Original subtitles

these fists were supposed to stop bullets.

They were meant to withstand empires.

This is the story of a century of humiliation.

And a warrior

Who's been hiding for years.

In the days of the british empire,

Things were taken.

They usually ended up in museums

And galleries with polite plaques.

My name is marc fennell

And this is the not-so-polite story

Of how they really got there.

you ever read something

Someone wrote like 100 years ago,

And you think,

"that is so relatable."

That's the experience that I got when I was...

xiran jay zhao

Is a best-selling author and youtuber

Who's on a mission to educate people about chinese history.

particularly about the sheer amount

Of stolen chinese artefacts

In galleries and museums around the world.

There's a lot that has been looted from china.

All of these western powers came to our country

And then just, like, ruthlessly stole from us,

And looted so much treasure

That I'm surprised that there's any left in china.

xiran is in some ways

Part of something much bigger.

A movement among the global chinese diaspora

To reclaim, not just the past, but how the past is told.

it's because, like,

The western powers came in and did all of that,

And then they didn't really pay reparations ever.

And they didn't really, like, ever try to make amends,

And that is a source of national shame and anger.

So, I think the western powers,

They have forgotten about this history,

But china certainly has not forgotten.

Whenever I am in a museum

And I see an artefact that is not native to the area,

I question,

Why is this artefact here,

And not in china?

Like, explain.

but the real reason I'm here

Standing in a makeshift youtube studio

Is actually because of something from here.

My hometown.

Welcome to sydney, australia.

See, this is a saga of the high seas,

A gallery of martial arts,

And a precious object that almost no one

Seems to know even exists.

Well, I certainly didn't, anyway.

That is, until one day

I got a message from this woman.

- hello. -Hello.

- how are you? -Good to meet you.

-It's nice to meet you too. -Yeah.

Thanks so much for talking to me.

Hi. Pleasure.

I'm joanna mendelssohn, and in 1972,

I got this amazing job.

Very badly-paid amazing job.

It was a very badly-paid amazing job

At the art gallery of new south wales

As curatorial assistant.

and in that job way back in the 1970s,

There was something on display that jo has never forgotten.

I'd like you to have a look at this.

That is the object that most fascinated me.

this is why we're here.

A bronze and gold buddhist statue.

A warrior.

so, chinese ming dynasty, weituo,

From the palace of 10,000 years, peking,

Which is peking now, beijing.

it's gold.

And it's very aggressive.

It looks as though he's very angry and he could stop you.

He could stop you in your tracks.

-Right. -It was so wonderful,

And it really was a beautiful piece of work,

A beautiful sculpture.

And then when the gallery management changed...

-It vanished. -It vanished?

It just wasn't on view anymore.

so, you've got an ancient golden warrior statue

That at the moment is nowhere to be seen.

But, how did it end up in australia in the first place?

We know it came from china.

How do you think it left china?

I'm assuming it was looted.

Why does it matter to you that people know the truth

Of where these things come from?

Probably because of the kind of person I am,

The kind of art history I've always researched,

Which is, I want to find out what's at the bottom of things.

Me too. That's why I'm doing this.

Yeah. This is fun. This is like,

This is like art as a detective novel.

so, a little digging around art gallery records,

And by "records" I do mean their website,

Shows that he's been on and off display

For years at the art gallery.

But the only real clue as to how it got there

Is that it was a gift.

Somebody by the name of francis hixson.

It seems captain francis hixson was a navy man,

Which is why I'm meeting this guy.

- hello. -Hello.

Afternoon, marc. How are you?

Good.

meet james hunter,

The curator of naval heritage and archaeology

At the australian national maritime museum.

So I have this problem.

There is a statue that is in the vaults

Of the art gallery of new south wales.

It is chinese.

We don't quite know how it got to australia.

The only piece of information I have is a name.

That name is francis hixson.

Does that name mean anything to you?

It does, yes.

He was born in the 1830s, in England.

So, he's in the royal navy

And he goes on his first overseas voyage,

Which, incidentally, happens to be australia,

And I guess he decides to throw down roots here.

