Chinese Heritage with European Characteristics: International and Domestic Dimensions of the China’s Cultural Heritage Politics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.18.2021.73.01Keywords:
China, Chinese culture, Chinese heritage, Chinese nationalismAbstract
The discussion on Chinese cultural heritage started to emerge as a result of inspiration coming from foreign travels of Chinese scholars-officials and as protective measures against looting of artifacts in the 19th and 20th centuries. The most spectacular robberies were carried out by Anglo-French forces in the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan) during the Second Opium War in 1860. That event became one of the cornerstones of the “century of humiliation” (bainian guochi) in the Chinese historical narrative. Even though the Communist Revolution classified historical sites as remnants of feudalism, today the Communist Party of China has assumed the role of a defender of the Chinese heritage. In contemporary China, its cultural heritage is a phenomenon of both domestic and international significance. The Chinese emphasize the antiquity of the Chinese nation, pointing to the origins of Chinese civilization as early as five thousand years ago. In contemporary China, recovering cultural treasures is important for the political legitimacy of a government and for erasing the national humiliation.
Downloads
References
Boggan T., History of the U.S. Table Tennis, vol. V: 1971-1972, Part I, 2005, at https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Table-Tennis/History/History-of-USATT/Volume-V.
Bollo S., Zhang Yu, “Policy and Impact of Public Museums in China: Exploring New Trends and Challenges”, Museum International, vol. 69, no. 3-4 (2017), pp. 26-37, https://doi.org/10.1111/muse.12170.
Cahill J., London 1935/36 Exhibition: “Early” Paintings from China, at http://jamescahill.info/the-writings-of-james-cahill/london-193536-exhibition-early-paintings-from-china.
Callahan W.A., “National Insecurities: Humiliation, Salvation, and Chinese Nationalism”, Alternatives Global, Local, Political, vol. 29, no. 2 (2004), pp. 199-218, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F030437540402900204.
Chinese Art Treasures; A Selected Group of Objects from the Chinese National Palace Museum and the Chinese National Central Museum, Taichung, Taiwan. Exhibited in the United States by the Government of the Republic of China at the National Gallery of Art, Washington [and others] 1961-1962, Genewa 1961.
Claypool L., “Zhang Jian and China’s First Museum”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 64, no. 3 (2005), pp. 567-604.
Cui Yao, Duan Fang: Luanshi zhi neng cheng wan Qing shoucang di yi ren, 6 July 2018, at http://collection.sina.com.cn/cjrw/2018-07-06/doc-ihexfcvk5924157.shtml.
CPI Inflation Calculator, at https://www.in2013dollars.com/1907-GBP-in-2019.
Dikőtter F., Wielki głód. Tragiczne skutki polityki Mao 1958-1962, transl. by B. Gadomska, Wołowiec 2013.
“European Museums Defend Their Partnerships in China”, The Art Newspaper, 1 September 2020, at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/european-museums-defend-theirpartnerships-in-china.
Gawlikowski K., “Formowanie się społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w Chinach w XX wieku”, in K. Tomala, K. Gawlikowski (eds.) Chiny. Rozwój społeczeństwa i państwa na przełomie XX i XXI wieku, Warszawa 2002, pp. 9-34.
Hevia J.L., English Lessons. The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China, Durham, NC 2003, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385066.
Hevia J.L., “Loot’s Fate: The Economy of Plunder and the Moral Life of Objects ‘From the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China’”, History and Anthropology, vol. 6, no. 4 (1994), pp. 319-345, https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.1994.9960833.
Hevia J.L., The Afterlives of Ruins: The Yuanmingyuan in China and the West. A Lecture, The University of Chicago, 21 May 2013, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAiLsuk_gLo.
Hoe S., Women at the Siege: Peking 1900, Oxford 2000.
Hon Tze-Ki, “Ti-Yong Theory”, in K.-W. Wang (ed.), Modern China. An Encyclopedia of History, Culture and Nationalism, New York–London 1998.
“How Many Chinese Cultural Treasures ‘Lost’ Overseas?”, People’s Daily, 30 January 2007, at http://en.people.cn/200701/30/eng20070130_346095.html#.
Hugo V., The Sack of The Summer Palace, Letter to Captain Butler, 25 November 1861, at http://archive.is/EekF#selection-553.0-553.29.
