Bronze Animal Heads

The Haiyantang in the Old Summer Palace

In 2012, Chinese actor Jackie Chan made a movie “CZ12”, also known as “Chinese Zodiac” based on the story of the lost cultural relics from the Old Summer Palace.

The Haiyantang was the largest Western-style mansion in the Garden of Eternal Spring, one of the three imperial gardens in the Old Summer Palace. In front of the Haiyantang and outside the central gate was a large fountain flanked by stone ladders on both sides. Arranged on the south and north sides of the fountain were twelve stone steps, on which twelve Chinese Zodiac statues spouting water were stationed. These statues stood up for the twelve two-hour periods of the day respectively. In the south were the statues of Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey, and Dog. While in the north were Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster, and Pig.

These statues have animal heads and are known as the twelve Chinese Zodiac statues with bronze animal heads and human bodies. They were wrought out of red bronze during the reign of Qianlong Emperor in the Qing Dynasty, based on the images of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.

The Design of the Haiyantang

In the 25th year of Qianlong’s reign in the Qing Dynasty, namely A.D. 1760, Qianlong Emperor ordered a European landscape architecture with Baroque style should be constructed in the Garden of Eternal Spring. And the important task of presiding over the design fell on a court painter from Italy Giuseppe Castiglione, known as Lang Shining in China.

In the very beginning, Giuseppe Castiglione entered Ruyiguan as a court painter. Ruyiguan was royal painters’ house in the Old Summer Palace. Since then, he had been engaged in painting and designing in China for over 50 years, living through the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. Giuseppe Castiglione had been bold in the exploration of new painting and designing styles, and thus successfully designed the well-known Haiyantang. The Haiyantang was named after an ancient Chinese saying: “clear rivers, peaceful seas, placid climates, and good harvests.” The word Haiyan means in Chinese that the Yellow River is clear and the sea is peaceful, implying the auspicious meaning of a peaceful world.

The completed Haiyantang consisted of the main building and an H-shaped water tower behind the main building, with a reservoir welded with tin sheets on the top. It was the largest European-style landscape architecture in the Old Summer Palace.

The Design of the Statues

Giuseppe Castiglione’s unique designs combine Chinese and Western styles. His designs were admired and trusted by the Qianlong Emperor. However, when the emperor ordered him to design a Western mechanism for the fountain to spout water, he encountered many difficulties. As the Haiyantang was designed to be full of Western-style garden landscapes, Giuseppe Castiglione’s original plan was to design the fountain according to the Western cultural tradition. But an important part of the Western cultural tradition is mythologies of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, in which, most images of the gods and goddesses are naked. Accordingly, Giuseppe Castiglione planned to build a naked female sculpture with Western characteristics, but the Qianlong Emperor considered it a great contradiction to the traditional Chinese concept and a huge offense to Chinese moral principles. Thus Qianlong ordered Giuseppe Castiglione to redesign it.

Then someone thought of an idea for Giuseppe Castiglione and told him not to use images of human bodies commonly used in the Western fountain design, but use the twelve Chinese Zodiac signs in Chinese folk culture, each of which was associated with one of the 12 traditional twelve two-hour periods. Giuseppe Castiglione was greatly inspired. Along with a French waterworks designer Michel Benoist, known in China as Jiang Youren, he designed a water clock with 12 statues, depicting the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Thus the twelve animal heads of the Old Summer Palace was born.

Unsurpassed Craftsmanship of the Bronze Heads

The craftsmen who made these animal heads of the Old Summer Palace were all from Royal Article Workshop of Qing court which exclusively served emperors. These craftsmen demonstrated excellent craftsmanship in the animal heads. And the material used for making the animal heads at that time was superior alloy copper specifically refined for royal service by the Qing government. The refined alloy contained a variety of precious metals. The copper used in these bronze heads was the same as the copper used to make the bronze cranes displayed in the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing. The animal heads forged with such copper are deep in color and glow with luster. They can withstand over a century’s hard weather without rusting.

The Tortuous Fate of the Twelve Animal Heads

Carved with stone, all the bodies of the animal heads were dressed in robes. And the water pipes connecting heads and bodies took a turn to spout water every two-hour period of the day. At noon, the twelve bronze heads spouted water all at once, showing a spectacular view in a twinkling. Novel and rich in Chinese characteristics, these statues fully met the requirements of the Qianlong Emperor. However, good times didn’t last long. In the Second Opium War, the unrivaled architectural wonder, the Old Summer Palace suffered a catastrophe. The destruction it suffered was far beyond imagination. And the ill-fated twelve animal heads later experienced over a century’s vicissitudes.

On October 18, 1860, the united British and French forces intruded into the Old Summer Palace, burning, killing and pillaging mercilessly. Countless precious treasures and cultural relics were ransacked. Those easy to carry were all swept away, while the large things they couldn’t carry were destroyed ruthlessly. The twelve animal heads were valuable works of art blending Chinese and Western cultures and enjoyed a high reputation internationally. Therefore, when they were plundering, the invaders treated them with some respect, but the stone bodies of the twelve Chinese Zodiac statues were all destroyed.

After the Second Opium War, about a million Chinese cultural relics have been scattered all around the world over the last century, as a result of wars, robberies, and burglaries. Exactly how many treasures were looted out of the Old Summer Palace by invaders still cannot be calculated up to now. However, according to a rough estimate, just a part of the gifts presented to the French king by the returning French invaders was as many as 10000 rare antiques.

Afterward, the twelve animal heads had been out of people’s sight for a long time, becoming an epitome of the Chinese cultural relics lost overseas and also a permanent thorn in the hearts of the Chinese. In the spring of 2000, two world-famous artwork auction houses put the heads of the Ox, the Monkey and the Tiger in the auction in Hong Kong. And in early 2003, China Cultural Relics Recovery Fund found out that the Pig head was in America after inquiring and searching over and over again. With the efforts of multiple sides, the charmingly naive Ox head, the shrewd and lovely Monkey head, the dignified and solemn Tiger head, and the lifelike Pig head finally returned to China and are now collected in the Poly Art Museum.

Until now, seven of the twelve animal heads have come back to people’s sight again including the two promised to be returned by the French Pinault family. It is said that the Dragonhead is currently kept in Taiwan. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the heads of Snake, Goat, Rooster and Dog are still unknown. The bronze animal heads of the Old Summer Palace have gone through all vicissitudes. They have been moved from place to place, passed around by different owners and put in auction multiple times. In the meantime, their prices have gone up by tens of thousands of times within twenty years.

Current Condition of the Bronze Animal Heads

However, having experienced so many vicissitudes, the Monkey head has become a bit flat, with a walnut-size pit on its right; the mortise and tenon joint originally used to connect the water pipe in the Tiger head has been broken, and only a small one of the Tiger hairs are left; and on the top of the Pig head, there is a pit, supposedly smashed severely by a gunstock. Likewise, scratching marks are also visible on the heads of the Tiger and the Ox. In 2007, the Horsehead returned to China with the help of a patriotic entrepreneur—Ho Hung San, also known as Stanley Ho. In April 2013, the French Pinault family announced in Beijing that they decided to gratuitously return two Chinese relics, the bronze animal heads of Rat and Rabbit from the Old Summer Palace, to the Chinese government, which ignited the concerns about the returning of overseas Chinese relics again.