北溝故宮文物典藏山洞

Beigou Forbidden City Vault

December 27th, 2020

Beigou Forbidden City (北溝故宮) is an obscure historic site hidden in the hills of Wufeng, Taichung. From 1949 to 1965 it was the provisional base of operations for the team of archivists, curators, scholars, and technicians overseeing the subset of the Palace Museum collection sent for safekeeping to Taiwan by the Kuomintang (KMT) in the later stages of the Chinese Civil War. Nowadays this collection is managed and displayed by the National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), or simply Gùgōng (故宮) for short, situated in Taipei, and almost nothing remains of the facilities in Wufeng. The one exception is an underground vault constructed in 1953.

Beigou Palace Museum Vault Entrance 1 — The recently excavated entrance to a historic vault in Taichung.

Both the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and the Palace Museum in China trace their histories back to the Forbidden City in Beijing. Established in 1925, the Palace Museum collection originates with the vast imperial holdings of the Ming and Qing dynasty emperors who resided there. In 1933, under threat of invasion by Japanese forces, the huge collection was boxed and sent overland to Nanjing, the first of several stops on a decades-long mission to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands¹.

Beigou Forbidden City Vault (北溝故宮文物典藏山洞) — Approaching an earthquake-damaged vault dug into a Taichung hillside.

Following the Japanese surrender and the resumption of hostilities between the KMT and communist forces the collection was split in two, and many of the most valuable pieces were transported by sea to Keelung, at the northern tip of Taiwan, in 1949. From there the collection was sent by rail to a warehouse in Yangmei, Taoyuan, and then to the former sugar factory in Taichung, before it was finally secreted away to purpose-built facilities in Wufeng by 1950. The collection remained there until the opening of the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 1965.

Inside Beigou Palace Museum Vault 1 — Inside the U-shaped vault at a former storage site for the National Palace Museum collection.

The grounds of the former museum facility lay idle for many years after the collection was relocated. Eventually the site was repurposed for use by the Taiwan Provincial Film Studio (台灣省電影製片廠) and Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra (省立台灣交響樂團). In 1990 the site was again transformed, this time into a amusement park, Taiwan Studio City (台灣電影文化城)², but it closed in 1999 after suffering heavy damage in the 921 Earthquake. After clearing the debris nothing remained at the surface to indicate that this site had been home to the palace museum collection for 15 years.

Inside Beigou Palace Museum Vault 2 — Around the bend of the U-shaped vault. Earthquake damage is more obvious here.

The vault seen in these photographs was approved in 1952, constructed in 1953, and in active use from 1954 until the entire site was abolished in 1965. It was built to withstand disasters both natural and manmade (mainly in the form of air raids) and seems to have held up fairly well through decades of neglect, all things considered. It was heavily damaged in the earthquake and buried under a landslide. From what I’ve read, nobody knew exactly where it was located until it was excavated in 2013. It is an interesting coincidence that it spent around the same amount of time hosting some of the world’s greatest art as it did completely cut-off from the outside world.

Inside Beigou Palace Museum Vault 3 — Built to withstand natural disasters and military airstrikes alike.

Trapped Inside the Beigou Palace Museum Vault

IBeigou Palace Museum Vault 4 — Just inside the far end of the U-shaped National Palace Museum vault.

Renewed interest in the site and its cultural value³ prompted the Taichung government to register the damaged vault as a historic monument in 2014. Officially known as the Beigou Forbidden City Vault (北溝故宮文物典藏山洞), and sometimes more informally as the Wufeng Beigou Tunnel (霧峰北溝坑道), the site was almost completely neglected apart from the installation of a historical plaque near the entrance of the vault. From what I understand, part of the delay in developing the site is fragmented property rights; the underlying land is divided amongst more than a dozen shareholders, all of whom would have to agree to whatever redevelopment plan the city government dreams up. In 2019 one landowner filled the pits granting access to the vault, ostensibly because of the hazard they posed⁴.

Beigou Palace Museum Vault Entrance 2 — The second entrance is not nearly as accessible as the first.

Prior to the closure of the site I managed to slip inside to take a look around. Nothing remains inside the vault, of course, and while there is visible deformation from the earthquake in many areas, it remains structurally intact. It is somewhat hard to imagine this obscure hole in the ground filled with parts of China’s national treasure, but that is indeed the purpose it once served. Hopefully the Taichung government can get its act together and reach a deal with the landowners to redevelop the site and bring this story to life. In the meantime, if you happen to be in Taiwan and wish to visit the site, you should be aware that access may be difficult and there’s no guarantee you’ll find much of anything, but if things change I’ll be sure to update this post!

Sixth Tone has a good series documenting the wartime travels of the palace museum collection; read it here: part 1, part 2, and part 3. For a more detailed history of the movements of the collection this page from the National Palace Museum (in Chinese) is highly informative. You might also like to peruse this history told from a more Chinese perspective for comparison. ↩
Parts of the former amusement park were still visible in 2012 according to this blog but I saw no trace of it while visiting in 2017. Taiwan Studio City was one of several amusement parks dedicated to Taiwanese cinema. Apart from film studios in Shilin and Beitou, there was also the Baihe Taiwan Film & TV Town (白河台灣電影文化城), which is now closed and abandoned. ↩
Two Chinese language news reports about the excavation can be found here and here. This site also features a series of interviews with elders in the surrounding community, many of whom worked at the original museum facility. ↩
A news report detailing the second entombment of the vault can be seen here. ↩

Map

Warning: this location is abandoned, hazardous, or otherwise neglected and may be unsafe and even dangerous! Exercise appropriate precautions when visiting.

警告：此處已廢棄或長期無人管理，可能存在潛在危險。造訪時請務必提高警覺，並做好相關安全防護措施。