【Three Centuries of Cultural Journey: From Remaking Treasures to Voluntary Repatriation.】 Three…

Three hundred years ago, Chinese screens were sawed open and pasted on the walls of European nobles. Three hundred years later, a Dutchman gave back the porcelain collection to the Shanghai Museum for free. From being useful to me to sending it home, this is the story of Chinese antiques spanning three centuries. Hank Nieuwenhuyse, a Dutch collector. His grandfather began to collect Chinese export porcelain in the 1920s. His father inherited it, and then to him, three generations. Almost 100 years. In 2008, Hank donated 97 family collections for free. Since then, in 2018 and 2019, he donated twice more, a total of more than 150 cultural relics. The age range spans from the Shang Dynasty to the Ming and Qing dynasties. He said, these porcelain should return to China. The Shanghai Museum is the best home for them. So when I got back from Shanghai in 2007, I wrote a letter to the Shanghai Museum with pictures, and I said, would you be interested in receiving my blue and white export porcelain? And I wrote back and I said, sure. In today's perspective, this reflects a profound respect for the ownership of cultural relic. But 300 years ago, the way Europeans treated Chinese antiques was completely different. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Chinese screens and porcelain flooded into Europe, which were loved by nobles, but they owned them in their own way. To own them, they sawed the Chinese lacquer screens thin and reassembled, then pasted them. On the entire wall. A room like this was called a painted house, which was the most fashionable decoration at that time. They added metal bases to Chinese porcelain and added handles, or even transformed them into candlesticks or coffee pots. These practices seem somewhat bold by today's standards, but in that era, there was no concept of cultural relics Protection. Around the world, transforming the objects they like into what they need is the most natural thing. This love of making things useful to me, although it was rough, was the first time for Chinese antiques to make large scale entry into the western world. They made the exhibition available free of charge to a museum in the Netherlands in 2,010. This was the first time that so many imperial porcelain objects were made available for an exhibition outside of China. Three hundred years is enough to change many things. The concept of modern cultural relics Protection gradually formed after the 19th century. People began to realize that objects were not only tools, but also witnesses of history. In the 21st century, collectors like Hank no longer transform Chinese antiques. Instead, they learn, study, and protect. Finally, they return them to their homeland. From sawing the screen to donating it, what has changed is not the cultural relics themselves, but the scale in people's hearts. The power of culture never lies in division and possession, but in enabling a family across the oceans to spend three generations to return Treasures once used and transformed by them, sending them back home willingly