United States Repatriates 58 Cultural Artifacts to China

The United States has repatriated a total of 58 cultural relics, artworks, and fossils to China. A handover ceremony was held by the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, according to the embassy’s official WeChat account, reported the Global Times.

The Cultural Property, Art, and Antiquities Program of the US Homeland Security Investigations returned such artifacts as a Bodhisattva statue from the Tianlongshan Grottoes in North China’s Shanxi Province, which was looted more than a century ago, as well as terracotta figures, stone statues, and fossils, per China News. An Instagram post on Hong Kong News Updates also commemorated the occasion.

The items’ return is supposedly a result of a recent meeting between the US-Chinese heads of state in Beijing.

“Within the broader context of China-US friendship and the overall bilateral relationship, this is a very important people-to-people and cultural exchange, and a very meaningful endeavor,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, told the Global Times.

“At the current stage of China-US exchanges, it is highly significant. It shows that the two countries still engage in deep exchanges in various fields,” he added.