OUR SHARED CULTURAL LEGACY

One spring day in 1994, an original work by Yuan Dynasty master painter Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) was brought to the warehouse office of the Palace Museum in Beijing.

Two museum staff wearing white silk gloves gingerly unrolled the 700-year-old piece of art on a long table in front of a group of visitors watching intently. They were Chinese and American scholars working on a book, Three Thousands Years of Chinese Painting, one of the volumes in an unprecedented publishing collaboration series called The Culture and Civilization of China.

This was one of the very rare occasions that the delicate artwork was ever shown under bright light, and the first time ever to visitors from the United States. It marked a typical but at that time very rare activity in exchanges between scholars of the two countries.

The early 1990s