Businessman paves way for return of relics kept in Norway

Seven marble columns taken from Beijing's Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, are to return to China, after a Chinese entrepreneur agreed to make a large donation to a Norwegian art museum.

The columns will go on display at Peking University, the director of KODE Art Museums of Bergen confirmed to the Global Times Tuesday. They are expected to be returned in the autumn of 2014.

Huang Nubo, chairman of Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, reached an agreement in December to donate 10 million Norwegian krone ($1.6 million) to the museum, The New York Times reported.

A graduate from Peking University, Huang was best known for trying to purchase land in Iceland to build a golf resort in 2011.

With 2,500 Chinese artifacts, KODE has one of the largest collections of Chinese art in Europe. The collection, including the columns, was donated by Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe, a former Norwegian cavalry officer who settled in China in 1886.

Xu Hong, vice president of the group, told the Global Times that the company intended to help the museum since it had some security problems.

The return of the columns is not directly connected to the donation, Xu said.

In January 2013, two men broke into the museum's China Collection, stealing two dozen art objects.

Museum Director Karin Hindsbo, told the Global Times via e-mail "this is an academic collaboration between Peking University and KODE."

In past years, some Chinese cultural relics lost overseas were returned to China. In 2013, the French art-collecting Pinault family handed over two imperial bronze animal heads to China.