-
9. Enhancing the Asian Collection in the Nationalmuseum
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
- Additional Information
It cannot be denied that the old “Wagonslits” is cozy when it comes to hotels, unusually cozy, though somewhat worn out in certain respects (the locks work slowly and toilet flushes badly and so on), and service is friendly and courteous , though sometimes a little clumsy. A few minor improvements and rearrangements have been done down in the lobby, but otherwise everything is pretty much the same. The service boys in the dining room are wearing light red jackets over white shirts and not those long blue gowns anymore; room-boys have been clothed in blue-and-white costumes and look neater than before. Carpets seem to be partly renewed, but otherwise rooms are like before (I found this morning a 2-cm-long animal in my room), high and spacious particularly here one floor up, where I continue living. The most worthy improvement has taken place in the kitchen as food has become really delicious . . . 1 In this letter from Beijing to his wife Rose, Sirén described the present atmosphere and the conditions in the Grand Hotel des Wagon-lits, where they had stayed together on their previous visit. There is a note of nostalgia in many of his comments written during this journey, which was his fourth in China. Great changes had taken place, and some of these were summed up by Sirén in an interview he gave to The Peiping Chronicle soon after his arrival in Beijing in March 1935. Since Sirén’s last sojourn, the treasures of the Palace Museum and History Museum had been moved away from Beijing: after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, the government was concerned about the safety of these precious imperial items and had made a decision to pack them up and transfer them to storage in Shanghai.2 Jiang Jieshi was still in power, but had not made an effort to resist the advance of the Japanese at that point, not having enough troops at his disposal. In Manchuria the Japanese had set up a Chinese puppet regime with Puyi as their figurehead and were arranging various maneuvers while pretending to be peaceful. In 1935, the atmosphere in Beijing was already tense and resulted in demonstrations initiated by university students. 9 Enhancing theAsian Collection in the Nationalmuseum 130 Enchanted by Lohans In spite of all these changes, the move of the capital to the south (which had already taken place before his previous visit), and the political tension, the enchantment of the old capital had not diminished in Sirén’s eyes: “it still retains a mysterious power of attraction and makes one rejoice over the simple fact that one can still come back to this ancient place and renew one’s old impressions.”3 He did lament the further decay in a letter to Rose: he had passed the three great central halls of the Forbidden City and found them more dismal than before: . . . some of the colour and the lacquer is beginning to flake off from the pillars and beams, the grass is growing abundantly on the roofs, and the interiors are crowded with the ugliest pieces of furniture that one can imagine. The impression I received was really saddening. . . . I still like to remember these buildings as they were in 1918 and 1922: empty, but dignified and awe-inspiring, and still in quite good repair. The photographs I made then could not be duplicated.4 Sirén had embarked on this fourth journey on December 10, 1934 from Stockholm and had taken a different direction than usual. Instead of crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, he departed from Italy towards the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. He was not, in fact, traveling straight to China, but planned to visit Southeast Asia (Indo-China, as he called it) first. Indo-China—the area of present-day Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam—was in those days more accessible than many parts of inner China; at the time it was a colony of the French. This excursion was possibly inspired partly by his close connections with the French academic world of Asian studies and l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient. Certainly another reason was his fascination with ancient cultures and their wisdom. In Indo-China he was curious about the history and archaeology of the old cultures and felt that he was watching act after act of a colorful historical play.5 He did not leave precise notes of his itinerary...