Rebuilding the Tongan Ships

Reporter/Provider - National Palace Museum
Publish Date -

The diagrams of the Tongan ship "Ji" and the Tongan ship No. 1 are two extremely rare colored drawings of Qing Dynasty warships held in the National Palace Museum's (NPM's) collection. To fully understand the origin and the purpose of these two illustrations, historical records helped unearth the tangled history between Li Changgeng, Cai Qian, and these ships that helped the Chinese Empire defend against piracy and rule the seas of Southeast Asia.


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Explore The National Palace Museum

(English/Mandarin subtitles can be enabled in player subtitle settings.) In 1949, nearly 700,000 artifacts were transported from China to Taiwan to be kept safe as the Chinese Civil War ended. Miraculously, none of these priceless relics were lost or damaged in the process. Now available for all t