Saving artifacts
a recommendation for China reading
On this wintry Sunday, I offer another angle to open the door to studying a country’s complex history. Many readers detest both history, as a repetition of dates or kings or battles, and art as too abstract, both of which seem too wearying a manner to learn the details of another country.
I confess I am a sucker for virtually any history so I have never understood why people so often revile the subject. Like one of the most influential scholars I had the privilege of knowing, Frederick B. Pike, my interests expanded greatly from its origins in Latin America as I reach more seasoned years. China is at the heart of that curiosity into new areas as, whatever one thinks of the place or people or government, its history has been dramatic.
One of the more overwhelming places in East Asia, a region replete with enormity, is the collection at the National Palace Museum in Taibei. A grandiose building with room after room of incredible calligraphy scrolls, pottery, paintings, coinage, bronze works, one has to give at least a passing moment upon touring as to how all of this irreplaceable history ended up in Taiwan instead of on the mainland. Sure, Chiang Kai-shek and followers fled from the mainland to the island a hundred miles to the east but would they have ferried these lavish items in their haste to flee menacing, and ultimately victorious, Communist forces?
Adam Brookes, in Fragile Cargo, weaves a fascinating tale of China’s decline under the late Qing era, the upheavals following 1911, and the somewhat unexpected challenges of preserving these revered works. I highly recommend the book for its clarity, rich development of societal trends and contradictions over this period, and overall tracing of one of the more unlikely successes of the Nationalists amidst crushing defeats.
Brookes explores China’s history through exploring the popularization, for lack of a better word, of the Forbidden City’s treasures, catalogued at more than 1.1 million items in the 1920s. That mystical imperial compound where emperors lived their peculiarly isolated lives as the Sons of Heaven was inaccessible to the public before the Qing dynasty ceased in 1911. Yet, the successor forces in the capital gradually opened the door to public entry to both the complex as well as an appreciation of the incredible historic articles the emperors accumulated over their various periods in power. These items became known then as the Palace Museum of the Forbidden City.
Brookes doesn’t make it exclusively about the articles themselves but uses the actions of three men, each different in experience, class, and profession, to tell the tale. By doing so, the author describes social, political, and international history by using their individual lives and work on these artifacts to show China’s twentieth century evolution. I won’t say the book reads like Sand Pebbles, a novel-turned-movie about a gunboat on the Yangtze saving Candace Bergen during this period, but I was drawn into the lives of these scholars as well as the average citizens facing a series of political revolutions.
Ultimately Brookes focuses on the threats to these irreplaceable items during World War II as the Japanese forces were determined to destroy as much as possible of sovereign China. Not that the Red Guards were not equally willing to damage the collection thirty-five years later but Brookes’ attention to World War II introduces the international and domestic intrigue simultaneous while reminding us of dangers the conflict itself raised.
He writes beautifully as if he were bringing the precious items to your table for your examination, appraisal, and cataloguing. One early passage sums this up: “Bow in hand, the huntsman leans over the horse’s neck, oblivious to everything but the chase. A wounded stag lies prostrate, in its death throes. The painting is a startling study of motion and balance, violence and pain”(Kindle edition, location 85 of 5911) .
If you want something quite different to delve into the process China underwent in the middle of the twentieth century, you could hardly find a better story than Fragile Cargo. In a time when China and Taiwan occupy ever greater space in our own national dialogue, a book with any broadening view helps all of us better appreciate the challenge ahead. Mr. Brookes’ work certainly augments our knowledge of the commitments that Chinese will make when they care about something.
Thank you for your time this dreary Sunday (in Annapolis) in late January. I welcome your thoughts, suggestions, or anything else to expand our measured, civil dialogue. Please feel free to circulate this column if you find it valuable. I appreciate your time and the financial support of those who subscribe to Actions create consequences.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Adam Brookes, Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China’s Forbidden City. New York: Atria Books, 2023.