Originally the collection consisted of artifacts from the Henan Museum on the mainland. Now it is far broader, including modern paintings and items depicting everyday Taiwanese life in earlier times.  

BY JANE RICKARDS

Glaring with an imperious frown, a pottery figurine of a military official – once buried with a Tang Dynasty aristocrat over 1,000 years ago – stands in Taiwan’s National Museum of History. The figurine’s presence in Taipei is a legacy of the Chinese Civil War of the 1940s. 

The transfer by the Kuomintang (KMT) government over half a century ago of several hundreds of thousands of ancient treasures from the Forbidden City – now housed in Taipei’s National Palace Museum – is famous. Less well-known is that more than 1,000 artifacts from the Henan Museum were either “stolen” or “rescued,” depending on which side of the Strait you are on, and are now housed in Taiwan’s National Museum of History.

Museum Director Huang Yung-chuan notes the treasures were first moved out of Henan when the Japanese invaded China in 1937, and the government felt that saving the Henan Museum’s artifacts from the encroaching Japanese army would help preserve the very core of Chinese culture. The Henan Museum was one of the oldest museums in China, but even more importantly Henan Province, with its Yellow River valley, was viewed as the cradle of Chinese civilization, home to the earliest Chinese dynasties such as the Xia, the Yin and the Zhou.

The artifacts were first rushed off to Chongqing in Sichuan Province deep in the interior to keep them safe from the Japanese. Then with the end of World War II but the start of hostilities with the Communists, “the party took around half of the Henan artifacts here and the other half were sent back to the Henan Museum,” Huang says. The items sent to Taiwan were placed in the National Museum of History when it was established in 1955, the first museum under KMT rule to be opened to the public.

Unlike the historically frosty relations between Beijing’s National Palace Museum in the Forbidden City and Taipei’s National Palace Museum, relations between the National Historical Museum and the Henan Museum have been fairly amicable for a number of years, says Huang. While the directors of the two Palace Museums had their first formal contact since the Chinese Civil War early this year – in what was considered one of the fruits of the Ma administration’s breakthrough improvements in cross-Strait relations – the National Museum of History and Henan Museum developed a sister-museum relationship ten years ago under the rule of former President Lee Teng-hui. Huang and his Henan counterpart have exchanged visits and delivered lectures in one another’s locations.

There was also talk of the two museums hosting a joint exhibition, but as with a similar recent case considered by the National Palace Museum, the plan fizzled due to concerns about whether artifacts lent to the Chinese side would be returned. “Even if the Henan museum gives us a guarantee that it will give us the artifacts back, China’s people may have different ideas and it could become difficult,” says Huang. He notes that some mainland tourists visiting his museum are aware of artifacts’ origins, but take it in stride. “When they come here, they say they think the items are theirs, but then they just laugh.” 

The Tang Dynasty tri-colored pottery collection originating from Henan is unrivalled in Taiwan, the museum says. Besides the military official, the pottery figurines include representations of camels, horse grooms, deities, and tomb-guardian beasts, many dappled with a glossy ochre, pink, and green. Tang tri-colored pottery (which, despite its name, actually has many colors) was created by firing the material at a comparatively low temperature, using copper, iron, manganese, and lead elements in the glaze.

The museum is also famous for its collection of bronzes, mostly unearthed early in the twentieth century in Henan’s Xinzheng, Hui, and Anyang districts, where there were many Yin Dynasty ruins. Bronze ware is emblematic of the Yin and Zhou periods, which were China’s Bronze Age. Visitors can see many ancient artifacts, such as an over-3,000-year-old, three-legged Shang cooking vessel with an intricate design around the pot. The museum is most famous for its Spring and Autumn period bronze ware, which date from the eighth century to the fifth century B.C. One good example is a green and brown wine vessel in the shape of a rotund tiger with intricate patterns of thunderbolts on its haunches.

