When it comes to Yuanmingyuan, the bronze statue of the animal head of the zodiac is an unavoidable topic.
The animal head of the 12 Zodiac was originally a part of the fountain outside Haiyan Hall in Yuanmingyuan, and it was a bronze statue cast in the Qing Dynasty. In 1860, the British and French allied forces invaded China and burned the Yuanmingyuan, and the bronze statues of animal heads began to be lost overseas.
Chen Mingjie, former director of the Yuanmingyuan Management Office, once told the media that from the information currently stored, there are at least 1.5 million pieces of Yuanmingyuan cultural relics scattered at home and abroad. The head of the zodiac animal in Yuanmingyuan has become a symbol of the cultural relics lost overseas in Yuanmingyuan.
Since 2000, the animal heads that have been lost overseas have begun to appear in auctions and other places, which has aroused widespread concern at home and abroad. After twists and turns, hundreds of years later, some animal heads finally returned. At present, in addition to the return of the horse head to the Yuanmingyuan, the heads of cattle, monkeys, tigers, pigs, rats and rabbits have returned to the motherland. However, the whereabouts of the other five animal heads are still unknown.
Luo Guoqiang, a professor at Guanghua Law School of Zhejiang University, said in an interview with the Beijing News that if China can directly negotiate and conclude bilateral treaties with relevant countries, the possibility of successful recovery is higher.
Liu Yang, a member of the Academic Committee of China Yuanmingyuan Society, said, “The legendary experience of Ma Shou is also a microcosm of China’s modern history.”
In 160, Ma Shou finally “went home”
Liu Yang collects and inspects the information of cultural relics scattered in Yuanmingyuan all the year round, and he knows the history of Ma Shou and his return.
The bronze statue of the animal head of the zodiac in Yuanmingyuan, also known as “the animal head of Yuanmingyuan”. During the Qianlong period of Qing Dynasty, Lang Shining, a European missionary, presided over the design, while Michel Benoist, a Frenchman, supervised the design and made it by a court craftsman in Qing Dynasty, which blended the essence of Chinese and western art.
The head of the animal is the nozzle of the “hydraulic clock” in the fountain in front of Haiyan Hall in the former Yuanmingyuan. The full name of the “hydraulic clock” is the “Zodiac Time Fountain”. Twelve bronze statues of human body and animal head are symmetrically arranged on both sides of the fountain in a figure of eight, and arranged around according to the time law. From inside to outside, ugly cows, rabbits, snakes, sheep, chickens and pigs are in the north, while from inside to outside, rats, yinhu, dragons, afternoon horses, monkeys and dogs are in the south. Each attribute animal head is a fountain organ and represents different time.
Every day, the bronze statues of the zodiac will spray water in turn. People can know the approximate time according to the animals that spray water, so they are called “hydraulic clock” by people at that time, and thus become the essence of Haiyan Hall complex.
In 1860, the British and French allied forces burned the Yuanmingyuan, and the bronze statue of the 12 Zodiac in Yuanmingyuan was lost overseas.
Liu Yang said that in 2007, the information of horse head auction at Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong was seen by Mr. Stanley Ho, a patriotic industrialist in Macao. Stanley Ho decided to buy the horse head with HK$ 69.1 million, and then announced that he would donate it to the country..However, for various reasons, Ma Shou did not return to the mainland for the time being. In 2019, the seventieth anniversary of the founding of New China, Mr. Stanley Ho officially handed over the horse head to the museum in mainland China.
On December 1, 2020, National Cultural Heritage Administration officially transferred the bronze statue of Ma Shou to the Yuanmingyuan Management Office in Haidian District, Beijing for collection.
After 160 years, Ma Shou became the first animal head to truly return to Yuanmingyuan.
Peking University Institute of Archaeology and Culture has analyzed and tested the horse head. The results show that the horse head is made of red copper with trace lead and zinc. The content of copper is about 98%, lead is about 1%, and a certain amount of iron and zinc. The melting point of copper is as high as 1083℃, so it needs to be cast at higher temperature. The reason for using red copper should be to present a purplish red effect.
The preliminary process analysis confirmed that the whole capital of Malaysia was cast by precision casting and lost wax method at one time, and the process was exquisite, which can be described as a fine product of lost wax casting.
After careful observation, Liu Yang found that Ma’s two ears were asymmetrical, and one of them was a little twisted, “indicating that it had been hit by external forces in more than 100 years’ experience. From the front, the horse head is very majestic, reflecting the momentum of a prosperous country. But if you kneel down in front of the horse’s head and look up from the bottom, you will find that it is a horse with curly hair and a big die smile, which is very cute. “
Liu Yang was very happy when Ma Shou returned to Yuanmingyuan. “Returning to Yuanmingyuan has a completely different meaning.”
Six animal heads are bumpy and return to the road
In addition to the horse head, the return experience of the other six animal heads is also full of ups and downs.
In 2000, at the auction held by Christie’s and Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, bronze statues of the head of a cow, the head of a monkey and the head of a tiger appeared.
On July 9th, 2021, in CCTV’s “Centennial Memories” program, Liu Hualong, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Poly Group Co., Ltd., said that as early as one month before the auction, the news that the animal head was about to be auctioned publicly came from Hong Kong. On the afternoon of the auction, while the auction was suspended, the representatives of Poly Group left the venue and applied to the group headquarters for bidding.
