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1、Cultural Relics on Their Way Home,Cultural relics as remnants of history, are regarded as records of the rise and fall of a nation. Many Chinese cultural relics, which have been scattered around the world over the last century, have started to return home to the collections of Chinese cultural insti
2、tutions, enterprises and residents over the past decade.,Reading practice 1:,This wave of returning artifacts has aroused issues concerning the protection of Chinas cultural heritage and the development of the antique market in the country. “The hot art market has contributed to the current tidal wa
3、ve, among other factors,“ said Kou Qin, assistant general manager of the Beijing-based China Guardian Auction Co.,More than 30 percent of the art works appearing at the companys autumn auction were collected from overseas. The coming Guardian auction couldnt be taking place at a better time. The Chi
4、nese art market showed signs of heating up again a fortnight ago, when an album of flower-and-bird paintings by Chinese artist Qi Baishi (1863-1957) hit a controversially high price of 16.61 million yuan (US$2 million).,The price was 10 times the record price Qis work fetched in global art circles i
5、n 1998. “The rise in the price of artwork in its home country, and the forthcoming return of the countrys relics from overseas have been a natural result of the economic boom,“ said Zhang Yongnian, director of the non-governmental China Cultural Relics Recovery Fund.,“It occurred in Japan and the Re
6、public of Korea (ROK) when Japanese and Korean art pieces began to return from overseas in the 1980s and 1990s.“Like other ancient civilizations, China has seen many cultural relics taken overseas when the country was subjected to wars and international bullying, said Zhang.,In 1860, invading Britis
7、h and French armies looted and burned down the Old Summer Palace, which was known then as the “garden of gardens.“In 1900, the invading British, American, German, French, Russian, Japanese, Italian and Austrian troops sparked looting throughout Beijing, including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palac
8、e, temples and mausoleums, government offices and residential houses.,“Items housed in Beijing from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to date, from historical files to national treasures, have been swept away,“ according to official documents from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Of the numerous cultural re
9、lics that were taken out of the country in the 100 years after the First Opium War (1840-42), a large number are now stored at major public museums in Europe and the United States, said Lin Shuzhong, a professor with the Nanjing Academy of Arts.For instance, relics from the Old Summer Palace have be
10、en showcased in the British Museum and the Fontainebleau Art Museum in France.,The relics that have returned mostly come from individual collectors and private museums, said Zhang. Zhang said there are three major ways for a country to recover cultural relics from overseas collections: to apply inte
11、rnational conventions, to purchase them and to get them back as donations.,Difficult homecoming,Some Chinese experts argue that the country should stop buying pilfered cultural relics and simply ask for them to be returned by applying international conventions. China signed the United Nations Educat
12、ional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property in 1970 and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported C
13、ultural Objects in 1995.,Reading practice 2:,Many signatory countries, such as China, Egypt and Greece, hope to recover cultural objects stolen from their countries under those conventions. But unfortunately the countries with the most valuable cultural relics from other countries, especially develo
14、ping ones, including the United States and Britain, have not signed the two conventions. International institutions have made several major donations and returned Chinese cultural relics to their home since 1949.,In 1951 and 1954 the Leningrad University, the Lenin Library and the Soviet Union Acade
15、my of Sciences opened their collections and returned 64 volumes of the 600-year-old Yongle Encyclopedia to the Chinese Government. China has also bought cultural relics back, said Zhang. Statistics provided by the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics show that more than 3,000 cultural relics came from
16、 overseas in 2002 and were sold in China, but no statistics were given on whether they stayed in the country.,Among them a large part were brought to the Chinese market by auctioneers, according to society. “ The shortage in relic supplies spurred us on to search overseas,“ said Kou Qin. Kou said that in 1993 and 1994, the first two or three auction houses founded in Beijing sold art works which were mainly confiscated from households during the “cultural revolution“ (1966-76). The owners