The collection also includes around 5,000 pieces of Shang Dynasty oracle bones that represent the earliest forms of Chinese script. Other ancient Chinese artifacts brought over from Henan or acquired later include Han green-glazed pottery and ancient jade, as well as 181 choice pieces originally taken from China by Japan during World War II and later handed to Taiwan. Huang points out one of these: a nine-storied pagoda, carved from sandstone, from the Northern Wei Dynasty; believed to date from 466 A.D., it is admired by experts for its rich iconography and technical complexity. The carving also shows a devoted Buddhist monk. “This was donated to Taiwan in the 1960s,” Huang says.

The museum’s many Chinese artifacts can normally be seen in a permanent exhibition on its third floor. Huang says that only around 500 items are currently being exhibited, as space in the museum’s four stories of display area is limited. The items shown are rotated frequently.

Post martial law

With Taiwan’s democratization, the museum has broadened its focus in recent years to include artifacts from Taiwan’s early days before the KMT’s arrival and from foreign countries. “We try to hold pluralistic exhibitions and also accept exhibitions from outside,” Huang says. Through annual government-sponsored acquisitions and private donations, the collection has now grown to almost 60,000 artifacts.

The museum has attracted the most attention in local cultural circles for its large-scale international exhibitions. It has twice held an exhibition of the famed terracotta warriors of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, with the first exhibition in 2000 drawing record crowds of over one million visitors. It has also exhibited the works of famous international artists, such as Henri Matisse in 2002, and ancient artifacts from foreign countries, such as an Ancient Indian Civilization Exhibition in 2003. This summer, it is set to exhibit new terracotta warriors from the tomb of the Han Emperor Jing in Xian, which China first made public in 2005 (see sidebar).

The museum also now differentiates itself from the National Palace Museum and other Taiwanese museums by focusing on folk culture and the daily life of the Taiwanese people. “The National Palace Museum has artifacts that belong to the emperors, but our museum is different. It covers all areas of culture, from highly valuable objects to ordinary ones,” Huang says. For example, the museum has 1,800 pieces of ancient and contemporary jade, but also a collection of 1,150 embroidery pieces in the form of clothing and accessories, ordinary household articles, and aboriginal clothing, mainly from the Qing Dynasty and shortly afterwards. The aboriginal clothing includes shoulder sashes and leggings used by the Bunun and Paiwan tribes, and the museum has other aboriginal artifacts.

The Taiwanese artifacts include 3,830 folk items donated by the National Taiwan Library, ranging from valuable Taoist religious images to everyday implements. They are often used to create exhibitions that nostalgically render everyday life in Taiwan’s early times. For example, the museum has held exhibitions on Taiwanese furniture, Taiwanese embroidery, and most recently Taiwanese coffee culture in the early twentieth century. This exhibition had a strong Japanese feel, as coffee houses were introduced to the island by Japanese colonialists.

The attractive café on the second floor is designed in the style of a Taiwanese colonial coffee shop in the 1920s. It is worth visiting the museum for the coffee shop alone, as its large windows offer sweeping views of a vast expanse of rustling lotuses in a pond in the adjacent Botanical Gardens. Patrons sit next to the windows at small round wooden tables. The floor is checked with black-and-white tiles, old-fashioned fans hang from the ceiling as period pieces, and Art Deco lamps on stands add to the decor.

Perhaps most striking is the museum’s collection of paintings. Besides its more than 3,600 traditional Chinese paintings and more than 2,700 calligraphy masterpieces, the museum is also noted for its collection of modern Chinese and Taiwanese artists. The museum has the country’s largest collection of modern ink paintings, with 140 works by artistic legend Zhang Da-qian alone. It also has 856 Western-style paintings by Chinese and Taiwanese artists.

