Two zodiac heads from Beijing's Old Summer Palace

On 18 October 1860, British troops began to burn the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing. Lord Elgin, the British High Commissioner in China, had ordered it. He acted in reprisal for the torture and death of Allied captives. The fire burned for about three days.

The palace had already been looted. The historian James Hevia and the Napoleon Foundation report that French troops, and then British troops, entered it from about 5 to 7 October. They say the French generals and Elgin helped to organise the looting. The French commander and ambassador did not join in the burning.

Among the palace’s treasures was a fountain with a water clock, the Haiyantang. Twelve bronze animal heads, one for each sign of the zodiac, were set around it. They were cast in the Qianlong period, between 1736 and 1795. Bloomberg, quoted by The New York Times, says the fountain is thought to have been designed by Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit painter at the Qing court.

The heads disappeared after 1860. The BBC says it is unclear when, how and by whom they left China. No source used here says how or when the rat and the rabbit left. The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2009 that nobody disputed they were looted in 1860. Christie’s, the auction house, argued that they had a clear chain of ownership since. As reported, the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé bought them from the Paris dealer Nicolas Kugel. Kugel had them from a Sert collection. The Los Angeles Times names the pianist Misia Sert. The Museum of Looted Antiquities names her husband, the painter José María Sert.

Christie’s sold the pair in Paris on 25 February 2009, as lots 677 and 678 of the Saint Laurent and Bergé collection. China’s heritage administration had asked Christie’s not to sell. A group of Chinese lawyers asked a Paris court to block the sale, and on 23 February the court refused. Each head sold for 15,745,000 euros, including the buyer’s premium, about 20.4 million US dollars at Christie’s rate. Three telephone bidders competed for each lot. A Christie’s employee took both winning bids, and the buyer was not named.

On 2 March, Cai Mingchao, a collector and auctioneer from Fujian and an adviser to the National Treasure Fund of China, said he had made both bids. He said he would not pay, as a patriotic act, and that he did not have the money. The Chinese government said it had no part in the bid. No source reports a charge or a lawsuit against Cai, or any action by Christie’s. Christie’s said it does not comment on buyers. Bergé said he would keep the heads.

In April 2013, François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of the group Kering, told President Xi Jinping that his family would give the heads to China. AFP reports that the Pinault family bought them from Bergé for an undisclosed sum. Reuters reports that People’s Daily named a private collector as the seller. The price Pinault paid was never published. A donation ceremony took place on 28 June 2013 at the National Museum of China in Beijing.

By 2013 five other heads had returned to China: the ox, tiger, monkey, pig and horse. The whereabouts of the dragon, snake, goat, rooster and dog were then unknown. The rat and the rabbit are shown at the National Museum of China, in its permanent exhibition “The Road of Rejuvenation”. The latest dated source for this, the Getty Research Journal, is from 2026.