Chinese art professor devoted to ancient African artifact protection

60-year-old Xie Yanshen, a Chinese art professor has become an expert on African artifacts, as having spent 25 years with them.

Not far from the seashore in the Togolese capital of Lome lies Xie's private museum, named International Museum of African Art, which harbors more than a thousand African carvings and artifacts dating from the 10th to the 19th century.

Professor Xie said some of these artifacts were bought from an old Swiss, and others collected by himself from western, eastern, northern and central Africa.

Xie was born in Shanghai and grew up in a family of artists. He left his parents, both painters living in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, and came to Togo in early 1989.

In an interview with Xinhua, he recalled his parents' response to his decision to go to Africa.

"Though my father and mother were not excited that I was to leave China, they gave me green light and my father advised me to mingle with the African people so as to know and understand their culture, not to live only in the Chinese community," he said.

Keeping his father's words in mind, Xie devoted much time to reading books about African culture and travelling across the continent. During the trips, he has collected a large number of carvings and artifacts.

Among the key pieces are ancient artifacts related to the life of African ancestors, such as the Dogon ancestor figures of Mali, Sokoto terracotta figures of Nigeria, ancient sacred tools of Angola, as well as ancient wood carvings and sacred artifacts from Chad, Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Morocco.

Xie said today's African artifacts are facing the challenge of being made in a slipshod way as it becomes more difficult to sort out authentic articles.

He lamented that sculptors in many countries are producing carvings but unable to tell the history and culture behind them.

Xie held the first exhibition of his collections in 2005 in China to show people the African art.

He said his museum is open to everyone, especially African youths, for them to know more about Africa's cultural heritage.

Now he is planning to apply for a membership for his museum in the Paris-based International Council of Museum (ICOM) in France. Endi