The announcement of the auction was met with tremendous fury in China. Lawsuits were filed. Despite this, Christie’s went ahead with the auction, and the winning price was at 28 million Euros, made via an anonymous telephone bid. That bidder turned out to be Chinese collector Cai Mingchao. Cai refused to pay the hammer price, and revealed that he merely wanted to sabotage the auction as a form of protest on China’s behalf.

Cai is not alone in his endeavour to bring home China’s lost art. In the last decade, China’s economic boom has seen the rise of a new wealthy class. Several billionaires have been actively purchasing Chinese art from auctions to return them to Chinese museums, in part as a display of wealth, but also as an act of patriotism. In 2014, real estate developer Huang Nubo donated US$1.6 million to a museum in Norway in exchange for the return of seven marble columns taken from Yuanmingyuan.

The Communist government does not encourage nostalgia. It recently banned period dramas for fear that the extravagant lifestyles of monarchs will dilute the “virtues of frugality and hard work”. Whatever the Chinese government’s intentions were in preserving Yuanmingyuan as a site of devastation, their efforts clearly paid off.