But ultimately,

Francis hixson was the commander

Of the new south wales naval brigade.

Francis hixson has this incredible career.

Does he ever go to china?

Francis hixson does go to china.

A situation around that time had occurred,

And there was immense poverty,

And the peasants banded together.

They armed themselves

And they laid siege to beijing.

this siege was huge.

For some reason, multiple nations felt the need

To send tens of thousands of troops into china

To put it down,

Including the british

And their distant colonies in australia.

So, francis hixson is responsible

For getting together one of those brigades

Of volunteer soldiers and sailors

To go to china.

but what was going on in china

That required a bunch of british colonial soldiers

To cross the ocean?

And how did it lead

To a golden statue

Landing in the hands

Of a british-born sailor?

Well, that uprising had a name.

It was known as the boxer rebellion.

And the most hixson and his men would likely have heard

Was that chinese peasants were murdering foreigners.

But that wasn't quite the whole story.

Bre music playing]

To find out what really sparked the boxer rebellion in china

At the very end of the 19th century,

Weirdly, I've come to a church in ireland.

-Hello, marc, nice to meet you. -Hello, nice to meet you too.

This way, please.

so I want to show you this.

This is the whole reason I'm here.

-Okay. - this is the statue

That was taken.

Yeah, many buddhist monasteries,

They have this, um, dharma guardian

In their temples, yeah.

dr zhouxiang lu lives here in dublin,

But he has been digging into the history

Of this uprising in china for years.

And the first thing you need to know

Is that the china of 1900

Is not the superpower it is today.

For centuries, the qing empire ruled this vast land.

But things were not going well.

They'd lost wars against western colonial powers

And been forced to sign damaging treaties

That ceded territory and control.

actually, china was defeated in every single war

Against the colonial and imperial powers.

The country was losing land, the country was losing money,

To foreign powers,

And it was regarded as a total humiliation.

That shaped chinese people's worldview.

and that sense of humiliation

Starts to permeate the culture.

But the trigger that changes everything

Seems to be religion.

As european powers took hold of parts of china,

Christian missionaries, particularly british ones,

Try to convert the chinese

From, well, amongst other faiths, buddhism.

Missionaries that come from places like this.

And the missionaries are trying to convert the chinese people.

So there were...

Started to have an increasing number

Of religious conflicts.

there's no question lots of other factors

Fuelled this uprising too.

There was poverty. Famine. Natural disasters.

But these missionaries

Coming in pushing this new faith...

The chinese people in these villages,

They snap.

The movement was started by farmers in villages.

since at least the 10th century,

There had been a tradition in rural regions of china

Of martial arts societies.

Many villagers, especially young male villagers,

They would practise martial arts for self-defence

In case bandits tried to loot their village.

except now, they had an enemy

Who they felt was looting their very culture,

And you see these martial arts societies

Banding together, growing in power.

They feel that their suffering

Is all because of the arrival of westerners.

If there's no westerners,

Then their life will return to normal.

the violence escalates.

The qing dynasty backs the boxers.

And suddenly, tens of thousands of people,

Chinese and foreign,

Are killed.

This is why the british and other forces

Are called into china.

Only, they face something there unfamiliar.

How is it that this conflict gets the name boxer rebellion?

Actually, the chinese name is not boxer.

The chinese name is righteous harmony.

It's a righteous harmony fist.

That's the fist. So in chinese--

-Oh, right! Okay, yes. -Yeah, the fist.

So they went straight from the word "fist" to "boxer."

-Yeah, yeah, that's the fist. -Right, okay.

and to be a member of this

Righteous and harmonious fists group

Had an almost spiritual quality to it.

So, there are two parts.

One is physical training.

It's this martial arts training.

Another part is this ritual.

They believe that the ancestors and the gods

And the angels will help them,

And so the knife or the bullet won't hit them.

They will become bulletproof.

And then by doing so,

You will able to defeat the foreigners.

After years of exploitation by imperial powers,

This civilian martial arts force,

Believing themselves to be invulnerable

To foreign weapons,

Came face to face

With an alliance of eight national forces.

this might seem like an obvious question, but,

What happens when

Warriors who believe that they're bulletproof

Come up against guns?

