China won't trade art for rights in Tibet
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - As nationalistic passions burn over the fate of looted Chinese
artworks auctioned in Paris this week, Beijing is attempting to keep the focus
on past humiliations by Western powers and away from delicate issues like human
rights and China's handling of Tibet.
The twisted tale of two animal heads, cast in bronze, that once adorned the
Qing Dynasty pleasure gardens in Beijing and disappeared, allegedly in
pillaging by the British and French
armies in 1860, took another turn last week when their current owner suggested
he would return them if Beijing agreed to free Tibet.
"I would be very happy to go myself and bring these two Chinese heads to put
them in the Summer Palace in Beijing," Pierre Berge, Yves Saint Laurent's
former business partner and companion, told the media in Paris.
"All they have to do is to declare they are going to apply human rights, give
the Tibetans back their freedom and agree to accept the Dalai Lama on their
territory," Berge said.
State media reports have downplayed Berge's statement, focusing instead on the
efforts of patriotic Chinese overseas to block the sale and recover the stolen
artworks. A group of 85 volunteer lawyers had submitted an application to a
Paris court asking it to stop auctioneer Christie's from putting the two
sculptures under the hammer this week.
"Personally, I have little hope that this single lawsuit would succeed in
recovering the two animal heads," Ren Xiaohong, a Chinese attorney representing
the Association for the Protection of China Art in Europe, told the Beijing
Youth Daily.
"But if this lawsuit manages to raise people's awareness of the fate of stolen
Chinese treasures and arrest the loss of more relics through theft and
smuggling, it would be well worth the effort," Ren said.
The Paris court has rejected the appeal and back home the planned auction has
raised nationalistic hackles. On the weekend, campuses of several Beijing
universities saw sporadic actions by students campaigning against the auction.
At the Capital Normal University, students lined up to sign a gigantic banner
declaring: "China has unquestionable ownership of the looted relics."
Linking human rights, Tibet and the stolen relics has irked the Chinese
Internet public and elicited a series of angry responses.
"Since [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy came to power, France has made too
many blunders," said one Chinese netizen on the Internet portal douban.com. "It
is narcissistic to believe that one can use two animal heads as a trade off for
human rights in Tibet," wrote another who called himself "dark star".
The two bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit were acquired by St Laurent and
Berge as they amassed one of the world's most impressive private art
collections. After St Laurent's death last year, Berge announced he would sell
the collection, estimated at up to US$350 million, and donate the proceeds to
medical research to fight HIV/AIDS.
"Auctioning cultural objects looted in war time not only offends the Chinese
people and undermines their cultural rights, but also violates relevant
international conventions," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told
the media last week.
The rat and the rabbit are among 12 zodiac animals designed by Jesuit
missionary Father Benoit in the mid-18th century as part of a water clock
embellishing the rococo-style palaces and fountains of Yuanming Yuan - the old
summer residence of Chinese emperors. The 12 animals represent different hours
of the day and night, at two-hour periods, each spouting water at an appointed
time.
Official accounts hold that the fountain was destroyed during the 1860 assault
on Beijing by Western allied forces in retaliation for the torture and death of
British and French hostages. The palaces were first looted and then Lord Elgin,
commander of the British troops, ordered the gardens and buildings to be set
aflame.
But at least one study disagrees with the official version of events. Hope
Danby, in her 1950 book The Garden of Perfect Brightness claims the
water clock that held the bronze animal heads was dismantled long before
European forces arrived on the scene.
About 20 years before the burning of the old Summer Palace, the wife of the
reigning emperor, Daoguang, took such a strong dislike to the animals that she
insisted on their removal. "They have completely disappeared," Danby wrote. "It
is surmised that they were melted down, their metal being remolded into other
ornaments."
Only seven of the original 12 heads have resurfaced.
Nine years ago, three waterspouts, the heads of an ox, a monkey and a tiger,
turned up for auction in Hong Kong. The Poly Group - a Chinese state-owned
conglomerate dealing in weapons and real estate - bought the heads and returned
them to the government. Two more heads were bought by Stanley Ho, a casino
mogul from Macau - those of a pig in 2003 from a private
collector and of a horse for $8.8 million at auction in 2007.
He donated them to Beijing museums.
The appearance of the rat and rabbit heads at the Paris auction has rekindled a
wave of patriotic indignation, termed by some commentators in China as the
"Yuanming Yuan syndrome".
The burning of Yuanming Yuan, or Garden of Perfect Brightness, has bedeviled
relations between China and the West for some 150 years. China sees its
destruction as the beginning of a "century of shame and humiliation" inflicted
on the Chinese nation by foreign colonial powers.
Until a few months before the Summer Olympic Games opened in Beijing last year,
a sign at the entrance of Yuanming Yuan exhorted the public never to forget
that chapter of history. "Do not forget the national shame, rebuild the Chinese
nation," it said.
The founding father of communist China, Mao Zedong, is still deeply revered for
launching a revolution that put an end to foreign humiliations and made the
Chinese people "stand up". In recent years, the increasing mercantilism of
Chinese society has made party ideologues rely more and more on nationalistic
rhetoric to rally people.
Beijing has also deployed its increasing political and economic clout to
pressure other nations to hand over stolen Chinese treasures. But some see a
potential downside to whipping up nationalist sentiments in China's quest to
recover its lost artworks.
"The price of scores of Chinese treasures auctioned abroad has escalated
dramatically not the least because of China's elevation of the quest as an
issue of national priority," said commentator Dan Shibing in the Monday China
Business Journal.
"As China and Chinese entrepreneurs have been willing to pay ever higher sums
to recover lost treasures, these artworks have become yet again an object of
plunder,'' Dan said.
The two heads that go under the hammer on Wednesday are estimated to be worth
10 million euros (US$12.7 million) each. The Paris auction is opening at a time
of nationalistic backlash in China against France because of its perceived
support for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
A Chinese delegation's trip to Paris was canceled after Sarkozy met with the
Dalai Lama in December. And a high-level procurement team leaving this week for
the European Union to boost China's ties with the bloc has pointedly omitted
France from its list of shopping destinations.
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