On May 18, 2025, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington DC, deaccessioned fragments of the contested ancient Chinese artifact known as the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts from its collection. These ancient Chinese texts were unlawfully excavated from a Warring States period burial site near Changsha, Hunan Province, and subsequently transported to the United States through illicit channels in the mid-1940s.
The fragments are from "Wuxing Ling" and "Gongshou Zhan," Volume II and Volume III, the latter two volumes of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts, which have now been transferred to the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA).
The ancient Zidanku Silk Manuscripts from the Warring States period are displayed during a handover ceremony at the Chinese Embassy in the United States in Washington D.C., May 16, 2025. (Photo: Xinhua)
Luckily, despite being outside China for 79 years, the silk manuscripts, containing more than 900 Chinese characters, remain largely intact. They are the earliest examples of silk text discovered to date and the oldest classical Chinese book in the true sense, shedding light on the cosmological wisdom and military strategy dating back to China's Warring States period (475 BC-221 BC).
It is considered one of China's most significant cultural repatriations to date. These manuscripts will be displayed to the public at the National Museum of China in July 2025.
A fight that lasted 40 years
The silk manuscripts were illegally unearthed in 1942 from the Zidanku site in Changsha and were then acquired by a Chinese collector. This individual later gave the manuscripts to John Hadley Cox, an American collector of Chinese artifacts, who brought the manuscripts to the U.S. in 1946 in hopes of selling a fragment known as Volume I, a larger and more complete work among the manuscripts.
Volume II and Volume III, now back in China, were previously given to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (one of the two galleries at NMAA) by an anonymous donor in 1992.
Zhu Ye (Right), deputy director-general of the Office for the Recovery and Restitution of Lost Cultural Property, National Cultural Heritage Administration of China, receives a certificate of transfer from Chase F. Robinson, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. (Photo: Xinhua)
For China, the repatriation took too long—40 years. To make it happen, Chinese scholars have done intensive work compiling excavation records and provenance trails of the silk manuscripts since the 1980s. They even needed to obtain testimonies from descendants of the original tomb raiders.
In 2019, a task force from NCHA arrived in the U.S., carrying three crates of heavy documentation for negotiations, which also took several years before the two sides finally reached a deal.
"The ultimate challenge was proving that the 1946 transfer constituted illegal export," revealed a researcher from the Chinese repatriation team. "Our breakthrough came when we unearthed crucial 1940s telegraph correspondence in Yale University's archives, proving that the seller was aware that the artifacts had been obtained illicitly."
Homecoming of Volume I and more
However, that is not entirely the end of the story, as Volume I is still located elsewhere in the world. According to NCHA, efforts are still underway to transfer this volume.
Arthur M. Sackler purchased Volume I of the Zidanku manuscripts in 1965 from an antiques dealer handling Cox's collection; this part of the manuscripts remains privately owned by the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and was not included in the transfer.
Historically, many Chinese cultural artifacts were subjected to confiscation, looting, illegal export, and trafficking by colonial powers. This continues to be a glaring wound in the history of human civilization.
To this day, a vast number of Chinese artifacts remain scattered worldwide. According to existing statistics from UNESCO, approximately 1.64 million pieces are outside China, dispersed across 47 museums globally.
In recent years, as the global community deepens its reflection on colonial legacies and unjust international relations, the return of looted cultural artifacts to their home countries has gradually become an international consensus.
China and the United States extended a key intergovernmental agreement on combating the theft of and illegal trade in cultural relics on January 11, 2024, according to NCHA. The two nations have worked on the repatriation of 594 pieces of looted Chinese cultural artifacts.
These artifacts carry the historical memory of the Chinese nation, yet the journey to reclaim them is still long. Each repatriation serves as a step toward healing the wounds of history and upholding the dignity of civilization.
Author: Guo Zedong
Editor: Yuan Zixiang, James, Shen He
