The Hidden Treasures of Ancient Chinese Jade at the British Museum
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ธ.ค. 2024
- Chinese jade at the British Museum, China Gallery, London - rare Chinese jade artefacts, Chinese jade at the China gallery of the British Museum. Let's go to the famous British Museum in London and let's visit the often overlooked exhibit of Chinese jade artefacts. Some of these Chinese jade artefacts date from as far back as 5,000BC!! The first two rings that you will see date from that era. The Chinese jade objects on display at the British Museum, in the exquisite China gallery, show the history of the exotic stone. Translucent yet tough, jade was worked into ornaments, ceremonial weapons and ritual objects by Chinese craftspeople.
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire.
#travel #vacation #adventure #bucketlist #traveling #explore #nature #traveltips #beach #trending #destination #holiday #world #holidays #tour #Cruise #trip #weekend #expedition #hiking #journey #trip #flight #tourist #tourism #booking #tickets #airlines #cheap #best #wanderlust #sightseeing #culture #trending #travellife #travelmemories #summer #travelblogger #naturevibes #travelingtheworld #travelingfamily #travelingalone #London #market #museum #island #travelling #travelgram #travelfamily #traveldiaries #travelling #BritishMuseum #museum #VicStefanu
Update, March 2022: This exhibit (the Chinese jade artefacts) at the British Museum was closed for over 2 years (for unknown reasons) and has recently been re-opened. I went to the Museum two days ago in order to re-videotape these incredible objects with my new camera, and guess what? The most elaborate (and the most expensive and oldest) jade items have been removed.. The rumour is that the Chinese authorities had (finally) asked for those items back... the reaction of the trustees of the Museum was to close down the exhibit for a long time and when they finally re-opened it, all those items had disappeared. No surprise here, just another tactic to hide away expensive, ancient objects that have been stolen and which should be returned to their native country... .
sadly this is true. How can the UK expect to have a good relationship with China when it cannot even return the artefacts that it stole from China? There will be hatred and deep-wounds that won't close because of the Museum's selfish actions. In the first place, these artefacts were produced by CHINESE hands and CHINESE culture. It's very frustrating. China has been really strong and intense these days in preserving their artefacts and items. I went to many museums in China recently and the country really prides itself on these thousand year old items and they take extra measure to preserve them. Some tombs are not opened because of the harmful effects of oxygen which can cause oxidation on many different materials and that's why CHina is keen on not opening some until they develop a better way to do so without damaging the objects. If people might recall, the terracotta were once greenish in appearance and turned brown due to air exposure. To these British elites, these artefacts are merely cash cows and money makers but for the Chinese they are a symbol of resilience, creativity, history, and a source of pride.
@@rabbitazteca23 I know exactly what you mean… Thank you for your comments!
So you don't show the older artefacts that were on the previous recordings?
@@denwiessimo6088 This video here is the oldest recording.. most of these items that you see in this video are not displayed any more
@@VicStefanu Ok, thanks for the reply and the video.
The chinese were such amazing artists to have been able to produce such amazing artefacts! This is really delicate and top-tier!
It really is, thank you for watching!! 😊😊😊Most of these objects shown here have now been taken away by the British Museum and they are not on display any longer...
That pair of bowls blew my mind. Exquisite. Thank You!
Thanks for watching! 👍👍👍
Very interesting video of the exhibit of Chinese artefacts dating as far back as 5000 BC on display at the British Museum located in London, England. The Chinese jade artefacts on display were exquisitly and intricately crafted. Excellent video of the Chinese Jade Artefacts.
+Michael Friedman Thanks Michael!!
Wonderful exhibitions!! I wonder if anyone ever wonder how these priceless ancient Chinese artifacts landed in a London Museum??
For each item, there is separate story..
This quote will give you an idea of how they got to England. Famous French writer Victor Hugo criticized the looting in his Expédition de Chine: "One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned…One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this, he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits."
