Treasured artifacts transported between mainland, Hong Kong and Macao

Three years ago, cultural relics handler Wang Jingshi flew from Macao to Beijing. On the seat next to him was a box tightly secured with eight tension belts. This special "passenger" was the first to board the plane and the last to leave.

A bronze horse's head looted by foreign troops from the Old Summer Palace 160 years ago, which is one of the nation's most iconic treasures, lay under several layers of packaging in the box.

Wang was returning the figure to the motherland, from which it had long been parted.

In June, he sat in a minivan — part of a motorcade — heading to the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which opened the following month.

Police motorcycles flanked trucks loaded with hundreds of rare national treasures from the Palace Museum in Beijing, which went on display in Hong Kong. Wang was taking part in the largest overseas loan of cultural relics in the Beijing museum's history.

Whether he is returning plundered artifacts, or loaning museum collections for exhibitions, Wang diligently escorts national treasures safely to their destinations, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wang, deputy manager and senior supervisor of the operations division at Huaxie International Fine Art Freight Services Co, a leading art handling company based in Beijing, has helped handle numerous deliveries of cultural relics between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao.

These treasures serve as unique bonds between people on both sides of the border, and the cross-border communication involved in transferring the artifacts continues to evolve, Wang said.

In 1997, Huaxie International Fine Art Freight Services Co paved the way for Hong Kong's first large-scale exhibition of cultural relics from the mainland to celebrate the city's return to the motherland. Some 200 national treasures from more than 30 leading museums and research institutes nationwide were displayed in the city.

After helping stage several more cross-border exhibitions, the company has delivered mainland cultural relics to Hong Kong for displays almost every year since 2014.

Many rare national treasures never displayed in public before have made their debuts in Hong Kong.

Among more than 900 artifacts loaned by the Palace Museum in Beijing to the Hong Kong Palace Museum for its opening exhibitions in July, many paintings went on show for a month, before being returned to warehouses in Beijing for at least three years for preservation.

Handling these precious and fragile objects requires special attention. Each one is placed in a specially designed box, and then kept in a wooden box with other treasures. Delicate and fragile items, such as clocks, silk fabrics and paintings, are wrapped in up to seven layers of protective material to safeguard them in transit.

A six-strong team comprising Wang, his colleagues and experts from the Palace Museum was formed to hang a 4-meter-high painting of a horse on a wall at the Hong Kong venue.

Two employees on an elevated electrical platform unfolded the painting from the top, two others on ladders handled the center, and the other pair took care of the work on the ground.

As a result of these joint efforts, the full scale of the masterpiece was gradually revealed.

Painted by the Italian artist Giuseppe Castiglione, the work depicts one of the 10 favorite horses of Emperor Qianlong (1711-99). Given the painting's huge size, it had never been exhibited in public before.

The Hong Kong Palace Museum made a 5-meter-high showcase to accommodate the painting, the largest such cabinet among more than 900 at the venue.

Wang, who is particularly fond of calligraphy and paintings, used breaks from his work at the Hong Kong museum to fully appreciate the masterpieces from Beijing, most of which he had never seen before.