The Stolen Chinese Vase

"Ms. Porter said the sellers had no knowledge of how the vase came to be in their parents’ possession, although they believed it had been in the family since the 1930s. One theory, according to Ivan Macquisten, the editor of Antiques Trade Gazette, a British magazine, was that it could have been among the treasures looted by British troops when they sacked the imperial palaces in Beijing during the second Opium War, from 1856 to 1860."


"Qing Dynasty Relic Yields Record Price at Auction," New York Times, November 12, 2010




I am not sure whether we should be outraged--or just amused--at the sale of a Chinese vase (an estimated 89.5 million dollars) that was part of the "loot" taken by the British during the Opium Wars. Students of Chinese history are well versed in the endless tales of precious art and artifacts being stolen from China and ending up in Europe and America either in museums, or on someone's mantle or just stashed in an attic.
If Greece were as rich as China, we might see similar bids coming out of Athens to effect the return of what the world now calls "the Elgin marbles." That the Parthenon, the greatest icon of Western Civilization, remains bereft of its frieze statuary as a result of what can only be seen as outright theft by an English lord, an individual who, like many in the Anglo-American world, no doubt saw himself as a natural heir to the Greco-Roman legacy, is just one small example of the lèse majesté those of us living in the lands of the conquerors take for granted.






I shall never forget my experience upon first visiting the British Museum in the late 1960s of just happening upon the great horse's head that was once part of the Parthenon. In those days, if memory serves, the piece was more or less absent-mindedly placed in a rather dark and dusty stairwell leading to one of the galleries. It was a breath-taking experience. At that point in my life, I will confess to having been completely unaware of the history of what had led to pieces of the Parthenon being essentially stashed in London. I had never heard the term "Elgin Marbles." On the other hand, my recent liberal education had filled me with respect, awe, even affection for ancient Greek art and literature. Coming upon the frieze itself was a profoundly stirring experience. To stand before the sinewy arm of Apollo rearing his steed out of the ocean depths to steer the sun across the arc of the sky brought to life thousands of mere words upon the pages of books. "Why is this here?" I wondered.



That experience was life-changing in more ways than one. It helped me to understand the power of great art, the power of great ideas to inspire great art and of the incredible human faculties that can be unleashed in us when we are so inspired. Mankind at its best, one might say. Very elevating. Very depressing, on the other hand, was the feeling that almost simultaneously arose in me that our most venerated museums can be seen as huge warehouses of stolen artifacts.



More recently in my life, during the early 2000s, I came to make several trips to China. Up until those visits my interest in China was primarily historical and political in nature. Making and preparing for those trips set me upon a period of doing more reading in the subject. As a visiting fellow with an educators' tour sponsored by the China Society, (located here in New York in a town house of East 65th Street), I was taken to Dunhuang to visit the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. If Apollo's sinewy arm had set my mind reeling, I experienced no less a reaction to the incredible Buddhist art work contained in the many caves of Dunhuang. Yet, that experience, too, ended up being both intensely inspirational and depressing at the same time.


By this time, I had read histories of the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion replete with tales of the good wives of British officers taking off bolts of precious silks and of soldiers throwing precious golden artifacts out of windows onto the grounds of the Summer Palace thinking that artifacts in such numbers were surely common brass rather than precious gold. I had even been shocked to learn that my ostensible benefactor, the somewhat stodgily respectable China Institute itself, owed its very existence to still extant reparations payments paid by the Chinese for its "crimes" during the Boxer Rebellion.



Now, as I circulated through the caves with my colleagues, I became witness to the very real emotional impact that the "removal" of a national heritage can have upon the people who suffer such losses. "Stolen!" came the cry of our young curator as he pointed to various spaces on the cave walls where ancient frescoes has been peeled off and sent via camel caravans and railways to the various European capitals. For this young man, the intersect between the politics of imperialism and a nation's art was not just a subject for an elective in an art history program. He took it personally.


The experience led me to read Peter Hopkirk's great work, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, which chronicles the extent to which Westerners felt entitled to just walk off with an unwary or powerless nation's treasures. In the process of telling his story, Hopkirk also lets us in on the many debates that have taken place around the subject. A common argument is that we, that is enlightened Westerners, are just better at caring for such objects. This argument gained some ammuniton not long ago when the Taliban in Afgahanistan destroyed two enormous ancient Buddhas citing them as "idolatrous and anti-Islamic." Those who make the argument choose, on the other hand, not to mention the many works of art "safely" secured in Western museums that were destroyed in bombing raids during the second world war. It has to be admitted that there can be little doubt that ideologues can be as dangerous for art works as thieves or poor preservation, but it is hard to see how anyone gets a free ride in this debate.

So we are now faced with the prospect of the Chinese buying back just one such object. Perhaps, in a sane world, the Porters would just have given the piece back to its proper owners, just as the English might begin crating the Parthenon's statuary free of charge and flying it back in a cargo plane on the next available flight. What that little vase seems to represent now, however, is that China, after years of being victimized by Western powers, followed by a dalliance with socialism that, in terms of its long history, lasted no longer than the blink of an eye, has now come fully to terms with the ruling axiom of our global historical moment: money talks.