@@margarethawinarto3931 Hello, thank you for these interesting comments!! 👍👍👍
easy - theft.
have you not heard of the British looting of China during the Qin dynasty?
You will not find a modern artist with talent and patience to carve these masterpieces any more. Even with modern tools.
I know exactly what you mean… Thank you for your comments! 😊😊😊
Absolutely beautiful, much love went into each of these carving by very talented hands.....
Amazing artifacts, thank you for viewing my videos!!
Amazing artifacts unbelievable some of this artifact's was made by our ancestors the Austronesian in Liangzhu China
Hello, thank you for your comments!! 👍👍👍
How beautiful.Thank you for sharing.
+benit basich Thank you for viewing my videos!!
How was all of this done without modern tools is beyond me
Hello, thank you for your comments!! 👍👍👍
That's why they have hidden it away. Let people wonder how the pyramids were made...
I think it's only right looted items are returned to rightful owners / governments.
That’s right! 👍👍👍
*Stolen artifacts by the Brits*
Hello and thank you for viewing my videos!!
@Greg Artley A thief justifying the theft and immoral acts.
how do you know those pieces were looted?
Very simple, the trustees of the Museum cannot produce (and they will not produce) any records demonstrating how each of these items was acquired
Amazing Skill 👌👌 and thanks to those hands who still caring these masterpieces 💐
Thanks for watching! 👍👍👍
I love how the Chinese carved jade. The workmanship was amazing.
It really is, thank you for watching!! 👍👍👍
They use diamond to carved jade some of this was made tby our ancestorsh they are austronestians leaving in Liangzhu china bfore they migrated out of china bcoz of war
중국의 옥 곰을 가지고 있는데 더 가지고 싶어지네요^^ 4:45 영상의 옥 곰은 한나라 시대의 옥 곰 같네요^^
흥미로운 댓글, 감사합니다.
Is the loot still going on ...Iraq , Afganistan , Syria, Somalia , Sudan ,Lybia etc ..... ?
Thank you Vic lovely
Thanks for watching! 👍👍👍
Thanks for the video ! Beautiful ❤️
Thank you!!
I love the alien grey head at the very top of the tower at 4:17 its amazing
Thanks for watching! 👍👍👍
WONDERFUL
Thanks for visiting! 👍👍👍
I suppose the history/story of how all these valuables end up in London Museum is equivalently important.
Yes it is, the problem is that you will never get a straight answer from the Museum trustees regarding the origins of the items
Hi Thanks Vic , I did not see any objects that I would class as Zhou or Hongshan , most was maximum 2000 years old some were song and tang dynasty objects . But none the less thanks for posting regards Sean
Hi Sean, thank you for your comments!!
from 3:40 to 4:15, I believe these items are from pre-zhou era.
These looted jade artefacts should be returned to the Chinese people
Sadly, I do not think that this museum will ever return anything to the Chinese, to the Greeks, to the Egyptians, etc...
Enjoy your dream experience with the jade secret!
Why aren't these priceless artifacts returned to the Chinese government who owns them?
Maybe because the Chinese never asked for them?
@@VicStefanu Famous French writer Victor Hugo criticized the looting in his Expédition de Chine: "One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned…One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this, he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits."
This anger continues till today, especially in China.
Karma. You got to give back the goods. Nothing is free in life. Trust me.
That’s right! 😊😊😊
落后就要挨打！
I made a cock-up over the 1894 Hague point. Many apologies. (Comes from trying to do things late at night by memory!). The correct history is this. The International Institute of Law concluded the final version of its manual at its 1880 session at Oxford under its British president Montagu Bernard and this was the basis for the 1899 Hague Conference called by the Tsar of Russia that formally outlawed looting. The 1880 manual was the work of several nations. The relevant part from it on looting is:
Art. 32. It is forbidden:
(a) To pillage, even towns taken by assault;
(b) To destroy public or private property, if this destruction is not demanded by an imperative necessity of war;
(c) To attack and to bombard undefended places.
This codified what had previously been only customary.