It's a massacre.

there's no way they can win.

the chinese fighters were defeated.

And the ruling qing empire, who supported them?

They capitulate to the foreign powers

With horrific results.

The qing government, the obligation is

To arrest and execute all the boxers, publicly.

And that's the end to it.

it's in this aftermath

That a boat arrives

From the british colony of new south wales.

Except, francis hixson

Is no longer on board.

Yes, francis hixon did go to china.

He just didn't make it all the way there.

He's considered too old for combat,

And he turns around at hong kong.

However, his son, also a navy man,

Does make it to beijing.

now, I have a very interesting

Piece of information for you.

It is an article

Talking about captain hixson

Bringing a piece of bronze statuary

That he was donating.

okay, so it says "the following additions

To the national art collection were made

During the past month.

Presentation by captain hixson.

An ancient bronze statue

Found beneath the ruins

Of the palace of 10,000 years near peking

By a detachment of the new south wales china contingent

From 1900 to 1901."

there you go.

it could've been his son

Or another soldier,

But either way,

Hixson got that statue.

This is that connective tissue.

This is how he collects it.

I would certainly say that's a fairly compelling

Line of evidence, yeah.

Spicy question.

Is this looting?

- well...

Looting's in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

From my perspective? Yes, it is.

Whether you're collecting it from an archaeological site,

Or you're literally walking into a museum,

Smashing the glass and taking it off the shelf,

And carting it home,

It doesn't belong to you.

So, yeah,

I would call that looting.

so, you have a centuries-old chinese statue,

Likely looted by british colonial soldiers,

Which ends up in the british dominion of australia.

This is wild. Well, to me at least.

If I was to tell you that there is a golden statue,

A buddha statue,

That's been sitting in the vaults of an australian museum

For literally decades

That I've managed to track back and work out

Has come from the boxer rebellion...

-Yeah? -Would that surprise you?

-Not really. -Why?

This is a topic that's always just lingering

In chinese culture.

So, so people generally know about it in china?

It's definitely very alive in the cultural consciousness.

And, yeah, people are aware, and people are mad about it.

Do you think that shapes the way

China views other countries now?

Do you think it still has an impact?

It definitely does.

Just imagine, like, you were the--

You were the dominant power in the region

For, like, 2,000 years.

Then, suddenly, in the span of, like,

A hundred years,

You lose, like, so many wars

And you get your territory, like, taken

By a bunch of white people.

And the japanese too, let's not forget them.

And it is just, like, so much--

It's a whole trauma conga line.

this boxer uprising

Ultimately becomes one brutal chapter

In a period that china now literally calls

The "century of humiliation"

At the hands of other nations.

now, I'm not saying this to excuse

The chinese government's current actions,

But I do feel like chinese people

Still suffer from a lot of lingering colonial trauma.

in truth, if you see a piece of chinese art

In a western museum,

Then there is a decent chance that it is there

Because of some british or other imperial sailor

Pulling a francis hixson.

And to millions of chinese people,

Each piece is a reminder

Of that century of humiliation.

There's no shortage of countries

That have been looted exactly the same way,

But the difference is this.

China is one of the few nations in the world

That can actually do something about it.

-Hello. - hi.

-Hey, how are you? -It's so great to meet you.

-Nice to meet you too. -Hi.

this is dr emmeline smith,

And even though we're meeting in glasgow, scotland,

Her main job is as a criminologist

Travelling through asia

Looking for looted and trafficked art.

the objects that come from china

That are sprinkled all throughout the global north,

How are they viewed within china?

Are they viewed as problematic within china?

Culture objects are very much seen as symbols

To establish this new national identity.

So yes, obviously, china wants them back.

They're definitely trying to get those back.

I hear stories all the time about, like,

Really rich chinese people

Who go to these auctions to buy the artefacts back.

what china is doing is really exceptional

Because it doesn't take the long route

Of perhaps court cases and ethical claims

To repatriate its heritage.

