Feature: The long road home for China's imperial treasures

Liang Jinsheng could have been retired for seven years, but he still rides his bicycle three hours everyday between his home and office in the Forbidden City. There, he carefully documents the cultural relics that failed to return to Beijing after the War Against Japanese Aggression (1931-1945).

"We should make history clear for the next generation," says the 67-year-old former head of the Palace Museum' s cultural relics administration department.

In September 1931, the Japanese army invaded northeast China, and Beijing was on the edge of being occupied. To prevent relics from being looted and damaged, the government decided to move the antiques of the Forbidden City southwards under a military escort.

On Feb. 6, 1933, after a year of hurried packing, a group of museum staff and soldiers set out with 13,427 boxes of relics. Three months later, they arrived in Shanghai, and then moved to the neighboring city of Nanjing, capital of the Kuomintang (KMT) government, in 1936.

However, the flames of the war soon came there after the Battle of Shanghai, one of the bloodiest battles in China. The convoy split into three teams: one headed farther south to Guizhou Province; one southwest to mountainous Sichuan Province; and the last northwest at first and then southwest through Sichuan, near the provisional capital of Chongqing.

The journey was consistent with the government's retreat route, Liang says. "Despite some objections, it was part of the national strategy in the War Against Japanese Aggression."

It was also personal journey for those involved - and it continued for decades after. Liang's grandparents, father and uncles all traveled with the relics. Liang and his siblings were born along the way.

In 1945, the Japanese army surrendered, and the three teams brought all the relics back to Nanjing over the next two years, ending their 15-year southward migration.

THE JOURNEY

"There was no planning the destinations," Liang says. "The convoy always chose places out of the enemy's reach."

Even so, the journey was still fraught with hazards, such as snowbound mountains, vehicle accidents, violent mobs and frequent air attacks.

Liang once read about a lucky escape for his grandfather during a sudden air attack in Shaanxi Province. His only shelter was a nearby bridge. Normally he would have fled to a slightly more distant vegetable field that he thought safe. But this time, enemy planes bombed the field, killing many people.

These difficulties did not stop the relics escort living their lives. Romance blossomed as five couples among museum staff and soldiers married on the road.

In 1944, the escort team stopped to store the relics in Emei County, Sichuan Province, where Liang's father married a local girl and they soon had their first boy. They named him Liang Esheng, which literally means the baby born in Emei.

From then on, all children of Liang's family were named after their birthplaces. A girl was born in 1946 in Leshan, known as Jiading in ancient times, so her name was Liang Jiasheng. Liang Jinsheng was born in 1947 in Nanjing, which was once called Jinling.

Liang has no memories of the journey, but he commemorated the contributions of ordinary people when he retraced the route in 2010.

The war destroyed many cities and made life harder, Liang says, but local people still lent a hand to help museum staff repair a river channel, carry boxes or build storehouses. "Without their support, the imperial relics would have been poorly protected."

OVERSEAS CONNECTION

Liang learned most of the stories about the journey from books and elderly survivors - his father had seldom talked about it at home. "It was a family taboo," says Liang. "We suffered a lot."

The southward journey actually continued in 1949 when the Kuomintang was defeated in China's civil war. Liang's grandfather, uncles and his elder brother were ordered to escort nearly 3,000 trunks of antiques to Taiwan, along with 2 million KMT troops and their families.

On Oct. 1 that year, the People's Republic of China was established in Beijing. Liang's family never thought it marked the beginning of a long confrontation across the Taiwan Strait.

Liang's father returned to Beijing in 1954, to take charge of transferring the remaining antiques back to the Palace Museum. The separation had caused the family to be categorized as having a "questionable background".

Liang Jinsheng studied hard and performed well at school, but he was refused membership of the Communist Youth League due to the "overseas connection". He still remembers the humiliation of being ordered to hand over the key of the classroom to league members. The political discrimination continued when he applied for Party membership, for college and work.

Tired of the unfair treatment, he went to a village in Inner Mongolia where he became an "educated youth" during the Cultural Revolution. "I didn't want to go back to Beijing," Liang says. "But when my son was born someone said I should think about his future."

In 1979, Liang applied for a job in the Palace Museum. He was accepted by the engineering department and transferred to the relics administration department five years later.

The same year, the National People's Congress, the mainland's top legislature, issued an open letter to Taiwan, for the first time calling for a resolution of all disputes through peaceful means. Almost overnight, the troublesome overseas connection turned into an advantage.

Liang recalls that in 1985, a visiting Taiwan scholar said he could help deliver family letters to Liang's brother. There was no direct mail service across the strait at that time.

In a letter, Liang mentioned that his mother had passed away and sent greetings to his grandparents.

The letter took half a year to reach Taiwan. A reply from his brother informed him that their grandparents had passed away in 1972.

The correspondence continued and a family reunion soon followed. Liang recalls how his father looked at his eldest son numbly for a long time on that first reunion.

"We all cried, but after the 40 years of separation, we had experienced many ups and downs," Liang says.

A ONE-MAN PROJECT

Liang went to Taiwan twice in the 1990s, where he went to see the antiques that his grandfather had safeguarded in the Taipei Palace Museum. "All of them belong to the Beijing Palace Museum," Liang says.

The southward journey was hailed as a miracle as not a single relic was lost. But, aside from those that went to Taiwan, others remain in Nanjing.

The Nanjing Museum has refused to hand them over, saying "they have developed an affection for the relics", and there is no move on the Taiwan side. "I think these cultural relics will never reunite in Beijing," Liang says.

Liang insists on cataloging the pieces left in Nanjing. However, successive political movements and frequent personnel changes have made it difficult to check the accounts.

He does the complex and voluntary job alone. Amid the slow work, he still feels a tingle of excitement when he sees the names of his great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather, who were imperial painters during the Qing Dynasty.

Liang hopes his only son can work in the Palace Museum, to continue the family duty of preserving China's heritage. Endit