high historical value.

Standing out among the objects of art are the marvelous Neolithic jades, the bronzes of the Anyang era, so admired for their quality, the calligraphies of the grand masters, the most beautiful paintings which illustrate the history of Chinese tradition, the  “ru” celadon of the reign of the Emperor Song Huizong (r. 1101-1125), whose glazing could never be reproduced, the Ming porcelains of the  Xuande (r. 1426-1435) reigns and Chenghua (1465-1487), and hundreds of decorative objects in ivory, lacquer, bamboo, lacquered metals, among others.

After the Revolution of 1911, that deposed the Manchu, the Republic of China was installed in 1912. Although the Qing dynasty did not exist any more, the last Emperor Pu Yi (r. 1909-1911) was allowed to continue to reside in the Forbidden City until 1924, when finally he had to leave his quarters.

After these events, a special committee was created to examine and recount the imperial possession, which was carried out by the best specialists of the period.

On October 10 1925 – the national date of the Republic of China – the Palace Museum was officially set up, within the compartments of the Forbidden City, which opened its doors. For the first time, the collection of art of the emperors of China could be seen and appreciated by the common person. These treasures of immense historical value and singular beauty, which for centuries had been reserved for the eyes of a minority, were now exposed to the public. 

The Palace Museum was then visited by thousands of people, from China and abroad.

However, it was then on September 18 1931 that the Mukden Incident happened, in Manchuria, and the Japanese invasion in the north of China became imminent.  The government, decided to take measures not to place the collection at risk, asked the curators of the Palace Museum – together with experienced owners of antiquities – to select and pack up the more valuable pieces, and keep them ready to depart, in case the Japanese arrived.

Na Chih-liang, born in 1905, specialist in jade, Wu Yu-chang, born in 1904, specialist in porcelain, and Han Lih-wu, born in 1901, president of the Chinese Association of Human Rights recount that on February 4 1933 they were notified that they should depart with the imperial treasures in a southern direction. On the next day, at nightfall, some 20,000 wooden boxes, individually sealed and numbered, containing jades, bronzes, ceramics, calligraphies, paintings, books among others, were accommodated on two freight trains.

It was then that starts one of the most strange and gripping journeys in the annals of the History of Art. In all, this collection would travel more than 10,000 km over 32 years!

On arriving at Pukou, near Nanjing, orders are received not to unload the collection but to await new instructions until finding a safe place to warehouse it.

A month later, the trains leave for Shanghai, where the pieces were unpacked and stored, staying there for four years. In this period, the collection was re-catalogued, with each piece receiving a special stamp from the Ministry of Education.  Some objects furthermore even travelled abroad and participated in 1935 in an exposition in London - The International Exhibition of Chinese Art based in the Royal Academy of Art, having great success.

In 1936 the collection was transported to Nanjing where a warehouse space had been specially constructed with temperatures and humidity controlled for the ideal conservation of the antiquities.

On July 7 1937 the city of Beijing was invaded by the Japanese, bringing about the Second Sino-Japanese war, which would last until September 9 1945. One month after taking Beijing, the Japanese army arrived at Shanghai. Foreseeing the invasion of Nanjing, the government decided to transport the collection to the distant city of Chongqing, in the province of Sichuan. Just hours after the departure of the collection, there the infamous Massacre of Nanjing took place in1937, one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of humanity.

Knowing the gravity of the war, it was decided to divide the collection into three parts as a safety measure and send it by three different routes.

One part went by boat, on the Yangtze river, to Anshun, via Changsha and Guiyang. The second part was transported by train to Baoji by the Qinling mountains and then by truck to Anchun, to arrive at Omei, in the province de Sichuan. The third part embarked on the Yangtze river for Hankou until Chongqing, and later to Leshan, in the province of Sichuan.

Told in this way, the journeys seem simple. However, it was extremely complicated to find viable and secure routes and means of transport adequate for shipping the crates and escaping from the Japanese bombardments.

For the route by truck, for example, 300 trips would need to be made to transport the 7,000 crates, bearing in mind that each truck could only carry 20 boxes at a time. In addition, that in the Qinling mountains, in the rigors of the winter, with chains for the tires so as not to skid in the snow! The journey to Hanchung took 48 days. From Hanchung to Chengdu is 525 km, over five rivers with no bridges! In Baochi the collection was hidden in the mountains in Buddhist caves, secure places against bombs but very humid for storing this type of shipment.

According to Na Chih-liang, during the transport by river, one time the towrope broke and the boat started to drift, but before smashing itself on the rocks, stranded itself on a sandbank. It was then that Na started to believe that the collection had a life of its own!

The journeys were very difficult. Those in charge of the transport worked day and night, under the constant risk of bombing by the Japanese planes.

At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese war, out of the 20,000 crates that had left Beijing, 13,484 had survived.

In March 1947, the collection was reunited in Chongqing and sent to Nanjing, to the museum. The first post-war exhibition was realized in the spring of the following year.

In1948 the communist party of Mao Zedong started to take over the Chinese territory while the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek lost strength in the struggle for power.

The collection, which was in the hands of the Nationalists, found itself more and more under threat. It was then decided to send it to Taiwan. Knowing that it would be difficult to send everything, a selection of the pieces was carried out and about 4,000 crates were sent in three parts to Taichung, where the collection was kept in the warehouses of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation.

The Nationalists always believed that they would go back and re-conquer the continental territory and for that reason, all the establishments on the island were of a provisional nature.

Only on November 12, 1965 was the headquarters of the National Palace Museum inaugurated in Taipei.

According the specialists, the very best of Chinese art is there.

For the authorities of continental China, those pieces were stolen by the Nationalists.

For the authorities of the island, they were saved from the Japanese invasion and the civil war against the communists. An unknown piece remains: what would have happened if the collection had remained on the continent, during the years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1967 to 1977, when so many cultural relics of China were destroyed simply because they had something to do with the bourgeois power?

Since remote times, the Chinese sovereigns considered that the possession of ancient calligraphies and paintings granted them the authority to govern China.

A history of the collection of imperial arte – which started during the Han, in the Century II to.C. or even before – shows a profound faith in cultural traditions and the belief that only those who have a clear vision of the past can take forward the civilization of the future.