Exhibition to show China's retrieved cultural relics

More than 600 Chinese cultural heritage items retrieved from overseas over the past 70 years will be on display at the National Museum of China from Sept 17, the cultural relics authority announced on Sept 10.

The exhibition, jointly held by the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, will feature precious items such as writings of prestigious ancient Chinese calligraphers and bronze sculptures looted in 1860 from the royal garden — the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) — by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War, according to the NCHA at a news conference.

Guan Qiang, deputy head of the NCHA, said the exhibition will be "unprecedented" in terms of its scale and the value of the exhibits. "It is the first panoramic show of China's efforts in retrieving its cultural relics from overseas since the founding of the People's Republic of China."

The exhibition will also display the history and some typical cases of the country's cultural heritage retrieval efforts, said Luo Jing, another NCHA official.

In this regard, a set of thousand-year-old bronze utensils belonging to Chinese cultural heritage, which have recently been returned from Japan following five months of pursuit, will also be included in the exhibition.

They are among the most-valued relics sets that have been successfully sought and brought back to China in recent years after their illegal trade on the international market was stopped.