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Victoria Finlay

You have to admire Prince Yiusheng. Confronted by rules stipulating how he could and could not construct his burial suit, the prince had a firm reaction.

 Damn the laws, he said, in the ancient accents of the Western Han Dynasty ruling classes, 2,000 years ago. And the prince employed his best artisans to make two sets of body armour of jade rectangles, sewn together with gold thread that, some officials no doubt harrumphed, was far above his station.

 Which is how he and his wife ended up lying side by side in their musty tomb dressed in green, tied with a binding usually reserved for emperors.

 The royal remains were rather unceremoniously removed from their precious casing when the tomb was discovered in 1968 in Mancheng, Hebei.

 The Prince's suit is here in Hong Kong on a rare tour, as one of an extraordinarily rich show of highlights from China's museums.

 Indeed, National Treasures - Gems of China's Cultural Relics is so dazzling that it is hard to identify any lowlights.

 More than 80 per cent of the pieces on show in two large exhibition halls of the Museum of Art are Class I relics. To put this into perspective, when a huge show of Chinese treasures is held in an overseas city, no more than a few per cent of the pieces are Class I.

 'The export quota for Chinese National Treasures is 15 per cent: no overseas show would have more than that,' said director of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Gerald Tsang.

 Hong Kong first made a formal request for this show in 1994 - the end of 1997 was ideal timing, because only then would the China export quota no longer apply.

 As director of Urban Services, Elaine Chung explained, the plans went on hold until earlier this year, as sponsors pulled out, and the tremendous technical difficulties of pulling together these valuable national artefacts began to appear overwhelming.

 But in March the agreement was given and by May the papers were signed and Amway (China) came on board as sole sponsor, said Ms Chung who went to Beijing twice to ensure the project would go ahead.

 Mr Tsang and his colleagues have been working mainly with museum heads in Shanghai, Shaanxi, the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing and the State Bureau of Cultural Relics, who had to approve the project at every stage.

 The curatorial difficulty was in deciding how to cover 5,000 years in 160 items.

 'Naturally, different people had different ideas. We had to consider that we are a museum for 6.5 million people: most of whom are not experts,' Mr Tsang said.

 'Some things are very important but they are 'uuurgh' to look at,' he joked. 'So we wanted to stress aesthetic beauty.'  Among the treasures are a money tree - coins growing out of bronze branches; a spectacular 2.6-metre-tall sculpture of a graceful tomb figure, 3,000 years old; Tang Dynasty dishes in 'secret colour' celadon glazes; and a delicate, 15-metre hand scroll showing the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty coming south with his armies and elephants.

 To cater for Hong Kong audiences' liking for tea culture, the team went to the Famen temple, in Shaanxi, where there is a set of Tang Dynasty tea ware which has never left China.

 It was discovered in 1987 when the Famen pagoda - China's version of the tower of Pisa - finally toppled, revealing several chambers of treasures and Buddhist relics. Also discovered was this most complete set of Tang tea ware in China, including an ornate silver grinder intended to powderise tea cakes.

 Tea cakes became the basis of the ornate tea ceremonies in Japan, but disappeared from China after the 14th century when the Ming dynasty citizens favoured brewing leaves in tea pots.

 'When they found all these tea pieces in Famen they built a special gallery and charged admission. And there I was, saying 'I want this',' Mr Tsang said.

 Famen has filled its special tea museum with replicas until the originals return home in March.

 But there will certainly be some kind of fall-off in attendance at that museum and others whose star pieces have headed south for the winter.

 'We have to compensate for that.'  This show has not happened before and it will not happen again, Mr Tsang said decisively.

 It is not simply the money involved, which has run into millions. It is also the level of goodwill and organisation.

 More than 30 museums and collections contributed. Any national treasure must have at least four security people when it travels within the country.

 'So imagine - 120 guys turned up in Beijing with their crates and suitcases - and then we had to re-pack it.' The 44 crates were brought down from Beijing to Hong Kong by train. Their 7,500-kilogram cargo was insured for US$200 million (about HK$1.55 billion), a special concession from Beijing, which suppressed the full value of the shipment to allow Hong Kong, as a provincial city, to afford the high premiums.

 High security? I asked rhetorically: and Tsang smiled and imitated someone holding a heavy rifle.

 'Yes. Very,' he concurred.

 There was a huge police escort meeting the train in Kowloon, taking the ancient cargo through Tsim Sha Tsui late last month, he said.

 'It was quite dramatic.'  It took one week just to unpack. 'You can't imagine: some of the pieces were so heavy and yet so fragile.' The two-man pottery delegation from the terracotta army arrived from Xian lying in a crate wrapped up in blankets like mummies.

 The terracotta soldiers - these are particularly rare examples because, unusually, they still have paint on them - had to be eased out centimetre by centimetre with cloth bales, and velvet knee and back supports had to be built for these very elderly warriors.

 'You imagine them to be hollow clay, but they are thickly packed with mud inside. And on the outside they are so fragile we could only touch them with the soft parts of our hands,' Mr Tsang said.

 The main aim - as well as boosting the profile of the Museum of Art - is to help Hong Kong people learn more about the diversity of Chinese history and culture, Ms Chung said.

 'Rather than just looking at textbooks, we hope that people can have the experience of seeing this exhibition and this way the stories will come alive.' Museum of Art, Tsim Sha Tsui. 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday; 1pm-6pm Sunday $10 ($5) - Wednesdays free. Until March 1 (closed December 25-26, January 1) http://www.usd.gov.hk/gems 



Once-in-a-lifetime treasure trove