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Remittance for Yuanmingyuan Relics Made Monday
Poly Art Museum said Monday it made the remittance that afternoon for the payment of rare Chinese relics it has recently bought from auction houses in Hong Kong.
A museum official, who declined to give his name, said that it remitted 1,109,607.97 US dollars and 7,743,750 HK dollars to Christie's and 2,098,135 HK dollars to Sotheby's.
The official refuted some media reports at home and abroad about whether the museum is able to make the payment, since the seven May Day holidays made it possible to remit the money through local banks.
According to previous reports, the two auction companies held respective auctions on April 30 and May 2, as scheduled.
At one auction four items including a bronze tiger, a bronze monkey head, a bronze ox head, and a hexagonal porcelain vase went under the hammer. They were looted by the British and French invading troops from Yuanmingyuan in northwestern suburbs of Beijing during the Second Opium War in 1860.
Poly Art Museum bought the three bronze animal heads, while the hexagonal porcelain vase went to the Beijing Municipal Administration for Culture Relics.
Relics experts believed the three bronze animal heads were taken from the same water clock in the imperial garden.
Auctions of looted Chinese antiques not only stirred rage among Chinese relics experts and Hong Kong residents, but also prompted laws over relics protection measures. However, the two firms claimed the antique sales did not violate any laws in Hong Kong.
China joined an international convention on cultural relics in 1995, which supports countries across the globe to recover relics looted or lost in wars, regardless of when the war took place or when the request was made to return the relics.
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