Guardians of China’s Culture Left ‘Shaking’ by Theft

A recent theft at the Forbidden City Palace Museum in Beijing left China laughing at the state-appointed cultural guardians.
Guardians of China’s Culture Left ‘Shaking’ by Theft
A paramilitary policeman patrols at the entrance of the Forbidden City Palace Museum on May 18 in Beijing. A security camera is visible in the top right hand corner of the photo. (Feng Li/Getty Images)
Heng He
5/24/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/114409932_museum_vertical.jpg" alt="A paramilitary policeman patrols at the entrance of the Forbidden City Palace Museum on May 18 in Beijing. A security camera is visible in the top right hand corner of the photo. (Feng Li/Getty Images)" title="A paramilitary policeman patrols at the entrance of the Forbidden City Palace Museum on May 18 in Beijing. A security camera is visible in the top right hand corner of the photo. (Feng Li/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1803666"/></a>
A paramilitary policeman patrols at the entrance of the Forbidden City Palace Museum on May 18 in Beijing. A security camera is visible in the top right hand corner of the photo. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

A recent theft at the Forbidden City Palace Museum in Beijing left China laughing at the state-appointed cultural guardians.

On May 8, a thief broke into the “heavily guarded” museum and stole seven pieces from an exhibit. The stolen items had been lent from a private museum in Hong Kong, the Madam Liang Yi Cang Museum.

Fifty-eight hours later, the Beijing Public Security Bureau announced that the case was solved, and the thief had been arrested at an Internet bar.

The story told by the police, rather than settling what had happened, only raised more questions. While everyone thought that this was the work of a super thief, it actually was done by a first-time amateur, according to police.

Shi Bokui, the alleged thief, 5-feet-3-inches tall, is an unemployed welder who has no special expertise as a thief. During a visit to the Palace, he is said to have suddenly come up with the idea of stealing.

The police say he hid somewhere inside the Palace and waited until everyone else left. Then he went to the exhibition, broke a rear window, dug a hole in a decorative wall, broke the glass of the display cabinet, and stole items worth more than US$1 million dollars.

How could this happen? The newspaper Jinyangwang-Xinquaibao, which belongs to the Guangzhou Evening News Group, called the Palace security “the number-one security in Beijing” in a May 12 article.

The Palace security is said to have four levels of protection: men, equipment, technique, and dogs. There are 1,600 theft alarm detectors, 3,700 smoke detectors, and 400 security video cameras. All of these would be turned on during closing hours.

The whole Forbidden City was said to be under surveillance without a single blind spot, not to mention more than 100 patrol dogs. How did an amateur thief defeat all of this security?

The first possibility is that the security system has never been installed. A second possibility is that the security system was installed but was a bogus product.

Even though this happens all the time, the public still has the right to know who bid, built, and tested the system. After all, everything comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket, and the public has reason in this case to doubt where the money went.

The final possibility is that the security system was installed and was genuine but was turned off that night. This is not impossible. The police have Shi Bokui’s confession, but under pressure to solve a case, police in China tend to use force to get a confession. Shi Bokui may be a patsy, or he may have had colleagues the police prefer not to mention.

Compounding the difficulties involved in the story of the amateur thief Shi Bokui is his fantastic escape.

He was actually spotted by the security guards on patrol. But then, police say this short man jumped to the roof, climbed the wall, jumped from the 33-foot-high wall without injury, and then walked away. All the while, the security guards are said to have watched. Shi is also said to have quit his welder’s job because he was afraid of heights.

‘Safeguarding’ China’s Culture

No matter what the true story is about this caper, the leadership of the Forbidden City should have someone step out to take responsibility, not just catch a former welder.

At least the director in charge of security should do something, such as investigating, checking the security measures, and explaining this situation to the public. The directors of the Palace Museum, though, apparently didn’t care about the stolen exhibits, the security failures, or even the reputation of the museum.

Instead, the deputy director of the Palace Museum, who is in charge of security, presented a thank-you banner to the police.

From the photo published online, there were 10 characters on the banner, with 5 on each side. One side reads “Shaking the Motherland’s Prosperity,” which most people think should read “Safeguarding the Motherland’s Prosperity.” “Shaking” and “safeguarding” are two different Chinese characters that are pronounced the same.

What the directors did is called in Chinese “changing the bad thing to a good thing” or “turning the damage into a benefit.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is very good at this. When any natural or man-made disaster occurs, the CCP uses it as an occasion to praise itself, to claim it is “great, glorious, and correct.”

Three years after the Sichuan earthquake, the suffering of the victims is kept hidden. The investigations into the cause of the collapsed school buildings are buried. Those individuals who carried out their own personal investigations, whether Tan Zuoren, Huang Qi, or even Ai Weiwei, are all in jail or under enforced disappearance. Instead, what the Chinese media report is how great the CCP is.

The Palace Museum actually has nothing to do with the Forbidden City. It’s just a regular unit branch of the CCP. For those leaders, sending a thank-you banner is the priority.

However this time, the usual routine didn’t work out so well. For the management of the Palace Museum, the old Chinese saying “misfortunes never come singly” couldn’t fit better. Facing a wave of criticism and teasing, the spokesperson of the Palace Museum insisted that the use of the character for “shaking” is correct.

The fact that the Palace Museum used the wrong word is bad enough. Refusing to admit the mistake made it even worse.

Every fourth-grade elementary-school student should be able to tell the difference between those two words. The Forbidden City Museum is at the top of Chinese cultural and historic sites. Those who work there should be the ones to correct others’ mistakes when those mistakes involve Chinese characters.

Such a mistake could never happen in Taiwan or in mainland China before 1949. After the anti-rightist campaign in 1957, after the Cultural Revolution, after the commercialization of everything that has happened in recent years, there is not much Chinese culture left in mainland China, not even in the Forbidden City Museum.

After the second round of the China-EU High-Level Strategic Dialogue, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo said, “China is a country with a long history and civilization and political wisdom.” This is true. But what has this to do with the CCP?

Heng He is a commentator on Sound of Hope Radio, China analyst on NTD's "Focus Talk," and a writer for The Epoch Times.
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