Underglazed blue candle holders, kept by the Victoria and Albert Museum, are featured in the newly published Selected Overseas Chinese Cultural Relics.

Lin Shuzhong (1926-2014), a professor with Nanjing University of the Arts, visited many museums in the United States in 1985. He was on a yearlong assignment to teach the history of Chinese painting at a university. He came across collections of rare and ancient Chinese paintings and antiquities at US, and later, other foreign museums. He kept a record of what he saw.

For dozens of years he traveled extensively across Asia, the US and Europe. His findings were published in an eight-volume series in 1996, which introduced more than 2,000 Chinese paintings to his readers.

Lin's efforts raised public awareness on the status of Chinese relics abroad.

His work motivated specialists in the field to take more concrete actions, for instance, building a data base of remains of China's cultural heritage on foreign land.

The recently published first volume of a book series titled Selected Overseas Chinese Cultural Relics, initiated by National Museum of China in 2005, does just that－catalogs Chinese artworks kept at major world museums. The series begins with the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The London-based institution has a collection of 18,000 Chinese antiquities and 195 pieces/sets of it are featured in the book. It also contains high-resolution pictures and introductions written by the two museums' scholars that include sites from where the exhibits had been excavated.

It introduces collectors whose donations greatly enriched the treasure trove. One such person was Stephen W. Bushell (1844-1908), an English physician who arrived in Beijing in 1868 and spent nearly three decades in China thereafter.

He frequented Beijing's antique stores, from where he built his expertise in ceramics and accumulated his own collection.

Bushell purchased 253 articles of Chinese artworks in 1883 on behalf of the South Kensington Museum, which was later renamed the V&A. Before his return to Britain in 1899, Bushell donated several bronze wares to the museum.

In 1975, his great-grand-daughter made another donation, a dozen of Bushell's collection of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties ceramics.

A selection of Bushell's old collections are featured in the first volume, including a pair of qinghua (underglaze blue) candle holders.

Lyu Zhangshen, director of the National Museum of China, says that according to incomplete statistics of UNESCO, about 1.64 million Chinese cultural relics are available in some 200 museums abroad, and a considerable amount of relics are unknown to the public.

Recent years have seen rising interest in recovering Chinese antiquities that were robbed or smuggled from the country.

Deep-pocketed Chinese collectors hunt for such art at auctions worldwide. Heated debates center on whether one should purchase such stolen Chinese articles at very steep prices.

Chen Lyusheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China, says the situation has made dealings with foreign museums complicated.

"They couldn't help worrying that the project will expose their assets (of Chinese antiquities), and hence may lead to retrieving action from the Chinese government."

He says that some museums hesitate to tour their Chinese art collections in China although they aspire to broaden their collaborations with Chinese institutes.

He says that overseas Chinese antiquities have multiple sources of provenance, some of which ended up in foreigners hands through proper cultural exchanges or legitimate channels.

The Chinese potteries of the Neolithic times kept at Stock-holm's Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, for instance, were gifts from the Qing royal court, he says, and an imperial decree announcing the grant is displayed.

Song Xinchao, deputy director of China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage, says museums at home and abroad have agreed to put aside the disputes over Chinese cultural properties and to strengthen mutual academic studies on them.

He says it will enable more people to understand the value of Chinese relics.

V&A director Martin Roth wrote in the preface to the book that it is built upon studies of precedent scholars.

The V&A book marks only the start of a long march. It has set a good example for the current and future cooperation between the Chinese and foreign museums.

The second volume in the series carefully scans Chinese art at Japan's Sumitomo Izumiya Museum and will soon roll off the press.

The Kyoto-based museum boasts more than 3,000 Chinese bronze wares and paintings.