BEIJING, May 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A news report by China.org.cn on the homecoming of Chinese cultural relics:
National treasure returned home after 79 years of drifting — under China-U.S. joint escort
Ten days ago, a commercial flight from Washington D.C. touched down at the Beijing Capital International Airport in the quiet hours before dawn. The flight carried China’s long-lost national treasure — two volumes of the ancient Zidanku Silk Manuscripts. That moment, after 79 years adrift overseas, the precious artifacts finally returned home.
In Chinese, silk or satin-based textiles are generically termed “bo.” Before the invention of paper, ancient Chinese wrote classical texts on silk, known as “bo shu,” or silk manuscripts. The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts are to date the oldest examples of such ancient texts unearthed in China, dating back over 2,300 years. Richly illustrated and paired with explanatory texts, the manuscripts explore the origins of the four seasons and twelve months, the taboos and auspicious practices at different times, as well as military strategies for offense and defense in war.
The invaluable texts were illicitly excavated from a Chu-state tomb in 1942, at the Zidanku site in Changsha, Hunan Province. They eventually fell into the hands of Cai Jixiang, a Chinese antiques collector. But several years later, John Hadley Cox, an American, coaxed Cai into giving the silk manuscripts to him under the guise of photographing the manuscripts using infrared devices to decipher the faded text. Exploiting Cai’s trust, Cox never returned the silk manuscripts, and instead smuggled them to the U.S. Since then, the national treasure has been separated from its homeland.
The long journey home has crystallized efforts of many.
The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts consist of three volumes. After being illicitly brought to the U.S., “Sishi Ling,” the first volume, was purchased by Dr. Sackler in 1966. A doctor and art collector with a deep affection for China, Dr. Sackler fully recognized the significance of the silk manuscripts, and believed artifacts of such gravity should not be kept outside of their country of origin. In 1986, ground was bro ken for the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, a project that Dr. Sackler funded. He planned to return the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts to China upon the museum’s completion. Unfortunately, Dr. Sackler passed away the following year, before his wish could be fulfilled.
As for the second and third volumes, “Wuxing Ling” and “Gongshou Zhan,” their whereabouts were unknown at the time.
Li Ling, a chair professor at Peking University, began researching the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts in 1980. For 45 years, he has dedicated himself to tracing every stage of the artifacts’ journey since excavation. With the help of scholars including Professor Donald Harper from the University of Chicago, Li traced exhaustively the “footprints” of the silk manuscripts in the U.S. It turned out that the two missing volumes were stored in a shoebox by John Hadley Cox, and were kept in Washington D.C. until 1992, when Cox donated them anonymously to the National Museum of Asian Art.
Professor Donald Harper, based in the U.S. at the time, connected with members of John Hadley Cox’s family. In 2024, Harper handed over a crucial piece of evidence to China — the lid of the shoebox that once held the silk manuscripts, donated by Cox’s granddaughter. The lid clearly logged the manuscripts’ several transfers after arriving in the U.S.
While scholars like Li Ling and Donald Harper worked tirelessly on the silk manuscripts, the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S. issued a policy on the ethical return of all cultural artifacts acquired through improper means. Buttressed by the solid and complete chain of evidence, China officially launched its recovery of the second and third volumes of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts. Following over a year of extensive consultation and negotiation, the scene we showed at the beginning finally materialized. The success also gives us confidence that the return of “Sishi Ling,” the first volume, is not far behind.
Since China and the U.S. signed their first MoU in 2009 to prevent illegal importation of Chinese cultural artifacts into the United States, it is believed, almost 600 items or sets of lost cultural relics have been repatriated to China.
Li Ling, who has devoted decades of his life to researching silk manuscripts, said that the retrieval of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts would have been impossible through his efforts alone. It is the joint efforts of both Chinese and American scholars, and the cooperation between the two countries to help lost cultural artifacts return to their countries of origin, that allowed these national treasures to come home.
Through the plexiglass encasing the artifacts, one can still see the faintly discernible writing on the remains of the now-brown Zidanku Silk Manuscript fragments, offering a peek into ancient reflections on the universe and life from two millennia ago. Their 79-year journey home also reflects the spirit of equal dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States; it is a microcosm of people’s wisdom and experience in guarding the fruits of human civilization beyond national borders.
China Mosaic
http://chinamosaic.china.com.cn/index.htm