Okay, so it's a long and complicated story, but here are the basics.. the Nationalists fled China as the Communists seized control in the late 1940's. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan.. and they took with them about 1/5th of the collection of the Beijing museum, probably as much as they could carry. The other 4/5ths of the collection was mostly destroyed by the Communists in the name of the "cultural revolution" .. the 1/5th that survived is now the collection of Taiwan's Palace museum.. that 1/5th still amounts to so many items that it would take 20 years of rotating exhibits for the Palace museum to display them all, pretty amazing.. even more amazing is the fact that China wants all this stuff back.. that it belongs to them. Taiwan has no intention of returning it and the collection is considered to be the best in the world of Chinese art going back 6000 years. A really wonderful museum, a nice way to spend the day. More about the story of it all here.
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