1、Cultural Relics on Their Way Home Cultural relics as remnants of history, are regarded as records of the rise and fall of a nation. Many Chinese cultural relics, which have been scattered around the world over the last century, have started to return home to the collections of Chinese cultural insti
2、tutions, enterprises and residents over the past decade. Reading practice 1: This wave of returning artifacts has aroused issues concerning the protection of Chinas cultural heritage and the development of the antique market in the country. The hot art market has contributed to the current tidal wav
3、e, among other factors, said Kou Qin, assistant general manager of the Beijing-based China Guardian Auction Co.More than 30 percent of the art works appearing at the companys autumn auction were collected from overseas. The coming Guardian auction couldnt be taking place at a better time. The Chines
4、e art market showed signs of heating up again a fortnight ago, when an album of flower-and-bird paintings by Chinese artist Qi Baishi (1863-1957) hit a controversially high price of 16.61 million yuan (US$2 million). The price was 10 times the record price Qis work fetched in global art circles in 1
5、998. The rise in the price of artwork in its home country, and the forthcoming return of the countrys relics from overseas have been a natural result of the economic boom, said Zhang Yongnian, director of the non-governmental China Cultural Relics Recovery Fund. It occurred in Japan and the Republic
6、 of Korea (ROK) when Japanese and Korean art pieces began to return from overseas in the 1980s and 1990s.Like other ancient civilizations, China has seen many cultural relics taken overseas when the country was subjected to wars and international bullying, said Zhang. In 1860, invading British and F
7、rench armies looted and burned down the Old Summer Palace, which was known then as the garden of gardens.In 1900, the invading British, American, German, French, Russian, Japanese, Italian and Austrian troops sparked looting throughout Beijing, including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, temple
8、s and mausoleums, government offices and residential houses. Items housed in Beijing from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to date, from historical files to national treasures, have been swept away, according to official documents from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Of the numerous cultural relics that w
9、ere taken out of the country in the 100 years after the First Opium War (1840-42), a large number are now stored at major public museums in Europe and the United States, said Lin Shuzhong, a professor with the Nanjing Academy of Arts.For instance, relics from the Old Summer Palace have been showcase
10、d in the British Museum and the Fontainebleau Art Museum in France. The relics that have returned mostly come from individual collectors and private museums, said Zhang. Zhang said there are three major ways for a country to recover cultural relics from overseas collections: to apply international c
11、onventions, to purchase them and to get them back as donations.Difficult homecoming Some Chinese experts argue that the country should stop buying pilfered cultural relics and simply ask for them to be returned by applying international conventions. China signed the United Nations Educational, Scien
12、tific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property in 1970 and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Obje
13、cts in 1995. Reading practice 2: Many signatory countries, such as China, Egypt and Greece, hope to recover cultural objects stolen from their countries under those conventions. But unfortunately the countries with the most valuable cultural relics from other countries, especially developing ones, i
14、ncluding the United States and Britain, have not signed the two conventions. International institutions have made several major donations and returned Chinese cultural relics to their home since 1949. In 1951 and 1954 the Leningrad University, the Lenin Library and the Soviet Union Academy of Scienc
15、es opened their collections and returned 64 volumes of the 600-year-old Yongle Encyclopedia to the Chinese Government. China has also bought cultural relics back, said Zhang. Statistics provided by the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics show that more than 3,000 cultural relics came from overseas in
16、 2002 and were sold in China, but no statistics were given on whether they stayed in the country. Among them a large part were brought to the Chinese market by auctioneers, according to society. The shortage in relic supplies spurred us on to search overseas, said Kou Qin. Kou said that in 1993 and
17、1994, the first two or three auction houses founded in Beijing sold art works which were mainly confiscated from households during the cultural revolution (1966-76). The owners of the relics couldnt be found after the turbulent 10-year period. Some senior collectors also had pieces in their collecti
18、on auctioned off so that they would be able to move out of their shabby quarters into larger and better houses or apartments. In 1996, the number of auction houses in Beijing was more than 20. However, art collectors have declined to sell more pieces after they had moved into larger houses. The addi
19、tional cash they earned from auctions had found no ideal channel for investments. Meanwhile, State-owned antique shops, a major supplier for auctioneers, could provide less and less real relics. As the supply problems became apparent, the auctioneers have turned to parts of the country they had negl
20、ected, such as East Chinas Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Northwest Chinas Shaanxi Province, and also to overseas.Reclaiming cultural relics from overseasCultural relic experts and NGOs have set the wheels in motion to begin reclaiming Chinas national treasures from abroad, said an article in Be
21、ijing Review. The following are excerpts from the article: On April 11, the China Cultural Relics Recovery Programme, funded by the China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture announced a large-scale programme to reclaim Chinese cultural relics scattered around the world. Xie Chensheng,
22、 a senior cultural heritage preservation expert, said, Cultural wealth can be shared by the whole world, but not the ownership, just like the property rights on software. practice 3: Ownership of lost Chinese cultural treasures should lie with the Chinese people. Although some national treasures hav
23、e been recovered since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, the large-scale programme recently announced by the China Cultural Relics Recovery Programme is the first of its kind in China. According to Zhang Yongnian, head of the programme, he and his colleagues will focus on items
24、that were stolen, excavated or looted and trafficked abroad between 1840 and 1949. Statistics from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization suggests about 1.67 million Chinese cultural relics are held by more than 200 foreign museums in 47 countries. Some estimates put th
25、e number of Chinese cultural relics of that kind collected by individuals at 10 times that figure. Its time to reclaim our cultural relics from abroad, said Wang Weiming, director-general of the programme. If we do not put forward our reclaiming request, Im afraid there will be no hope for many cult
26、ural relics to return to China.But he is keen to stress this will not be an indiscriminate witch-hunt. He said: We dont mean to retrieve all the Chinese relics collected in foreign museums. Our next step is to compile a list of relics that need to be returned and there is much research work to do.同学们来学校和回家的路上要注意安全同学们来学校和回家的路上要注意安全
