China and Taiwan take another step closer

On the larger significance of Yongzheng and his wizards.

Jonathan AdamsOctober 13, 2009 11:08Updated May 30, 2010 12:09

Portrait of the Qing Emperor Yongzheng. (Courtesy of the National Palace Museum)

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Pity the poor despot Yongzheng.

His brothers keep angling for the throne. His subjects complain he's not really Chinese (they have a point: he's Manchurian). And the wizards he brought to the palace to cook up an elixir of immortality keep trying to manipulate him.

What's an 18th century autocrat to do?

Yongzheng's woes are summed up in one of his imperial seals on display at a new exhibit in Taipei. The seal says: "Being a ruler is difficult."

The exhibit, which opened last week and runs through Jan. 10, shines a rare spotlight on a fascinating figure from China's imperial past.

But even rarer are the co-hosts. The show is the first-ever direct cooperation between the rival Palace Museums in Beijing and Taipei. As such, it's a sign that warming cross-strait relations are now moving beyond commercial ties and into culture, too.

"It's an important symbol for cross-strait relations, especially cultural relations," said Zheng Xinmiao, director of Beijing's museum, at a press conference in Taipei. "The two palace museums share a common history. Now, the door has opened for us to work together."

The original museum is in Beijing's Forbidden City. It was opened to the public in 1925 after the last Qing emperor was kicked out. In the 1940s, the Kuomintang boxed up all the museum's best treasures and fled to Taiwan. They built Taiwan's National Palace Museum outside Taipei to house the booty. Beijing has fumed ever since. Simply put, it wants its stuff back.

That's not likely to happen anytime soon. The treasures are firmly ensconced in underground vaults on this self-ruled island, out of Beijing's reach. But cross-strait cooperation is the next best thing.

Still, the current exhibit isn't without its kinks. In the exhibit catalogue, the two museum directors can't even agree on the Taiwan museum's name, let alone why they chose Yongzheng for their first joint effort.

In his preface, the Beijing director calls Taiwan's National Palace Museum the "Taipei Palace Museum," since in Beijing's world the words "Taiwan" and "national" must never appear in the same phrase.