China is to send a team of artefact hunters to nearly 50 countries to track down thousands of treasures looted by foreign armies 150 years ago.
The experts will scour museums, libraries and private collections in Britain, the US, France, Japan and elsewhere to photograph and catalogue what was taken from the Yuan Ming Yuan, popularly known as the Old Summer Palace, after British and French armies sacked it in 1860 then picked through what remained in 1900.
Chen Mingjie, the director of Yuan Ming Yuan, said: “We hope to build a complete database of the Old Summer Palace’s lost relics so we can have a clearer view of the historical royal garden, then known as the Garden of Gardens, before it was looted and burnt.”
He was not sure how many treasures had been pillaged from the palace, which was a summer pleasure ground for Chinese emperors in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Based on our rough calculations, about 1.5 million relics are housed in more than 2,000 museums in 47 countries,” Mr Chen said.
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