Cultural assets

Late minister Zhang Naiqi's collection of antiquities are on display in Beijing. Lin Qi reports.

Historian Zhang Lifan recalls his childhood home in a siheyuan, the traditional quadrangle-style courtyard house of Beijing, being decorated with hardwood furniture made in the classical Chinese style and the many antiquities that his late father Zhang Naiqi, an economist and food minister, had collected over decades.

Zhang Lifan, 68, says he used to ask his father about where and when the objects came from.