Skip to main content

Artifacts desperate to return to China from British Museum



Escape from the British Museum, a three-episode video series made by two vloggers, tells the story of a rare Chinese jade teapot with a pattern of curling branches, escaping from the British Museum and looking for a way to return home to China. While the female vlogger plays the role of the jade teapot, the male vlogger acts as a journalist who helps the artifact return home.

In the video series released online on Sept 5, the jade teapot returns to China with letters from other Chinese cultural artifacts, which were stolen or looted from China and are displayed or stored in the British Museum, saying they are desperate to return home.

As some British media outlets said, the video series echoes the Chinese people's call for the British Museum to return the stolen and looted Chinese artifacts. But unlike they claim, the video series does not promote nationalism. Instead, it represents the shared feeling of the Chinese people as well as those in other countries from where Britain and other colonial powers stole and looted historical, religious and cultural artifacts.

With former colonized countries gaining in economic strength, the former colonial powers can right some of their centuries-old wrongs by returning the artifacts to the countries of their origin.

The Chinese people's call for the return of artifacts transcends boundaries, because every country whose artifact is "displayed" (or stored) in the British Museum wants them back. The demand for the return of artifacts is a shared demand. That some British media outlets call this demand "nationalism" suggests they are still living in their colonial past.

It is hard to believe that even in this age, more than half of the stolen and looted cultural artifacts are still with the British Museum. In fact, a commentary piece in The Telegraph, titled "If the British Museum loses its marbles, nationalism triumphs over humanity's common heritage" in January claimed that "the friezes were lawfully acquired by the UK".

By "lawfully acquired", does the author Daniel Hannan mean acquired with the "help" of machine guns and warships? Or does he mean the cultural artifacts of African, Asian and American countries should be kept in the land of robbers and looters, rather than in their land of origin?

If the United Kingdom wants to continue to be an influential global power, it should not follow the advice of people like Hannan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Osho Quotes on Meditation

Osho Quotes on Meditation If tea-drinking can become a meditation, then anything can become a meditation — cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only when you are awake in the day — slowly slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too — when it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, then, only, have you attained to the discipline, to the essential discipline of Zen. Meditation means: drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself. The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state. Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on...
2 comments
Read more

Im a mum I save time doing my kids lunches using savvy hacks its easy

EVERYONE parent will know just how crazy the mornings can be when you're getting the kids ready for school. From prepping their lunches, to getting them washed and ready - time can fly by. But one savvy mum has shared just the hack to help speed up the process in the mornings. The mum, who goes by the name of Azure MacCannell on TikTok, has revealed a super time saving trick. She preps all of the sandwiches for the week, and freezes them. Azure has two lines of separate pieces of bread next to each other, On one line she spreads peanut butter, and on the other line she spreads jam. Azure then places the bread on top of each other to make a sandwich, before using a crust cutter to make the sandwiches into smaller squares. She then puts them into a big container and freezes them and use them "as needed." Azure also freezes the crust for "delicious French toast sticks." The video attracted thousands of likes, with many rushing to the comments section to share their...
Post a Comment
Read more

Osho on Witnessing technique

Osho on Witnessing technique – You can witness breathing, you can witness the thought process in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MEDITATION Osho – Societies will come and go. You will take birth and you will die and many lives will come and go, and many, many clouds will pass through you. But the inner sky – AKSHAT – remains uncorrupted, virgin. But you can become identified with clouds. You can begin to feel that ”I am the clouds”. Everyone is identified with his own thoughts which are nothing more than clouds. You say, ”my thought,” and if someone attacks your thought, you never feel that your thought is being attacked – you are being attacked. The sky is fighting – fighting for clouds because some cloud has been attacked. The sky feels, ”I am attacked!” The sky was there when there was no cloud, the sky will be there when there is no cloud. Clouds add nothing to the sky. And when clouds are no more, nothing is lost. The sky remains itself totally. This is the nature – the inner sky, the inn...
Post a Comment
Read more