Part of the Beijing Palace Museum collection will go on display at Taipei Palace Museum. The deal to loan the pieces is a major step in a cooperation agreement worked out by the two museums.

Beijing's Palace Museum and the Palace Museum in Taiwan have made their final arrangements for cooperation. According to the agreement, the Taipei Palace Museum will hold an exhibition on Emperor Yong Zheng this October in a show that will feature 37 relics on loan from Beijing.

Entitled "Dilemma of a Monarch", it will offer a comprehensive presentation of Emperor Yongzheng. The third emperor of the Qing Dynasty is known for consolidating the bureaucracy of the vast nation. Among the nearly 200 antiques to be showcased are the emperor's portraits, imperial seals, and manuscripts.

The show is a milestone in cooperative agreements between the Palace Museums of Beijing and Taipei. During a meeting in Beijing earlier this year, curators at the two institutions agreed that both sides will meet for a cultural seminar on an annual basis. They added that they would do their best to provide audio and video materials for publications associated with research at the museums.

As the Chinese Civil War drew to a close at the beginning of 1949, the Kuo-Min-Tang brought nearly 3,000 boxes of ancient treasures from the Beijing Palace Museum to Taiwan. The selected antiques accounted for about a quarter of the whole collection of the Forbidden City.

(CCTV September 23, 2009)