ONCE lost overseas and thought gone forever, five heads stolen from a set of bronze Chinese zodiac statues are now on display in Shanghai at a popular exhibition that has become a phenomenon in the East China city.

The exhibition, which is being held at the Minhang Museum until Dec. 18, puts on display a total of 47 national treasures that had once been lost overseas, so that they and their tortuous lost-and-found stories can be appreciated by visitors. The heads were originally part of an 18th-century water clock fountain at the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) built in 1709 in Beijing, that included 12 statues modeled after the Chinese zodiac.

The fountainheads were ripped from their statues when the palace was razed by British and French invading troops during the Second Opium War in 1860.

Over the years, through the efforts of philanthropists and organizations, seven of the fountainheads have been returned to China. Four of them: the ox, monkey, tiger and pig heads, are now in the collection of Poly Art Museum in Beijing, and on exhibition in Shanghai, together with the reproduction of a horse head, which now belongs to the National Cultural Heritage Administration.

“We wanted to create the opportunity to reunite these animal heads in front of people in modern times. When visitors see the scratches on them, they can empathize with the misery of China during that period of time. I think this is a chance for all of us to understand history from a whole new angle,” said Xu Di, director of publicity at the museum.

In “A Story of the Old Summer Palace” published by the Palace Museum in 2017, author Liu Yang presented an all-round review of the Haiyan Hall, a famous Western-style building at the Old Summer Palace.

The main entrance of this luxurious building faced to the west and there were stone steps on both sides leading to the second floor. The fountain pool in front of the hall was in the shape of a diamond, with bronze statues of the Chinese zodiac lined up alongside it.

“Each bronze statue would spray water out of its mouth for two hours following a time sequence, and at midday all the bronze statues would spray water together. People could tell the time according to the statutes, so they were also known as a ‘water-powered clock,’” Liu wrote in the book.

The 12 bronze animal heads, with selected materials, ingenious shape, and skillful craftsmanship combined ancient oriental time counting and the Chinese zodiac with Western-style fountains, and they were a perfect blend of Chinese and Western cultures.

After the destruction, the international community, including the French writer Victor-Marie Hugo, condemned the barbaric act by the British and French invading troops. However, the recovery of the looted cultural relics still faces a bumpy road ahead.

“There are at least 1.5 million Yuanmingyuan cultural relics scattered at home and abroad. Recovery is still very difficult,” said Chen Mingjie, former director of the palace’s management office.

Experts believe that for China, the recovery of cultural relics is like a correction for illegal aggression. “The return of these cultural relics does affect national sentiment, and it is also an inevitable requirement to correct the injustices that have occurred in history,” said Huo Zhengxin, an expert on art repatriation and a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.

The exhibition also made efforts to recreate this regrettable past using technology. Director Xu said the reproduction of the Old Summer Palace was undertaken by a 300-member team. Since 1999, the team has been inspecting the garden and making attempts to replicate it. But so far “only 60% of the garden has recovered.”

Walking into the exhibition hall in Shanghai, a giant projected Haiyan Hall appears in front of visitors. “You see each piece of the glazed tiles have a different color, completely different from what we see now from the ruins.”

The horse head in the exhibition is another example of the difficulty of retrieving the lost relics. In 1882, a Frenchman bought the horse head and brought it to Europe along with several other animal heads. It then disappeared and in 2007 it reappeared at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong and was bought by entrepreneur Stanley Ho (1921-2020), who handed it back to Beijing in 2020.

Other highlights of the exhibition include a 1,900-year-old bronze food vessel dating back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 B.C.). This is a lunch-box-like bronze ware that has a 98-character inscription on the bottom that describes in detail the story of ancient China’s legendary king, Da Yu, and his efforts to bring flooding under control. The bronze inscription is the earliest record in China about the king.

“The stories behind these relics will be acknowledged by visitors during the exhibition,” noted Xu. “The repatriation of cultural relics is a part of China’s growth process as a nation. Being able to have more people see the real history behind these relics is also a spiritual inspiration,” he added.(Global Times)