Arrested man who stole art in the Forbidden City

This is the first robbery of China’s main historical landmark in 20 years. Museum authorities are planning an emergency modernization of security systems.

Forbidden City, Beijing

The police arrested a man who, according to them, made his way to the famous Forbidden City, despite the increased protection of the former imperial palace, and stole seven works of art from gold and precious stones.

“This was the first theft of historical values in 20 years,” said museum spokesman Feng Nai’en. “Security measures will be strengthened in the near future.”

After checking, it turned out that the missing were women’s accessories inlaid with precious stones. All items date back to the 20th century. This exhibition belonged to the Hong Kong Museum of Liang Yi Museum.

Two missing items were discovered shortly after the theft, slightly damaged.

According to Chinese media, on Wednesday night, in an Internet cafe in Beijing, police detained a man named Shi Bokui, who admitted to robbery. The state newspaper China Daily reports that some of the seven stolen valuables have already been found and recovered, but the full details are still unknown.

Fang Neyen said that the entire palace complex will be once again carefully checked to make sure that all the exhibits are in place. “What happened here shows that, first of all, we must accelerate the modernization and installation of new security systems. And after that it is necessary to conduct a thorough investigation and think over how we can prevent this from happening in the future. ”

Wang Xiaohong, curator of the museum, Liang Yi Tsang, declined to name the value of the stolen property that belongs to the Hong Kong collector. “Despite the theft, the exhibition will continue, and other exhibits will take the place of the disappeared relics during the investigation.”

The deputy director of the museum behaved very restrained to reporters: he said he was very guilty, apologized and bowed in repentance.

Karen Smith, a Beijing curator and historian, expressed her view that the theft could greatly affect the museum’s reputation, but would improve the security system. She also noted that the missing items were not the most valuable treasures of Gugun.

“If you intend to steal something from the Forbidden City, there are much more valuable exhibits there,” she said in an interview. For example, in the palace complex rare ancient scrolls are on display, but they are protected much better than other values.

Initially, it was not clear whether the incident would affect the cooperation of the exhibition complex with international museums that host their exhibits in the Forbidden City. For example, this could affect tensions with a museum in Taipei. Hundreds of thousands of rare treasures located in the palace complex during the won were housed in the Taipei’s Palace Museum. In 2009, the Beijing Imperial Palace also lent several dozen exhibits to this museum, but they, in turn, are still afraid to open an exhibition in the Forbidden City for fear that historical values will not be returned.

The Forbidden City (today - “Gugun”, “the former palace”) is the largest palace complex in the world (total area of 720 thousand square meters), located in the center of modern Beijing. In front of the main entrance to it is Tiananmen Square, which in turn is the largest square in the world. From the XV to the beginning of the Chinese revolution in the XX century, the Forbidden City was the main palace complex of the Chinese imperial dynasties Ming and Qin.