Kohara H., “The Qianlong Emperor’s Skill in the Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting”, Phoebus: A Journal of Art History, vol. 6, no. 1 (1988), pp. 56-73.
Kraus R., “The Politics of Art Repatriation: Nationalism, State Legitimation, and Beijing’s Looted Zodiac Animal Heads”, in P. Gries, S. Rosen (eds.), Chinese Politics. State, Society and the Market, Abingdon 2010, pp. 199-221.
Lai Guolong “The Emergence of ‘Cultural Heritage’ in Modern China: A Historical and Legal Perspective”, in A. Matsuda, L.E. Mengoni (eds.), Reconsidering Cultural Heritage in East Asia, London 2016, pp. 47-85, https://doi.org/10.5334/baz.d.
Landler M., “Christie’s Auctions Relics Despite China’s Objection”, The New York Times, 1 May 2000, at https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/01/arts/christie-s-auctions-relics-despitechina-s-objection.html.
Landsberger S., Patriotic Education Propaganda Poster Set (1994), at https://chineseposters.net/themes/patriotic-education-1994.
Li Chuanbin, “Shixi ‘Baocun guji tuiguang banfa zhangcheng’”, Chengshi Xuekan, vol. 39, no. 2 (2018), pp. 8-14, http://dx.chinadoi.cn/10.3969/j.issn.2096-059X.2018.02.002.
Liu Zuozhen, Repatriation of Cultural Objects: The Case of China, Singapore 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0597-8.
“National Treasures to Be Displayed in Taiwan”, People’s Daily, 28 November 2001, at http://en.people.cn/200111/28/eng20011128_85473.shtml.
Pauthier G., “Des curiosités chinoises exposées aux Tuileries”, Gazette des beaux-arts: la doyenne des revues d’art, vol. 9, no. 6 (1861), pp. 363-369, https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17225.34.
Poly Art Museum website, at www.polyartmuseum.com.
Renan E., “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”, in J. Hutchinson, A. Smith (eds.), Nationalism, Oxford–New York 1994, pp. 17-18.
Ringmar E., “Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime: The European Destruction of the Emperor’s Summer Palace”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 34, no. 3 (2006), pp. 917-933, https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298060340030401.
Royal Engineers Museum website, at https://www.re-museum.co.uk/.
Sand J., “Was Meiji Taste in Interiors ‘Orientalist’?”, Positions: Asia Critique, vol. 8, no. 3 (2000), pp. 637-673, https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8-3-637.
Shambaugh Elliott J., Shambaugh D.L., The Odyssey of China’s Imperial Art Treasures, Seattle–London 2005.
Song Qiang, Zhang Zangzang, Qiao Bian, Gu Qingsheng, Zhongguo keyi shuo: bu. Lengzhanhou shidai de zhengzhi yu qinggan jueze, Beijing 1996.
Speech by H.E. Xi Jinping President of the People’s Republic of China at UNESCO Headquarters, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, 28 March 2014, at https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1142560.shtml.
“Summer Palace to Pursue Stolen Treasures”, Global Times, 19 October 2010, at http://www.china.org.cn/arts/2010-10/19/content_21152865.htm.
Sun Yat-sen, San Min Chu I: The Three Principles of the People, Shanghai 1927.
The Rifles Berkshire and Wiltshire Museum in Salisbury, museum website, at https://www.thewardrobe.org.uk/collection.
Thomas G.M., “The Looting of Yuanming and the Translation of Chinese Art in Europe”, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture, vol. 7, no 2 (2008), at http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn08/93-the-looting-ofyuanming-and-the-translation-of-chinese-art-in-europe.
Volkan V.D., Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, Boulder, CO 1998.
Wardęga J., Chiński nacjonalizm. Rekonstruowanie narodu w Chińskiej Republice Ludowej, Kraków 2014.
Yue Jones T., “Two Bronze Animal Heads, Stolen 153 Years Ago, Returned to China”, Reuters, 28 June 2013, at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-sculptures-idUSBRE95R0HW20130628.
Zasławska D., Chinoiserie w Wilanowie: Studium z dziejów nowożytnej recepcji mody chińskiej w Polsce, Warszawa 2008.
Zemanek A., “Wprowadzenie”, in A. Zemanek (ed.), Estetyka chińska. Antologia, Kraków 2007.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
