Series of Exhibitions on China in Szeged

A new unit was added to the Szeged (the largest city and regional center of the Southern Great Plain) series of China exhibitions on Friday, with the Black House opening a showcase on the Franciscan mission in China.

An exhibition on the clay soldiers who guarded the tomb of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, has been on display at the Szeged Palace of Culture since May 26, while an exhibition on the Han Dynasty, including full-body jade armor used during the emperors’ burial, was opened at the Night of Museums in cooperation with several Chinese public collections.

The Franciscan Mission to China, on display at the Black House since Friday, is the third in a series of exhibitions on China’s history in Szeged.

The exhibition takes visitors back to the first half of the 20th century, when Hungarian Franciscans took over a mission center in China’s Hunan province in 1929.

The missionary work was hampered by the turmoil of history, until finally, after Mao Zedong took power in 1952, all Hungarian Franciscans were expelled from China.

The mission was founded by seven Franciscans who spent a year learning the language and then compiled a Hungarian-Chinese dictionary of 2,000 words. They also maintained a hospital, an orphanage, a school, and an institute for the training of catechists. In the course of their work, they collected a variety of utensils and ornaments, which were exhibited in Hungary.

The exhibition at the Black House features a selection of items from this Chinese mission – a collection currently held by the Szeged Franciscans. Visitors can see porcelain, Chinese footwear, musical instruments, an abacus, and other interesting items. The most beautiful pieces of the exhibition are undoubtedly the paintings of the leading representative of Christian Chinese painting, Lukas Chen.

Via Ungarn Heute. Featured image: Facebook/ SzTE-BTK Néprajzi és Kulturális Antropológiai Tanszék