How Forbidden City relics escaped war - before being split between Beijing and Taipei

In December 1934, the museum’s administrative council approved the construction of a permanent, secure repository in Nanjing. The building, which was reinforced with cement and equipped with air conditioning and ventilation, was completed in August 1936.

The crates were subsequently moved from Shanghai to Nanjing between December 9 and 22.

The treasures move to the west

On July 7, 1937, the battle at Beijing’s Marco Polo Bridge erupted between Chinese and Japanese troops, triggering the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese army quickly occupied the Chinese capital and turned its attention south.

On August 13, Shanghai came under attack. The rapid Japanese advance caused panic among those responsible for the treasures in Nanjing, and they immediately began the evacuation the following day.

First shipment (south route)
The first batch of crates was taken by boat across the Yangtze River to Hankou (Wuhan), and then continued by train to Changsha. After a few months, the treasures were relocated again to Guangxi. A year later, they were moved a final time to a cave repository in Anshun, Sichuan province, where the collection remained until 1947.

Second shipment (central route)
In November, as Japanese troops closed in on Nanjing, hundreds of workers hurriedly prepared the next batch of 9,369 crates. These were quickly taken to the port and loaded onto steamships bound for Chongqing.

On its long journey, the treasure was stuck for months in Yichang, Hubei province, waiting for the Yangtze River water level to rise high enough for navigation. The collection then headed upriver, passing through the Three Gorges to Chongqing, the wartime capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.

By 1939, even Chongqing was no longer safe. The crates were ferried by small boats on a dangerous journey through rapids to Leshan in Sichuan province.

On the final stretch, the boxes had to be carried on the backs of porters.

The third shipment (north route)
The evacuation of the remaining artefacts began in December, just days before the Japanese seized Nanjing. This proved to be the most dangerous and difficult of the three evacuations, beginning with the transfer of 7,286 crates by train to Xuzhou.

The transport mission continued with some 300 trucks loaded with crates traveling over long-forgotten roads.

The caravan crossed the Qin Mountains through dangerous terrain, facing mud and the threat of landslides near the Thousand-Buddha Cliff.

A severe snowstorm isolated the caravan for several days without supplies. After being rescued by Nationalist troops, the crates finally arrived at Hanzhong, in Sichuan, 48 days after the journey began.

However, after only one month, the government ordered another move to the safer city of Chengdu. Just after the boxes were evacuated from Hanzhong, the Japanese bombed the location.

The route to the Sichuan capital was arduous, requiring the crates to cross rivers by boat and, at times, to be pulled manually. Once in Chengdu, the crates were taken to a temple on Mount Emei.

During the arduous, decade-long journey, no artefacts were reported lost

In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s surrender in the Pacific theatre of World War II. For China, this brought an end to bloody hostilities, with the Second Sino-Japanese War officially ending on September 2, 1945. Following the surrender, the entire trove of artefacts was then sent back to Nanjing, a massive process that took longer than a year to complete.

The great split: Chinese Civil War (1947-1949)

In 1947, the historical collection was piled up in the Nanjing repository, ready to be returned to the Palace Museum in Beijing, when the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists engulfed China. Both sides laid claim to the collection.

In 1948, as both Beijing and Nanjing prepared to fall to Mao Zedong’s Communist troops, the Nationalists in Nanjing planned their final retreat to Taiwan. They transferred the last artefacts remaining in Beijing to Nanjing, intending to transport the entire collection with them to the island.

Faced with the imminent arrival of Communist forces, the Nationalists only managed to send three ship consignments to the port of Keelung. It was mid-winter, making the sea journey extremely difficult.

Finally, on February 22, 1949, the last ship arrived in Taiwan, completing the historic split.

The Nationalists took 3,824 boxes with them to Taiwan - a far smaller volume than was initially transferred from Beijing. However, despite the small quantity, the Nationalists ensured they carried away a great deal of the most valuable objects from the imperial collection.

The largest volume of artefacts remained on the mainland and was returned to the Palace Museum in Beijing, where the collection was originally assembled by emperors over several centuries in the Forbidden City.

The portion spirited away to Taiwan was housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which was founded in 1965.

In 2022, the Hong Kong Palace Museum opened in the city’s West Kowloon Cultural District to mark the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule. The Hong Kong museum is run independently from its Beijing “big brother’’, which has loaned hundreds of precious relics and national treasures for show.

Will the collection ever be brought together again?

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