Editorial | Heritage items belong in their home country
The return of 2,300-year-old silk books from the US to China is not only ethically correct but can also restore faith at a low point in relations between the two nations
If books are a window to the past, the recent return to China of a pair of silk manuscripts lifted a curtain that fell 79 years ago when they were illegally taken from the country before they ended up in a US museum.
Their return is a powerful reflection of how cultural exchange offers hope at a low point in China-US relations.
The two volumes of 2,300-year-old silk books – the earliest known in China – arrived in Beijing from the United States on May 18. The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts are the oldest ancient classics ever found, dating back to about 300BC.
Volumes II and III of the three-volume set were transferred from the National Museum of Asian Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Volume I is privately owned, and efforts were reportedly also under way for its return to China.
Illegally excavated in 1942 from a tomb in Zidanku in central China, the books were first acquired by a Chinese collector. They were taken from the country in 1946 by US collector John Hadley Cox. The museum received the silk manuscript fragments as a gift in 1992.
Diplomatic efforts to get them returned were started by the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China decades later.