Culture : Chinese Heritage Survives an Incredible Journey : * The National Palace Museum is about more than art. To Taiwan, it is a weapon in the struggle for national identity.

On a cold rainy day in early 1949, as Communist troops advanced from the north, panic-stricken families of Nationalist Chinese navy men rushed a Taiwan-bound ship in the Yangtze River port at Nanjing.

The uncontrollable crowd swarmed into space intended for nearly 2,000 crates of art from China’s dynastic collections--art that had survived 16 years of shipment back and forth across the war and revolution-torn nation and that was now to be sent to Taiwan.

The navy commander in chief, Gui Yongqing, decided that he must order the frightened people off the ship. But as he strode on board, “men and women, the old and the young, burst into loud wailing,” according to a brief history published by the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

“When Commander in Chief Gui saw the people, he felt dejected and speechless,” the story continues. “After a moment’s pause, he ordered that the officers’ and sailors’ quarters be opened for these people. The cultural objects were placed in the cargo hold, on the deck, in the dining hall, the clinic, etc. But more than 700 crates could not be placed on board.”

Those 700 crates, the brochure states, with no further elaboration, were “abandoned in the harbor.”

But the ship, together with two others that had left earlier, succeeded in carrying nearly 5,000 crates of artistic treasures to Taiwan, where they now form the core of the world’s greatest collection of Chinese art.

The National Palace Museum possesses about 600,000 items from the old imperial art collection and historical archives of the Chinese emperors who lived in Beijing’s Forbidden City. It also has about 50,000 items gathered during the past four decades. There are so many items that only 1% can be displayed at any given time despite the grandeur of the museum building.

That is enough, however, for the museum to play a key role in the preservation of Chinese culture--and also to serve as an important tool for the ruling Nationalist Party in trying to ensure that the people of this island maintain a sense of Chinese identity.

“This represents Chinese history and culture--the best things in Chinese history,” commented Chou Kung-shin, curator of the exhibition department. “If you want to know yourself, you have to know your past. Here we have the most beautiful, richest heritage of Chinese culture. So I think it’s very important for the Chinese young people--and not only for the Chinese, but for all people in the world who want to know Chinese cultural history. This is the best place to learn.”

The museum is viewed by the government and people of Taiwan as the continuation, at a new site, of the Palace Museum established in the imperial halls of Beijing’s Forbidden City in 1925.

China’s Communist government, which still runs its own Palace Museum in the original location, can boast the more spectacular buildings: the great complex reached by passing through Tian An Men, the Gate of Heavenly Peace. But most of China’s best art is in the hands of the Nationalists in Taipei.

Accumulation of these priceless treasures--jade carvings, pottery, paintings, ancient bronzes--began during the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) and included items from as early as the 6th or 7th Century. Subsequent dynasties took over and added to the collection, which included millions of pieces by the time China’s last dynasty, the Qing, fell in 1911.

Pu Yi, China’s last emperor, was allowed to live in the palace until 1924, and during this period some of the art passed into private hands. The palace became a museum under Nationalist government control the next year. But soon the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, and it seemed only a matter of time before war would reach Beijing.

It was decided in 1931 that “we’d better get ready early by picking out the best objects, moving them away from danger and waiting for the situation to settle down,” jade specialist Na Chih-liang, 86, said in a 1985 interview recalled in the museum brochure.

The journey finally began on Feb. 5, 1933, after Beijing was asleep, and lines of wheelbarrows carried crates from the palace to the train station.

Little did anyone expect that it would not end for another 32 years, during which the collection traveled more than 6,000 miles, with stops in 23 cities and towns. The objects survived years of storage in caves, hazardous river shipment and that sea trip with navy commander Gui and his shipload of terrified refugees before finally moving into the newly constructed National Palace Museum in suburban Taipei in 1965.

There, the collection has become an important part of a struggle that has gone on ever since the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek relocated to Taiwan in 1949--the struggle to make the island as Chinese as possible.

One set of measures, such as banning Japanese movies for several decades, was aimed at eradicating much of the influence of the 1895-1945 Japanese occupation.

Schoolchildren were required to use standard Mandarin Chinese, based on a Beijing accent, rather than the local Taiwanese dialect, which matches the language of the Fujian province coast, ancestral home to most Taiwanese.

As Taiwan industrialized, it sent tens of thousands of students to study in the United States and other Western nations. But education in Taiwan offered heavy doses of pride in China’s own cultural heritage.

That’s where the museum fits in. About 3 million people--only 10% of them foreigners--visit the museum annually. Every day, hundreds of schoolchildren are bused in for tours. The effect is to give youth growing up in Taiwan--whether born of Taiwanese parents or refugees from the mainland--a sense that they are part of the Chinese nation.

“We have a children’s program,” Chou commented. “We invite them, through all these activities, to know their culture and history. . . . It’s part of their past, and one part of us. You cannot forget your past. If you want to be a real Chinese, you have to know your past.”

Chou herself, who was born on the mainland but came to Taiwan when she was 2 years old, expresses strong Chinese patriotism marked with deep sadness over destruction of traditional culture on the mainland under Communist rule.

“After the (1966-1976) Cultural Revolution, they’ve just ruined everything--even the spirit,” Chou lamented. “They don’t know what’s delicate, what is beauty. The most beautiful aspects of Chinese culture, they just destroyed--not only the sculpture or the arts, but also the inside of the humans. That’s a very big shame.”

Chou hopes that this collection may someday serve the entire Chinese nation, to help “tell people what is beauty.”

But rebuilding widespread appreciation for traditional culture in China will take decades, she added.

“If you want to build a person to appreciate beauty, fine arts, it takes time,” she said. “The problem there is that they have to feed their stomachs first. They have a very big problem. When you’re rich you have time and energy to appreciate beauty. When you’re still in a poor condition, you think only of how to fill your stomach. So I think it needs time.”

In years to come, larger numbers of people from mainland China may be able to visit Taiwan and see this art, Chou noted. And a century or so from now, she added, who knows what might happen? The collection itself might return to the Forbidden City in Beijing.

“That could be,” she said, laughing at the thought. “I cannot say.”

Treasure Trove

Taiwan’s National Palace Museum has more more than 600,000 items, including: * 393,167 historic documents

* 147,924 rare books

* 23,863 items of porcelain

* 4,636 carved jade pieces

* 4,389 bronzes

* 4,099 paintings

* 1,041 works of calligraphy

There is room to display only 1% of the vast collection at any one time. Some items are rotated every three months; others annually.