In the end, Poly successfully photographed the monkey head and the cow head for HK$ 7.4 million and HK$ 7 million respectively. Then at Sotheby’s auction on May 2, Poly won the tiger’s head for HK$ 14 million.
The only thing that returned in a public way without the intervention of the auction company was the bronze statue of the pig’s head. At the beginning of 2003, the Chinese special fund for rescuing lost overseas cultural relics searched for the whereabouts of the bronze statue of pig head in the United States. After hard work, American collectors agreed to transfer the bronze statue of pig head to the special fund. In September 2003, Stanley Ho donated more than RMB 6 million to the special fund to buy back the bronze statue of pig head, which is now collected in Poly Art Museum.
In October 2008, Christie’s auction house announced that it would hold a special auction in Paris, France in February 2009..Among them are the bronze heads of rats and rabbits, which were plundered by the British and French allied forces from Yuanmingyuan in 1860 and lost overseas for many years.
Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer, was very angry at the news. He formed a “lawyers’ group to pursue the lost cultural relics in Yuanmingyuan”, hoping to negotiate with the cultural relics holders and Christie’s auction house, and even fight transnational lawsuits, aiming at stopping the auction and pursuing the national treasure.
Although the efforts of the lawyers’ group did not achieve the desired results, after many storms, the two animal heads were finally auctioned. At the end of April, the French Pino family, the major shareholder of Christie’s, announced that it had bought two animal heads from the owners and would donate them to China for free. In 2013, the head of the mouse and the head of the rabbit entered the National Museum of Tibet.
Liu Yang later said that the rabbit head and the mouse head can finally come back, which is the result of joint efforts of many parties, but there are also elements of luck. “The process and results can hardly be copied.” For overseas cultural relics, Liu Yang described it this way: “There is a crack in the door where cultural relics return, but you must go up and knock hard.”
According to the Beijing News reporter, Liu Yang passed away in 2019.
Through this storm and its great influence, we can also get a glimpse of the dilemma and breakthrough of the recovery of lost cultural relics.
Luo Guoqiang, a professor at Guanghua Law School of Zhejiang University, mentioned that the transnational civil litigation initiated by Chinese lawyers’ groups must be conducted in the court of the country where the cultural relics are located (France) according to the laws of the country where they are located, and faced with foreign civil law problems such as the ownership of litigation rights, acquisition in good faith, and limitation, which was doomed to be unsuccessful almost from the beginning.
The conclusion of bilateral treaties may be conducive to the recovery of cultural relics
It is understood that so far, of the twelve animal heads scattered in Yuanmingyuan, seven have returned to China in different ways. In addition to the horse head in Yuanmingyuan, the cow head, monkey head, tiger head and pig head are now in Beijing Poly Art Museum, and the mouse head and rabbit head are in China National Museum.
Liu Yang said that Yuanmingyuan has been paying attention to the whereabouts of other animal heads. It is said that the dragon head is currently overseas, but the whereabouts of the snake head, chicken head, dog head and sheep head are unknown.
Regarding the recovery of lost cultural relics, experts said that there are still many difficulties at the legal level.
Luo Guoqiang told the Beijing News reporter that international treaties that may be applicable to the recovery of cultural relics lost overseas mainly include the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illegal Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the 1995 International Institute for the Unification of Private Law Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Relics. The 1970 Convention and the 1995 Convention provide relief measures for the recovery of cultural relics lost overseas, but the 1970 Convention only applies to cases after the conclusion and entry into force of the Convention, while the 1995 Convention has a limitation on the recovery of cultural relics, and some countries where cultural relics are located have not yet acceded to the above two conventions.
Luo Guoqiang believes that, by contrast, if China can directly negotiate and conclude bilateral treaties with relevant countries,.The possibility of successful recourse is high.
Huo Zhengxin, deputy dean of the School of International Law of China University of Political Science and Law, also said that the signing of bilateral treaties between the two countries is more practical, more targeted and more specific.
In view of the situation that several animal heads are recovered through commercial repurchase, Luo Guoqiang said that commercial repurchase is not the best way to recover. Although it is the most convenient and practical way in terms of legal operation, it is morally unsatisfactory.
Because the Chinese parties need to buy cultural relics at a high price, some people will think that these cultural relics were originally stolen from the country, and if they want to buy them back at a high price, it is tantamount to “double harm.”
Huo Zhengxin also disapproves of state-owned enterprises or state-owned cultural and art institutions participating in the auction. “The participation of China parties, especially state-owned institutions, in the auction will give the impression that the China government has recognized the legality of the illegal loss of cultural relics, which is very unfavorable for pursuing cultural relics through legal channels in the future.”
Luo Guoqiang said that in recent years, in terms of international law, the concepts of “illegally lost cultural relics should be returned to their countries of origin” and “combating illegal trafficking in cultural relics is the common mission of all mankind” have been recognized and supported by more and more countries; China has signed bilateral agreements with 23 countries on the recovery and return of lost cultural relics, and led the formulation of the Dunhuang Declaration on the Protection and Return of Stolen Cultural Property Illegally Exited, which reflects the demands of countries with lost cultural relics.
In terms of domestic laws, the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics has been revised many times, and domestic laws provide a principled basis for the recourse of cultural relics lost overseas from the perspective of entity or procedure. “In terms of specific regulations, there is still room for further improvement.”
Liu Yang said, maybe these animal heads are lying quietly in a corner of the world, waiting for people to find them. “I hope that in my lifetime, I can see twelve animal heads reunited in Yuanmingyuan.”
Beijing News reporter Qiao Chi