Chapter 13 The first section of the Central Museum born of the war

Just when the battle in Shanghai was in full swing and Chiang Kai-shek was determined to fight the Japanese army, the Nanjing Nationalist Government began to try to use the transportation force to transport treasures, industrial facilities, strategic materials and scientific research equipment treasured by the country to the Yangtze River and Longhai Railways and various roads were quietly transported to the interior to preserve strength and fight for a long time.At the same time, according to the order of the national government, the research institutes of the Academia Sinica and the universities in Pingjin and Tianjin also began to migrate to Changsha and Xi'an.

With the decision made, Fu Sinian immediately instructed the institutes of the Academia Sinica to pack supplies and instruments, pack up and prepare for departure. Long before the outbreak of the Songhu War, the Archaeological Team of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, under the command of the visionary and responsible Li Ji, began to pack the previously excavated artifacts and various equipment in accordance with the evolution of the war situation, and prepared to move inward. .According to the article in July of the 26th year of the Republic of China in the "Chronicle of Major Events" of the Institute of History and Philology: "The Institute moved westward with the Institute, and first selected 60 boxes of the most precious Chinese and Western books, magazines, and rare books, and the first batch was shipped to Nanchang Agricultural College. , and the remaining 1,333 boxes were transported to Changsha in batches. However, some of the human bones, animal bones, and pottery fragments unearthed from the Yin Ruins are limited to means of transportation and are temporarily kept at the original site.” Committee, the institute moved to Changsha Bible College, director Fu Sinian remained in Nanjing, and appointed Liang Siyong as the standing committee member of the preparatory committee."

In this operation, according to Shi Zhangru, a researcher of the Institute of History and Philology: "Because Nanjing is very close to Shanghai and the war is tight, we packed them first." It is also a decision to select human bones and keep the rest.” According to different situations, Fu Sinian agreed with Li Ji and Liang Siyong that 60 boxes of the most precious Chinese and Western books and rare books that have been bundled will be collected by Li Ji was personally responsible for the escort to Nanchang Agricultural College for preservation. The other more than 1,300 boxes of unearthed artifacts were successively transported to Nanjing Xiaguan Wharf for loading and shipped to Changsha in batches. Mr. Liang Siyong was responsible for organizing the hiring of ships, transportation and placement.

Just as the personnel of the Institute of History and Philology were loading the ship, the war in Shanghai had reached the most brutal and decisive stage, and Japanese planes began to fly to Nanjing to carry out bombing.Amid the gunfire and smoke, batches of ships loaded with boxes of national treasures quietly left Xiaguan Wharf and headed westward along the Yangtze River.Most of the personnel of the Institute of History and Philology set off with their families together with the ship, and some personnel, such as Na Lianjun and Shi Zhangru, took a detour by land to Changsha by train. Because too many agencies moved from the mainland, the whole city of Changsha appeared extremely crowded and chaotic.The Bible school is a three-story building with a large space and a basement to store things and avoid bombs dropped by enemy planes.At that time, teachers and students from Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University had come to Changsha one after another, and borrowed the Bible school to attend classes. Most of the rooms had been occupied by the three universities. In the classroom, all the boxes transported by Shi Yu are temporarily stored in the basement. Before October, the staff of the Institute of History and Philology have been busy with shipping, handling and sorting.It wasn't until about mid-October that I started to settle down.Because Liang Siyong had been organizing the shipment and transportation in Nanjing, Dong Zuobin, Shi Zhangru and others carried out the transportation in Changsha.When Liang Siyong arrived in Changsha with the last ship and met Liang Sicheng's family, it was already early October. At this time, Li Jizheng, as the director of the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum, led his subordinates to escort more than 100 boxes of national treasures along the Yangtze River. On the other hand, it is difficult to march towards Chongqing.These cultural relics were transported out of Beiping and temporarily collected in Nanjing. On September 18, 1931, with the outbreak of the "September 18th" Incident, the Japanese army occupied the three northeastern provinces of China, further invaded North China, threatened Pingjin, and the Chinese nation entered a time of crisis.In view of the tragic fate of a large number of valuable cultural relics being burned and looted after the British and French allied forces occupied Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and burned the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, and considering the possibility that the cultural relics preserved by institutions such as the Forbidden City in Beijing may be burned or robbed by the Japanese army during the war, the Palace Museum People of insight such as Chang Yi Peiji telegraphed to the central government of Nanjing, putting forward the idea of ​​moving the cultural relics south as soon as possible to avoid the disaster of swordsmen.After some twists and turns, the national government finally got the approval. At the end of 1932, several departments in Beiping with cultural relics agreed to send personnel to select cultural relics and urgently pack them into boxes and move them south.In addition to the 13,427 boxes and 64 bags concentrated in the Palace Museum, there are also 6,066 boxes of cultural relics in the Antiquities Exhibition Center, Taimiao, Summer Palace, Guozijian, and Fengtian and Rehe Palaces. The National Government commissioned the Palace Museum to send staff to move them south. ——This is the famous first move of national treasures to the south in the modern history of China. At the end of 1948, quite a few of these treasures moved to Taiwan with the Chiang Kai-shek government and became the treasures of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

The cultural relics moved from Beiping to the south were first transported to Shanghai for temporary storage, and at the same time, the Nanjing Branch of the Palace Museum was built for long-term storage at the former site of Chaotian Palace in Nanjing.Because the Nanjing branch can only accommodate the cultural relics shipped out of the original Beiping Palace Museum, and the original 6066 boxes of cultural relics shipped to other departments in Shanghai, such as the Taimiao and the Summer Palace, have nowhere to store them. Cai Yuanpei proposed that the National Central Museum was established in Nanjing in April 1933. The preparatory office temporarily took over these cultural relics.The Central Museum is affiliated to the Ministry of Education, and its office is located at No. 1 Jimingsi Road. It acquired 12.9 hectares of land in Zhongshanmen Banshan Garden. It was originally planned to build three major museums, including humanities, crafts and nature. Due to the current situation, only one museum was built. The Humanities Hall (later the main hall of the Nanjing Museum) was hastily evacuated and moved westward.