Instead, it's buying it back

Because it has the political willpower

As well as the financial power

To restore these cultural objects.

And in that sense,

It is perhaps a little bit threatening

To the european foundations of the antiquities trade,

Because china is redefining the rules of engagement.

so this is from the art gallery

Of new south wales.

So, this is a bronze object

That was taken from rubble in the boxer rebellion.

In the tail end of the boxer rebellion.

They've had it in their collection since 1905.

The thing is, they haven't had it on display.

A lot of the times when I work in asia,

Communities ask me, "well,

How are you taking care of our gods?

Are you at least feeding them

Or displaying them properly with respect?"

But instead, we've created a museum culture

Where thousands of people ogle at these objects

From behind glass.

The fact that it goes into museum storage,

It's not even being worshipped...

It's not right.

according to the art gallery of new south wales,

It's now been at least eight years

Since the statue was last seen in public.

-Mm-hm. -Not many people know about it.

Like, the only reason I know about it is

A former worker who worked at the art gallery in the 1970s...

Yeah. Oh my god.

...Reached out to me, and she's like,

"hey, they've got this thing."

Do you think it's plausible

That they've kept it off display because of that reaction?

I think definitely.

And I think, well,

That definitely speaks to guilt.

we've actually found at the museum,

We've had things get donated to us

From the boxer rebellion and from other conflicts.

And in many cases, we turn it down.

We won't take it.

So, for example, if it came from china,

Our belief is that it should go back to china.

And it-- we certainly won't accept it.

Like is there a way of honourably

Hanging onto something that was looted

In the wake of a war?

No.

I don't think so.

after months of negotiating,

The art gallery of new south wales

Has asked me to come to a storage facility

At an undisclosed location.

Yes, it is an actual secret vault.

I'm here to meet someone

That I never thought I'd get to meet.

I can tell you from experience,

Most art galleries and museums

Would never do this.

They would never invite me and put you guys here

To talk about this.

Why? Why did you agree to open this up

Out of the vault and show me?

it seems pretty obvious

And straightforward to us.

We're a public art museum.

The works in our collection,

They belong to the people of new south wales.

Our-- our goal is to,

To display art for enjoyment,

For discussion, for research.

So, we're always happy to show a work

And to talk about it.

Is this loot?

I think it's best not to use words like that right away.

But, again, we wouldn't deny that that's not a possibility.

So in 1905,

Francis hixson gave an interview to a newspaper,

And he said it was found in the rubble

Of the boxer rebellion.

Would that qualify to you?

I don't think it really matters

How you describe the process,

Whether you call it acquisition, loot, theft, whatever.

The fact is, if it was coming out of rubble

In the middle of a war zone,

That sort of raises red flags, I think,

In terms of how...

How an object moves.

I think it's fair to say it is,

It's a sort of a problematic history.

Has anyone ever asked for it back?

-No. - no?

This statue hasn't been on display for a little while.

When I leave here today, what are you going to do with him?

Well, actually,

We're planning a huge rehang of our asian collection.

And this sculpture will be

An important part of that display,

And you'll be able to see it in the gallery.

it's good to look at the object

And almost think,

"what story is the object trying to tell?

What would it tell if it could?"

what would he say about those sailors

From that tiny corner of the british empire?

it's entirely possible

That you would've had palaces that had been looted,

Burned to the ground,

And cultural bits laying around

That people probably have said,

"ooh, look at that, nice statue.

I'll pick that up and take it home

As a keepsake."

or would he speak of the farmers

Who raised fists against empires?

the boxer rebellion was regarded as a movement,

Not from the top level

But from a grassroots level.

It was the awakening of the general public.

or, a story of rage and humiliation.

it makes me feel angry just because

All these western powers,

They liked chinese artefacts and art enough

To, like, take all that stuff,

But they didn't care for the actual chinese people.

They like the culture that we create,

But they don't have any respect.

if one day, you walk past this warrior,

Ask him,

Whose story are you telling?

we need to know about our past.

We need to know how things happen.

We can't understand the present

Unless we understand the past.