The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures

摘要

Throughout history, China's rulers have put extraordinary store in their imperial art collections to bolster their sovereignty; and neither of the two post-imperial regimes of the modern age, Nationalist nor Communist, has departed from this pattern. Rather, the stakes underlying these two 20th-century entities' competing roles as heirs to the former imperial collection, and cultural patrimony, have risen to new heights by virtue of Beijing's and Taipei's concurrent claims to legitimacy as the rightful rulers of present-day China. So, at least, did things stand until, in spring of 2000, the newly victorious Democratic Progressive party in Taipei announced its intention to release Taiwan from its government's former goal of ultimate reunion with the mainland - a departure whose ramifications for politics across the strait, as for China's former imperial collection (the cream of which is held in Taiwan's National Palace Museum), are striking to say the least. As David Shambaugh writes in the book under review: "Thus, it is clear that politics and art remain as inextricably intertwined for the future of the imperial collection as they have been for almost three thousand years" (p. 109).