After the establishment of the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum, Cai Yuanpei served as the chairman of the first council, Fu Sinian as the preparatory director, invited Weng Wenhao, Li Ji, and Zhou Ren to be the preparatory directors of the Nature Museum, the Humanities Museum and the Crafts Museum respectively. , to assist public education, and to enhance knowledge through appropriate display and exhibition".In October of the same year, the 377th meeting of the Central Political Conference of the Kuomintang made a resolution to transfer the cultural relics of the Beiping Antiquities Exhibition Center (according to the south: established by the Yuan Shikai government in 1914) to Nanjing to the Zhongbo Preparatory Office. In 1936, all the cultural relics relocated to Nanjing from the former Guozijian (according to the south: the location of the Beiping History Museum established in 1911), the Summer Palace, etc. were allocated to the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum for preservation.The storage of these two batches of cultural relics not only became the basis for the collection of the Central Museum’s Preparatory Office, which was in its infancy, but also established a pivotal status in the cultural and museum circles in the future.

Except for the cultural relics relocated to the south allocated by the government, since the establishment of the Zhongbo Preparatory Office, it has the idea of ​​building a national and even world-class museum worthy of the name, so it began to collect cultural relics from private collectors. In October 1933, with the joint efforts of Cai Yuanpei, Ye Gongchuo, Li Ji and others, more than 2,000 pieces of antiquities were purchased at the price of 34,000 yuan in He Xufu Painting Garden, Marquis of Min.Later, with the continuous acquisition, allocation and dispatch of personnel to the field to carry out archaeological excavations, the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum quickly collected about 300,000 first-class treasures in the country, including the "Portraits of Emperors and Empresses" in paintings, "Tang Minghuang Xingshu Picture"; rare treasures such as "Maogong Ding" famous at home and abroad among bronze wares. In July 1934, Fu Sinian, the director of the Preparatory Office of the China Expo, decided to resign due to too many part-time jobs. Li Ji succeeded him. Guo Baojun, a former member of the Anyang Archaeological Excavation Team, served as the director-general. The staff included Wang Zhenduo (Tianmu), Zhao Qingfang, etc.

It was also in this year that the Central Museum Architecture Committee was established, and Liang Si, a special committee member of the China Academy of Architecture, was appointed as a special committee member to carry out initial preparations for construction planning and solicit architectural proposals from people in the architectural circles across the country.The establishment of the Construction Committee and the involvement of Liang Sicheng are Li Jiji's close cooperation with members of the Liang family after his work with Liang Qichao and Liang Siyong. In 1935, the plan designed by the famous architect Xu Jingzhi was selected. Later, Xu and Liang Sicheng slightly modified the plan. The exterior of the building imitated the palace style of the Liao Dynasty, and the internal structure was a combination of Chinese and Western, which made the whole building complex have a unique style and majestic momentum. .In accordance with the national government's planning and design plan of "building Zhongbo Museum into a first-class museum in Asia and even the world", the first phase of the project started in 1936. The owner, represented by the Zhongbo Preparatory Office, signed a contract with the famous German Siemens company, and the other party provided building materials. , and was responsible for installing elevators, telephones, exhaust fans and other communication and ventilation first-class high-tech equipment that were still rare in world museums at that time.Unexpectedly, in July 1937, due to the outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the massive Japanese invasion of Shanghai, Nanjing was in a hurry, and the first phase of the project (Humanities Museum) was forced to stop working just after three-quarters of the completion.All the personnel, together with the rare treasures collected, started another most tragic migration in history.

On the day when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out, the staff of the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum, under the leadership of Li Ji, secretly stored some calligraphy and paintings and other treasures in the Industrial Bank in Shanghai.After the outbreak of war in Shanghai, Li Ji was responsible for escorting more than 60 boxes of Chinese and Western magazines and rare books from the Institute of History and Philology to Nanchang Agricultural College, and quickly returned to Nanjing. The transfer method of a large number of cultural relics.As a result of the negotiation, the cultural relics were transported to Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and other places in three batches.According to their respective division of labor, in mid-October of this year, Li Ji was ordered to escort more than 100 boxes of national treasure-level cultural relics preserved by the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum, and took a boat along the Yangtze River to Chongqing for secret storage.The staff were evacuated from Nanjing with the ship and moved to Shapingba, Chongqing for temporary residence.When everything was arranged properly, Li Ji hurried to Changsha to join his colleagues from the Institute of History and Philology.At this time, it was late November, and several institutes such as the Institute of History and Philology and the Institute of Sociology, which had been moved by the Academia Sinica, had basically settled down.After learning that Liang Sicheng's family moved from Beiping to Changsha, Li Ji decided to visit. Under the leadership of Liang Siyong, the two came to the temporary residence of Liang Sicheng's family, and since then they have had the opportunity to meet again after parting.

At this time, both the host and the guest did not realize that with the reunion of this opportunity, Liang Sicheng's family, Li Ji's family and their institutions spent nine long years in exile together.