Many alive now don’t realise just how different the world used to be. It’s so easy just to condemn people from the past. As a young child I was introduced to a lady born in 1860.She was 94 and I still remember her. Her generation brought up the generation born in the 1880’s and 90’s and in turn that generation brought me up because so many of their children, the following generation, were killed in the two World Wars. So I know first hand how many of that earlier generation actually felt and thought. The world they knew was different to ours in so many ways. Nonetheless, from the mid 19th century to the Second World War large numbers of British people went across the empire to introduce modern education and technology to the peoples of the world. They did this out of a sense of public service and duty to humanity. Many of them died in the 1950’s and early 1960’s and few appear nowadays in accounts of empire.
A recent Professor of Mediaeval History at Oxford University, FRH Du Boulay, was concerned enough about the modern trend to distort the British Empire into an Empire of Pure Evil by reducing it to only its worst aspects from centuries long past that at the end of his life he wrote a short history of his own family [‘Servants of Empire’ pub IB Tauris 2011]. One of them was the young major who guarded the Forbidden City in 1900 who I discussed below. You’ll find the full story in Du Boulay’s book. Another was an aunt who worked for £15 a year from the Pretoria Government, riding round wilder parts of South Africa making sure remote schools were properly run to modern educational standards. It was a very tough job, especially for a woman in those days. Such people acted out of a sense of service to humanity. Fortunately this tradition is continued today by young people from many countries, but it is wrong to write it out of history books.
What I said below about the sale of Chinese antiques by the Chinese state over nearly 20 years is common experience among all the top dealers in Chinese antiques, and museum curators. It is not controversial. Some wrote memoirs, though I don’t have their references for you. They rescued some of what would otherwise have been destroyed in the 1960’s. One of my early mentors was an authority on Chinese art who visited China in 1972 and was shown round a factory in which beautiful, rare but officially confiscated Ming furniture was utterly ruined from being used as carpenter’s benches. There were many such reports by Western visitors being shown China’s modernisation programme at that period. Some years ago some Chinese bidders refused to pay Sotheby’s for lots they bid on at auction, claiming these were looted and they were simply entitled to them because they were Chinese. Eventually they had to back down once the correct position was established. I came across a Chinese website that claimed 34 million artefacts were looted from the Summer Palace. The palace wasn’t physically big enough to get that number of precious items into it even if you filled it to the roof.
One of the best modern academics on the history of removing artefacts from China and elsewhere is Prof. Justin M. Jacobs [‘The Compensation of Plunder’]. He has made the crucial point that until the First World War the world was ruled by aristocrats and royalty who quite naturally regarded these artefacts on their land as personal property. If you negotiated a major diplomatic deal with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as Lord Elgin did, then the Sultan’s personally owned artefacts became diplomatic gifts made in the routine way to a high level participant in a diplomatic deal on large issues. That is how the Elgin Marbles came to Britain. One cannot say the Sultan had no rights at that time over those pieces. After the First World War, that old way of governing went by the board, and new nation states rightly started to regard these items as national treasures owned by the state. So we have reached a position where tragically each side in that particular restitution debate is actually in the right. The Elgin Marbles were legitimately obtained according to the law and practice of that time but times have changed about how those pieces are regarded today by Greeks. The trouble now is that (understandable) national pride, rumours on the net, current political aims, all egged on by naked propaganda history, etc. etc. have made the whole area so sensitive that chances of compromise evaporate whilst everyone shouts righteously at everyone else.
Everybody criticizes the B. M. patrons for their methods of collecting. I m just thankful to them for the preservation, exposition, and study of every single one of them. I couldn't fathom what would happen to many of them if they wouldn't have been brought there. Yes, even the Elgin marbles: the Turkish occupation stayed there in Athens for decennia after their export, and their political control was not inspired by the love of arts, for sure. That's just an example. Stop nagging at the British Museum Colonialism and put your energy and attention into understanding what they are able to show to the public. In this way you can try to understand a bit of History, ancient mentalities, religions and on and on. These Chinese jades if not located in the BM's vitrines, would be probably hidden in the mansions of some shady plutocrat, if not destroyed for carelessness. Thank you very much Western culturally oriented Musea, you help us understand what it means to be human and what ancients did before our times.
