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By 1906, two more disastrous wars had been fought, with the victors exacting

crushing indemnities on the losing Qing government. In 1895 the Qing lost to the

Japanese, and in 1900, the allied forces of Britain, Russia, Japan, the United States,

Germany, France, Italy, and Austria, together crushed Qing troops. Chen Liu reported in

Tao Ya that in order to pay the indemnities the government began to sell the porcelains

and art pieces stored in imperial palaces and gardens such as the imperial summer retreat

grounds in Chengde. As a result, Chen lived in a landscape whereby precious objects

formed an active antiques market in ever increasing numbers. Yet this market was not

the product of a free invisible hand of demand and supply; its origins lay in war

indemnities. Chen noted this in Tao Ya several times. He wrote glowingly that the

“collected treasures of a thousand years are stored in the Qing capital. Once they burst

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forth onto the world stage, everyone will know and it will arouse admiration.” On the
other hand, the ambiguous moral valence of the sudden visibility of imperial collections

artworks that ensued from these depressing international political circumstances was a

point not lost on Chen. He continued to explain that the admiration gained through

seeing imperial collections of porcelain with an ironic description. To see such dazzling

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treasures was a “so-called opportunity” that “one could hope for but not seek.” The key

phrase here is “so-called (suo wei).” Chen clearly experienced joy from viewing these

spoils of war, but he was more concerned that the knowledge about porcelain from his

country was made possible by the opening of the palace collections. Proclaiming the

“bursting forth of three hundred years of collected splendor” as a “rare opportunity,”

Chen felt that the opportunity was a lost cause saying that “Our Chinese porcelain is the

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best in the entire globe, but we Chinese do not know their value.” He not only extolled