A pair of hanging brocade banners, embroidered with a couplet and used in an imperial banquet hosted by Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), has returned to Beijing, according to the Beijing Star Daily on May 10.

They were on show in the Asia Hotel on May 11-12 along with a batch of cultural relics originally taken from the Palace Museum (the Forbidden City).

The banners were obtained in Europe by Emperor’s Ferry Auction (EFA), known in China as Tianjin International Auction Co, after having been overseas for over a century, but the company would not reveal how they acquired them. It only disclosed that a Chinese-Dane and Chinese-German found the banners and bought them to end their history of being overseas.

Gao Minghua from EFA said his company will hold its spring auction on June 13-16, including calligraphy and painting, ritual implements, ornamental objects and jewelry.

It has collected over 200 relics lost from the Palace Museum, of which the banners are expected to attract the most attention.

Also under the hammer will be a scroll written by Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) called Thousand Character Reader, a scroll of landscape painting by Huang Binhong (1865-1955) and a white jade gourd-shaped bottle.

Yang Xin, former vice director of the Palace Museum, said the banners were woven by order of the emperor specially for the Qiansouyan, an imperial banquet to which people aged over 70 were invited in 1791.

Yang thought the banners were looted by the Eight-power Allied Forces in 1900.

Zong Fengying, a Palace Museum brocade expert, gave a high evaluation of the weaving technique used to make the banners, and, though EFA hasn’t provided an appraised price for them, it estimated that they might be worth 5-6 million yuan (US$604,000-725,000).

(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, May 12, 2005)