The National Taiwan Museum owns the art since the fifties. Their return to the mainland is of great symbolic value.

Taipei (AsiaNews) – For the first time in about 70 years, the National Taiwan Museum will loan some of its treasures to the Hubei Provincial Museum in central China. Previously, mainland requests to borrow important cultural artefacts were rejected, as Taiwan feared the works might be confiscated. They were taken to Taiwan from the mainland when Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist army fled to the island.

The decision is yet another sign of warming ties between the former bitter rivals after improving relations recently by increasing air, naval and trading ties.

"We support the government's existing policy to promote cultural exchanges with the mainland," said Li Tzu-ning, an official at the National Taiwan Museum.

The work in question is the portrait of Koxinga, a general in China's late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), plus other art treasures.

In return, the museum in Hubei will loan more than 100 cultural relics to the National Taiwan Museum, in Taipei, for an exhibition slated for November.

The National Palace Museum holds more than 655,000 artefacts spanning 7,000 years from the Neolithic period to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

• taiwan
• china
• national
• museum
• loan
• artefact
• painting
• koxinga