Hello, thank you for watching my videos!! 👍👍👍
china jade
That’s right! 👍👍👍
Why is the video entitled 'looted ancient Chinese Jade artefacts'? - the objects were not looted.
And how did they end up in England?
so how do you think you get those artifacts if not looted? try to learn some history will you?
YES THEY WERE
They were plundered; which is the same thing. Here is the History of plunder
:
According to data from the British Museum, around 23,000 Chinese treasures are currently part of its collection - the largest collection of Chinese relics in any Western museum.
Numerous ancient relics have been plundered from China during different time periods, one of the biggest thefts occurred in 1860, when British and French expeditionary forces reached Beijing and razed the Old Summer Palace. The soldiers and officers who took part in the action ended up stealing numerous artworks from the palace.
Anger over the theft of these relics is not something limited to the people of today, at the time famed French writer Victor Hugo criticized the looting in his Expédition de Chine: "One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned…One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits."
@@margarethawinarto3931 Fabulous research you have done there on Google however if you made the effort of visiting the museum you would know that the majority of jade on display in the jade corridor is on loan to the museum from a private collector.
These are the pieces featured in this video, so as I said; they were not looted.
Sometimes people are critical of these items being held in foreign museums and not in China, especially the Chinese themselves. They forget that they couldn't get rid of this stuff quickly enough during the cultural revolution and of these item for the most part if not sold out of China would no longer exist. It happens with many other cultures that they now would like them back. I live in France and our museums are full of antiquities from other cultures and yes many were 'taken'. I often compare Napoleon with Hitler as he also invaded countries in order to take what he wanted from them and impose his rule. It's a tricky subject, the Elgin Marbles being one of the most famous.
Hello, thank you for your comments!! 👍👍👍
But the problem is, even with the Cultural Revolution, we still have a lot of things left behind, and you are talking about the guilt of the victims. at that time, France and Britain robbed and burned so many Chinese cultural relics that you even burned an Old Summer Palace as precious as the Imperial Palace. All our paintings and books for thousands of years have been destroyed, but you think it's our fault.
It is not that we want culture, but that your ancestors invaded other people's land, burned down other people's houses, dug other people's graves, took it from our ancestors, and even thought you protected them. Unfortunately, the museum almost destroyed this painting by mistakenly cutting a painting made by us almost 2000 years ago. Are you sure you are protecting them well again?.
times have changed sicko. Your reasoning no longer holds water since the government and largely the Chinese people are eager to preserve THEIR (NOT yours or your people -- THEIRS!!) cultural artefacts. If your desire is to truly preserve these artefacts and the Chinese NOW are able to do so, why not give them back? This is where your reasoning breaks down and what is revealed is really selfishness, greed, and pure thievery disguised as "good intention." It is not even debatable that China NOW is doing amazing in preserving their artefacts... what's the excuse now? No wonder China and the UK has such a tense and bad relationship. Good connections are based on a clean slate. How can the slate be cleaned when everytime the Chinese (including myself) look at you people, all we see behind you are OUR artefacts and you blocking our path to getting them? Relationships between Chine and the UK became better when the UK returned the province of HK that they stole. This made the Brits and China have better relationships... these stolen artefacts are just another hurdles that both countries need to get through. For the sake of our principles and the great reverence we the CHinese people hold for our ancestors, these artefacts that our ancestors created is a big deal for us.
@@xiaoxiaolee1680 exactly! We want them back.
5000 bc ? lol
That's what the signs say on the museum.....
The artifact has existed since 5000 BC, but it is looted by greedy Britain in the Opium War at the 19th Century
Do you know how old Chinese civilization is?
ไปเอามาจาก..ใหน
คุณหมายความว่าอย่างไร?