Chinese experts have found some previously unknown lost relics belonging to Yuanmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, in the United States, palace sources have said.

Chen Mingjie, director of the palace's management office, said at a press conference on Monday that the findings included a painting from the Song dynasty (960-1279).

"We discovered the Old Summer Palace's seal in the painting, and that was how we knew where the painting comes from," Chen said.

Yuanmingyuan management launched in October last year the search for lost Yuanmingyuan relics and decided to send research teams around the world to find and catalogue artifacts of Yuanmingyuan. The project involves teams of experts traveling to museums, libraries, and private collections in countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Japan.

The search team departed for the United States on November 29 last year, and spent 18 days in nine museums in the country's cities such as Washington D.C., New York and Boston, referring to large quantity of documents concerning the history and relics of Yuanmingyuan.

Chen said the searching team had also found many other artware including snuff bottles, seals, pots and other similar items, evidently from royal families of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and very possibly belonged to the Old Summer Palace.

The team also found hundreds of old pictures of the Old Summer Palace, other imperial gardens of the Qing Dynasty and many valued historical documents.

"The mission has been a success, actually more successful than we had expected," Chen said.

The goal was to identify and document what relics were looted from the palace, Chen said.

Numerous of relics went missing or were stolen from Yuanmingyuan when the palace was burned down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

"So far the documentation of all the existing relics of Yuanmingyuan is largely incomplete," Chen said.

Chen said the results from the searches would help future research on the Old Summer Palace and would enhance international cooperation as well.

"Searching for Yuanmingyuan relics in the US was the first stage of the project," Chen said, "Next, we'll search in Europe and Asia."

(Xinhua News Agency January 19, 2010)