Palace Museum in Taipei: How Chinese National Treasures were moved to Taiwan

This the first in a 12-part series about the Treasures now housed in the Palace Museum in Taipei, and covers the conditions that led to their removal from China at the end of the war between the Kuomintang Government and the Communist forces.

In a surprisingly balanced way the film documents the turbulent times in the late 40s in China, and how that led first to the relocation of hundreds of thousands of cultural relics from Beijing to Nanjing, and then on to Taiwan.

Artifacts from other palaces and museums in Nanjing and Henan were also removed for safe-keeping, and eventually over 5,000 cases of some of China’s most priceless artworks were taken to Taiwan, along with other treasures.

The Palace Museum houses one of the largest and finest collections of Chinese Culture in the world, with well over half a million works, around 90% of which were originally in The National Palace Museum and Palace Museum in Beijing.

Amongst the works that are now found in the Museum in Taiwan are antiquities from the pre-historical period, bronzes, ceramics, jade carvings, paintings, calligraphy, rare books and documents.

In this episode we get an overview of why and how they were removed and a tantalising glimpse of some of the works that are found in the Museum.