[The findings have put new pressure on the manuscript’s current owner, the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, to return it to China after decades of on-again, off-again efforts to sell it to Chinese institutions. According to people briefed on the discussions, the foundation is now in renewed talks with Beijing and indicated that it was willing to settle for a “finder’s fee.”]
By Ian Johnson
 |
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The
Chu Silk Manuscript is from the Warring States period, around 475 to 221 B.C.,
a
crucial era when lasting Chinese traditions like Confucianism and Taoism took
shape.
Credit Collection of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, New York,
photograph
courtesy of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,
Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC
|
BEIJING — Sitting in an underground storeroom
near the Washington Mall is a tiny silk parchment. Written 2,300 years ago, it
is a Chinese version of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with text that swirls like the
stars through the firmament and describes the relationship between humans and
heaven.
For decades, the ancient document, known as
the Chu Silk Manuscript, has fascinated people seeking an understanding of the
origins of Chinese civilization. But it has been hidden from public view
because of its fragility — and the uncertain circumstances by which it ended up
in the United States.
Now, a prominent Chinese historian and
archaeologist has pieced together its remarkable odyssey in a meticulously
documented analysis that has caused a stir in the rarefied world of Chinese
antiquities and raised broader questions about collectors who profit from
pillaging historic sites.
The 440-page study traces the provenance from
tomb raiders who discovered it during World War II, to an antiques dealer whose
wife and daughter died fleeing Japanese troops, to American spies who smuggled
it out of China and finally to several museums and foundations in the United
States.
The findings have put new pressure on the
manuscript’s current owner, the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, to return it to
China after decades of on-again, off-again efforts to sell it to Chinese
institutions. According to people briefed on the discussions, the foundation is
now in renewed talks with Beijing and indicated that it was willing to settle
for a “finder’s fee.”
Elizabeth A. Sackler, the foundation’s
president, declined an interview request but said in an email, “The Arthur M.
Sackler Foundation will continue in good faith to find a way to have the
manuscript returned to its country of origin.”
Donald Harper, a professor of Chinese studies
at the University of Chicago, said the story of the artifact, the oldest of its
kind, was a reminder of the complex relations between China and the United States
over the past century and the continued looting of ancient sites.
“This story resonates when you hear about
what is happening in Iraq or Syria,” he said. “What is remarkable here is that
we now know exactly what happened.”
That is largely because of the work of Prof.
Li Ling of Peking University, a quiet, intense man considered one of the
leading scholars on ancient Chinese texts.
Professor Li, 69, began studying the Chu Silk
Manuscript in 1980, working off photographs to decipher its archaic script and
later examining it in person in the United States. About a decade ago, he began
investigating the silk’s excavation and what happened to it afterward, which
led him to interview two of the original tomb robbers and examine records at
museums in Kansas City, Boston, New York and Washington.
Looted art is a delicate issue in any
country. But the silk manuscript is of special interest in China because it
dates to the crucial Warring States period, when lasting Chinese traditions
such as Confucianism and Taoism took shape. It is also important because it
offers the earliest descriptions of the gods that Chinese worshiped in that
formative period.
Professor Li said he wanted to restore the
document’s history. “I wanted to make this object live again,” he said, “to
resurrect it through archaeological means.”
Memorializing
Two Martyrs
In 1942, tomb raiders in the Zidanku suburb
of the central Chinese city of Changsha unearthed a remarkable find: an intact
tomb that included a sword, a scabbard and a silk document, blackened with age.
According to Professor Li’s research, the
thieves sold the loot to a local dealer, who mounted the silk on paper and
displayed it in his shop. It was purchased less than two years later by an
antiquities dealer and amateur historian named Cai Jixiang.
Mr. Cai would later write that he was struck
by the age of the silk, which measured about 14 by 18 inches, and suspected it
was from the Warring States period. He hoped to study it and perhaps resell it.
But Changsha was at the center of Japan’s
last-gasp offensive to defeat Chinese forces in World War II. Mr. Cai and his
family joined the crowds streaming out of the city. Before fleeing, he rolled
up the manuscript and put it into an iron tube.
Japanese troops caught the family on an
island where they had sought refuge. A witness from that era, whose account
Professor Li helped republish, described how an officer tried to rape Mr. Cai’s
wife, who broke free and threw herself into a pond. One of their daughters also
got away and jumped into the waters, where the two drowned in each other’s
arms.
Mr. Cai escaped with his four remaining
children to a nearby mountain town. As he tried to “cope with these manifold
disasters,” he later wrote, he turned to the manuscript, “hoping to focus my
mind.”
