The race against time to save Forbidden City’s treasures in the second world war had shades of Indiana Jones

When the Chinese people learned the nature and extent of the treasures in Beijing’s Forbidden City, the seat of imperial power, they were stunned

That the treasures survived is down to a small band of men and women who packed them up and moved them to safety in wartime, says Adam Brookes in Fragile Cargo

Reading Time:3 minutes

This jade cabbage captured the Chinese public’s imagination when the treasures of the Forbidden City were revealed after the last emperor’s fall. That the collection avoided capture by the Japanese is a tale of daring and adventure, as told in Fragile Cargo by Adam Brookes.

Published: 11:15am, 11 Sep 2022

Until the expulsion, in 1924, of Puyi, the last emperor of China, the treasures of the Forbidden City were largely unknown to the Chinese people. As Puyi left, curatorial teams swiftly moved in to catalogue the imperial collection. The volume and value of what they found was staggering but one object caught the people’s imagination.

Adam Brookes’ tale of the fate of the Forbidden City’s treasures, Fragile Cargo, recounts how the collection’s curators – who emerge quickly as heroes – were surprised at how obsessed the public became with a jade cabbage.

Less than 20cm long, dated to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), carved from pure white jade that mimicked the vegetable’s colouring, with a locust and another insect nestling among the leaves, the object fascinated people because of its perfect simplicity. But it was one item among what totalled 40,000 packing cases stuffed with treasures.

Brookes, a former BBC correspondent in Beijing, first heard about the effort to save the treasures on a visit to Taipei’s Palace Museum. Intrigued, he dug deeper. It was fortuitous timing.

Adam Brookes, author of Fragile Cargo: The Amazing Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City. Photo: Sam Kittner

He recalls that as he began his research, Chinese archives made available for the first time the entire catalogues – page after page listing 63,500 scrolls, manuscripts, books, ceramics, pieces of furniture, textiles and clocks.