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Taipei Palace Museum
Upon the Yuan Dynasty conquering the Song, the victor took the royal collections
and shipped those items from the Song's capital, Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou)
to its own capital, Dadu (present-day Beijing). Shortly after the perdition of
the Yuan, Ming general Xu Da transported all the precious art works collected in
Yuan's palace to Ming's capital, Nanjing. Later, Ming Emperor Yongle relocated
the capital to Beijing, taking along the palace collections. When the Qing
Dynasty prevailed over the Ming, that most recent victor commandeered the
col-lections. During the reign of Qing Emperor Qianlong, realizing that the
emperor was fond of artifact collections, officials and ministers competed to
cater to his pleasure by contributing widely and carefully selected articles,
thus the royal collection expanded to an unprecedented scale.
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Autumn View (28.4 x 93.2cm), a
painting on paper attributed to Zhao Mengfu, Yuan
Dynasty. | After the successful 1911 Revolution,
the then government of the Republic of China (1911-1949) devoted three
front halls of the Forbidden City to the Ministry of Domestic Affairs for the
exhibition of antiques and artifacts collected in the Forbidden City, as well
as collections from the Palace Museum in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province,
and from the Mountain Resort in Chengde, Hebei Province. In November 1924,
after Pu Yi, the last emperor, was evicted from the Forbidden City, the government
of the Republic of China established a commission for dealing with the
imperial collections of the Qing. On October 10, 1925, on the site of the Forbidden
City, the Palace Museum was officially established.
In 1931, Japanese aggressors launched the "September 18 Incident" in Shenyang and
occupied the entire northeast region of China, threatening Beijing and its peripheral
areas. To protect the national treasures from the invaders, the government
of the Republic of China moved to relocate the important cultural relics
in Beijing's Palace Museum to Shanghai and Nanjing. In 1933, against the
smoke and fire of war, the migration of the artifacts began. Thanks to secret
and strict organization, the cultural relics were safely transported from
Beijing to Shanghai and Nanjing, and later to Sichuan and Guizhou. And not one
item was damaged or lost. The transportation took more than 10 years, and
countless people devoted their effort to the grand and risky task. In 1945,
after victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the
treasures were transported back to Nanjing.
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