Unable to consult other scholars or even
basic reference books, Mr. Cai still managed to puzzle out most of its script.
He discovered that it spoke of how humans dealt with fate and death — thoughts
close to his heart.
He wrote an essay with his conclusions, drew
a precise map of the Zidanku site and, to explain why he had done all of this,
added a friend’s detailed account of the suicides of his wife and daughter.
A local printer published the work in 1945.
Shanghai
Intrigue
Two years later, Mr. Cai traveled to Shanghai
to sell some of his antiques. Japan had been defeated, but China was gripped by
civil war and hyperinflation, and he was desperate for money.
In Shanghai, he met an old acquaintance, John
Hadley Cox, a 34-year-old American who had worked for the Yale-China
Association in the 1930s.
Mr. Cox was now a key officer in the Office
of Strategic Services, the American military intelligence service that preceded
the C.I.A. Even before the Japanese surrender in 1945, Mr. Cox had been sent to
Shanghai to collect intelligence.
He was also an amateur historian and art
collector. According to correspondence discovered by Professor Li, Mr. Cox
asked to buy the silk manuscript after reading Mr. Cai’s book. The two struck a
deal: Mr. Cox made a $1,000 down payment and promised $9,000 more upon resale.
Within days, Mr. Cox contacted another
American military intelligence officer who flew the silk and other items to the
United States, taking them through customs as Chinese antiques, “value
unknown.”
It was not illegal in the United States at
the time to import looted art, but China prohibited the export of excavated
antiquities, which were considered state property.
“It’s fair to say it was smuggled out of
China,” said Lai Guolong, a professor at the University of Florida who
specializes in Chinese antiquities laws. “It’s just that China was too weak to
do anything.”
In the United States, Mr. Cox — who went on
to pursue research into ancient China and donated some of his other holdings to
the Freer Gallery in Washington, and his alma mater, Yale — offered the ancient
manuscript to numerous museums.
None seemed to grasp its historic value — and
it was too dark and fragile to dazzle crowds and patrons.
A few months after making the deal, Mr. Cai
asked for the silk back. In one letter to Mr. Cox, he even offered to return
the $1,000 deposit.
But Mr. Cox, who had left the O.S.S. and was
working odd jobs, appears to have ignored the request. After Mr. Cai managed to
get friends visiting the United States to pester him, Mr. Cox finally replied
with a vague promise to sell the manuscript or return it. But he never did.
After the Communists took power in China in
1949, diplomatic ties with the United States were cut, making it impossible for
Mr. Cai to reach Mr. Cox.
In 1964, desperate for money, Mr. Cox sold a
cache of his collection that included the manuscript at an unknown price to a
collector, J.T. Tai, acting on behalf of one of America’s most famous arts
patrons: Arthur M. Sackler.
‘The
Most Valuable Find’
Mr. Sackler had made his fortune by applying
the principles of Madison Avenue to the pharmaceutical industry. Along with two
brothers, he donated lavishly to an array of institutions, endowing galleries
at Harvard, Princeton and the Smithsonian Institution, making the family name
synonymous with Asian art.
According to Professor Li’s research, Mr.
Sackler bought the Zidanku manuscript immediately after examining it in Mr.
Tai’s apartment. The sale price has not been disclosed, but records indicate
that Mr. Tai had been asking for $500,000.
Fascinated by its antiquity, Mr. Sackler
would later call it the most important item in his collection.
But Mr. Sackler also appeared troubled by its
provenance. He wrote Mr. Cox and others involved in its smuggling out of China,
asking for details of its ownership. The letters, which Professor Li published
along with his study, make clear that Mr. Cox was not the owner but had been
acting on behalf of Mr. Cai.
Perhaps because of these concerns, Mr.
Sackler never displayed the piece in his museums. Instead, he held it back in a
private family foundation, and he often expressed a desire to return it to
China.
Twice, he almost did. During a visit to China
in 1976, he planned to make a grand gesture by returning it to a senior
Communist Party official, Guo Moruo. But Mr. Guo was ill, and the meeting never
took place, Mr. Sackler later wrote.
According to accounts uncovered by Professor
Li, Mr. Sackler also made plans in the 1980s to donate it to a new museum in
Beijing. But he died in 1987, before the museum opened.
The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation later tried
to sell the silk to the Hunan Provincial Museum, but negotiations broke down
over the price, according to people familiar with the talks. More talks are
expected in the coming months, this time with the central government in
Beijing.
Professor Li has had the chance to inspect
the manuscript only once. It had been neglected so badly that mold had grown on
it.
“I hope it can come back to China,” he said.
“Maybe just for a visit.”