These modern paintings are quite diverse in their styles and perspectives. Zhang, whose talent for copying ancient Chinese styles was unsurpassed, was heavily influenced by the literati paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although he mainly adhered to traditional Chinese approaches, later in life he also experimented with Western-style forms of spontaneous expression. For example, his 1966 freestyle ink and color on paper “White Lotus,” inscribed with a Chinese poem, features moody black splashes of ink, blue ink clouds, and white lotuses – together giving the feeling of movement.

Then there are the oil paintings of Taiwanese artist Liao Ji-chun, who was educated at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts in the early twentieth century. His original style was close to Western post-impressionism and Fauvism, while his later work was semi-abstract. His “Wheat Harvest” painted in 1967 is fiercely modern, with abstract blazes of rich yellow, purple, and red.

Another artist who received both Chinese and Western influences is Pan Yu-liang, who lost her parents at the age eight and who was sold into a brothel in China at age 13. Eventually, however, she won a scholarship to study art in Paris, where she lived for the last 30 years of her life, winning 21 French awards. Her gorgeous depiction of a Chinese woman playing a Western game of patience reflects a mixture of Western realism and Chinese sketching techniques, Huang says.

The museum director notes that these varied paintings reflect Taiwan’s pluralistic culture. Some of the artists were educated by the Japanese, some came from China or studied with Chinese teachers, and many lived abroad in countries such as France and Spain and absorbed Western influences. “They symbolize Taiwan’s culture – each individual culture is respected and they are all blended together,” Huang says.

It’s a long way from 1955.

Address: 49 Nanhai Road, Taipei.

Tel: 2361 0270. Website: http://www.nmh.gov.tw

Opening hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday and all public holidays. Select exhibitions may be open until 8.30 p.m. Friday nights.

Admission price: NT$30 for adults and NT$15 for children for permanent exhibitions. Some special exhibitions may have different admission prices.

English explanations are provided.

Major current and upcoming exhibitions

•  The Smiling Kingdom – the Terracotta Warriors of Han Yang Ling
   June 27 to September 27, 1F

This exhibition features artifacts from the tomb of Han Dynasty Emperor Jing, who ruled in the second century B.C. His tomb in Xian Province, known as Han Yang Ling, was converted to a museum first opened to the public in 2005. This Xian museum is lending its tomb artifacts to Taiwan. Currently, this site is not as famous as the nearby world-renowned Terracotta Warriors site belonging to the Qin Dynasty’s Qin Shi Huang – but it is still early days. The Australian newspaper says Emperor Jing’s “tomb and adjoining museum is not only the best of its kind in China, but is the best of its kind in the world.” While Qin Shi-huang’s Terracotta Warriors were magnificently life-sized, Emperor Jing’s pottery figures were only one-third of this, with softer lines and richer facial expressions, often showing a mystical smile. The tomb also has a broader range of figures than the Qin Dynasty counterpart, with female figures and eunuchs seen for the first time.

• Fatal Beauty: Traditional Weapons from Central Africa

  June 23 to August 16, 2F
  

The museum has collaborated with Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Museum to arrange for an exhibition of 500 items of African weaponry provided by a Hong Kong arts company, which acquired the items from European Museums and private collectors. “With the complicated colonial historical background, the diverse cultural features and the interactions with different regions could be seen through the craftsmanship of weapons,” the museum says on its web site. The exhibition is divided into 18 sections, representing different tribes or regions and featuring various weapons. One example is the “throwing knife,” a device perfected in Central Africa. It can be thrown at a target from a long distance, allowing the user to keep out of harm’s way.

• 1949 – Birth of a New Taiwan

  August 26 to September 27, 2F
  

Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the KMT government in Taiwan in 1949, this exhibition may prove to be somewhat controversial. Museum Director Huang Yung-chuan notes that 1949 marked a two-million strong mass immigration such as Taiwan had never seen before. “China is such a large place and people came from all over, and their resources and talents were concentrated in Taiwan,” he says. “It will be a very special exhibition.” The exhibition will feature various historical relics as well as letters and documents.