Dangling forbidden pleasures
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Jan 21st 2017
IF THE world’s most popular museum, drawing over 15m visitors a year, suddenly offered a distant city a priceless haul of artefacts—on permanent loan and absolutely free—you would expect that city’s residents to jump for joy. Not so, when the city is Hong Kong, and when the Palace Museum, which occupies most of Beijing’s vast Forbidden City, is doing the offering. In December Hong Kong’s chief secretary, Carrie Lam, announced surprise plans to build a branch of the Palace Museum in a showcase cultural district going up on reclaimed land in Hong Kong’s harbour. Many of the territory’s residents erupted in anger.
The cultural and commercial benefits for Hong Kong are unarguable, says Mark O’Neill, who has written a book on the Forbidden City’s treasures. The complex was the seat of China’s emperors from the 15th century until Pu Yi, the last emperor, resigned in 1912. It houses such an array of imperial Chinese pieces that the Palace Museum is able to display less than 1% of the collection at any time. A trove on show in Hong Kong would draw in millions of visitors a year. As well as ticket sales, think of all the merchandising possibilities, from catalogues to replicas of jewellery and furniture. Not just the museum but the whole city would profit from increased visitors. And then there is the intangible aspect: a boost for a young city with a relatively sparse cultural hinterland.
So great is the furore, however, that it may even scupper the plans. The problem is that Hong Kong these days is a divided place. On one side are those who favour smooth relations with mainland China and who would do the bidding of China’s Communist masters in Beijing. On the other are Hong Kongers who resent the central government’s growing influence and heavy hand, and who aim zealously to guard Hong Kong’s freedoms. With an eye for the telegenic gesture, pro-democracy politicians staged a protest in the subway system in front of a huge display promoting the museum project. Their leaders said they were not opposed to the idea of a museum, but to the murky way in which the decision in favour of it was reached. They also made clear that they associated the Forbidden City mostly with the bloody crackdown on students who in 1989 protested in Tiananmen Square just in front of it. Under pressure, Ms Lam has agreed to a period of consultation.
Yet at the same time the Hong Kong administration has called for politics not to be dragged into the debate. The call is absurd. For a start, Ms Lam wants to be Hong Kong’s next chief executive, who will be chosen in March; her museum enthusiasm will surely help to reinforce the Communist Party’s faith in her. Moreover, China’s rulers want a museum in Hong Kong precisely to make a political point. As local obstreperousness has grown in recent years, they have lamented that brattish Hong Kongers lack patriotism and appreciation for China’s greatness. The museum is intended to teach them a lesson.
Moreover, the Forbidden City has always been about politics and power. The Yongle emperor, or rather thousands of forced labourers, built it as an expression of Ming-dynasty might. From it radiated the emperors’ cosmic as well as terrestrial power. That is why, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong stood before the Forbidden City to call for the destruction of all traits carried over from old, imperial China—though not the palace itself. Zhou Enlai is said to have closed it to save it from rampaging mobs of Red Guards. It was reopened in 1971 when Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s national-security adviser, visited Beijing as part of America’s effort to forge ties with the Communist regime. At a time when Beijing itself was looking miserable and drab, Mr O’Neill points out, there was no better way to impress on Mr Kissinger a sense of China’s power and sophistication. (He has been in awe of China ever since.) The palace still serves this purpose. Thousands of tourists gather every morning to watch paramilitary troops march out of the Forbidden City, goose-step across the road and raise the national flag on Tiananmen Square.
Lastly, remember the rivalry with Taiwan. It, too, has a Palace Museum—with a far finer display than the one in Beijing and the word “National” at the beginning of its name. It is filled with hundreds of thousands of artefacts, mostly from the Forbidden City, that were carried to the island by Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) forces when they retreated to Taiwan in 1949. They took the best ones, though beauty is sometimes in the eye of the beholder: the “Meat-shaped Stone”—a hideous carving in the shape of a piece of braised pork—is, perversely, the biggest draw today. For Chiang, the treasures boosted the KMT’s claim to be the sole and rightful ruler of China.
When ties across the Taiwan Strait improved under the then KMT president, Ma Ying-jeou, who stepped down last year, Beijing’s Palace Museum lent pieces to its Taiwanese counterpart as a mark of goodwill. Since President Tsai Ing-wen took over, China has been far frostier. Her Democratic Progressive Party inclines towards independence and downplays historical links with China. Yet even the KMT used Taiwan’s Palace Museum to make a point about the island’s distinct identity. A branch of the collection opened two years ago near Chiayi, a city in southern Taiwan. It emphasises a history of Taiwan not as an adjunct to China but as an island nation steeped in Asian influences. And even as China has sought to enforce Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation, the treasures remain a source of soft power, with Taiwan lending them to the world’s top museums—but not to Beijing’s Palace Museum, for fear (implausibly) that China might not return the pieces.
As for Hong Kong, China’s leaders will be peeved at the ingratitude of many residents over the museum offer. But Hong Kongers’ refusal to be awed by a supposedly glorious past is hardly surprising. Their problem is an inglorious present, with China denying them full democracy. And China’s problem is that it is still scrabbling for a source of soft power with which to appeal.
