CHOU Kung-Shin, the low-profile director of Taipei's famed Palace Museum, shot to fame in 2009 when she rejected a proposed donation of imperial bronzes: a rat's head and a rabbit's head looted from the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860.

Chou, who retired in July, also made news in her tenure since 2008 by reaching out to the Palace Museum in Beijing, promoting scholarly cross-Strait exchanges, and in June 2011 "reuniting" two pieces of a famous painting, "Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains," one held in Hangzhou, one in Taipei.

Her rejection of stolen art was praised by scholars, international museum experts and the general public. She was applauded for "protecting the dignity of Chinese culture" and promoting ethics in museum collecting.

In rejecting the proposed donation from French businessman Pierre Bergé, Chou cited professional and ethical issues, saying the museum would not accept items that were controversial or stolen.

The plundered pieces, part of a clepsydra or water clock, are considered Chinese national treasures and China wants them back. The issue of stolen antiquities is highly charged. The heads are among 12 zodiac animal heads that adorned the elaborate timekeeping device.

They were designed by the Italian Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Castiglione for the Emperor Qianlong in the mid-18th century. The Summer Palace was looted by British and French troops in 1860. The heads belonged to several European collections before they were acquired by Bergé and the late Yves Saint Laurent in the 1990s.

Chou served as director of the Taipei museum from 2008 to July this year, when she retired. The 65-year-old museum veteran was one of the world's few female museum directors and worked at the Taipei Palace Museum for 40 years, starting as a guide in 1972.

Known for being active, earnest and outspoken, Chou was recently in Shanghai at the invitation of the Shanghai Museum for the celebration of its 60th anniversary. She addressed 500 guests, discussing the goals and work of museums and her own experience. She spoke to Shanghai Daily after her talk on Sunday.

"A museum offers the public a place to study in addition to the traditional education system. If the collections are heart of a museum, education will be its soul," Chou emphasized in her speech. She has been active in energizing the Taipei museum, introducing modern management, digitalizing the collection and stressing education and outreach. She has spoken of injecting "new vivacity and new values."

The Taipei Palace Museum houses 693,507 artifacts, many of them collected by emperors in the Ming and Qing (1368-1911) dynasties. It houses one of the world's largest and finest collections of Chinese art. The collection is rotated and only 4,000 to 5,000 pieces are exhibited at any one time.

Dressed in an elegant black longutte dress with a sapphire-blue silk scarf and pearl earrings, Chou appeared much younger than her years.

Perhaps because Chou attaches so much importance to education, she has decided in retirement to teach at the Graduate Institute of Museum Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei.

"As long as the students need me, I would like to give my professional advice and share my experiences with them. Education is always my first priority, whether for the general public visiting the palace museum or for the students on campus," Chou told Shanghai Daily.

She praised the Chinese mainland policy of free admission to all museums, implemented since 2009. While some media and experts question the policy, citing uncouth public behavior, Chou holds a different view: "It's good to offer more access for the general public to have an up close and personal contact with museum culture. We should be more patient and tolerant. As in all the other culture work, it takes time to cultivate the public's taste," she said.

According to Chou, when the world's first museum was founded in 1683 in Greece, it only stored private collections. However, when the first museum association was set up in the United States in the 20th century, education became an important function.

"Through education, the lifeless collections can be given more meaning and their values will be magnified," Chou said.

Chou's family comes from east China's Zhejiang Province. She was born in 1947 in Hunan Province and received a bachelor's degree in French at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei and a PhD in art history at the Sorbonne in Paris. She began working for the Taipei Palace Museum in 1972 as a tour guide.

That basic work gave Chou an appreciation of the importance of good museum guides who can attract and educate visitors. "Good guiding should be diversified, based on the visitor's age, education background and needs. An outstanding tour guide can make the trip both easy-to-understand for children and interesting and deep for scholars," said Chou.

For 11 years, Chou was secretary to the director. In 2008 she was named director.

In her view, the museum is neither a Forbidden City, nor a gold mine for business, but rather an educational institution for the people.

Her biggest satisfaction is seeing a family strolling around the museum and enjoying themselves.

In her Shanghai lecture, Chou explained a museum's advantages for further education, saying there's no limit on age and background and no academic pressure. She called museums ideal places for lifelong study where the learner gains knowledge from actual collections, not books or teachers. "But you have to know the stories behind those relics to understand the facts," she said.

In 2009, Chou organized a successful exhibition about Emperor Yongzheng, a Qing Dynasty ruler from 1722 to 1735. Titled "Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times," it was considered one of the best exhibitions about the ruler famous for his diligence and ruthlessness. When writer Er Yuehe, whose novels about Qing emperors used to dominate best-seller lists, visited the exhibition, he told Chou: "If I had seen the exhibit beforehand, I would have changed the angle of my book on Yongzheng."

"That's the unique ability of a museum - one exhibition can change a man's conception of history," she said.

After becoming director in 2008, she introduced modern management. Instead of following a conservative but safe development strategy, Chou has pursued new policies to raise the museum to new heights.

She became the first curator of Taipei museum to reach out to the Chinese mainland, specifically to the Palace Museum in Beijing. Her visit to the mainland in February 2009 was described by media as an ice-breaking trip.

During her tenure, two pieces from one of the most famous paintings in Chinese history were finally "reunited" at the Taipei museum in June 2011 after nearly four centuries.

The scroll "Dwelling in the Fu Chun Mountains" by Song Dynasty (960-1279) painter Huang Gongwang is one of the master's few surviving works. Its last owner loved it so much that he wanted to take it with him into the next life, so he set it on fire in 1650. His nephew rescued the work, but it had already been burned into two pieces. The right side, 51cm long, is held in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum. The left side, 636cm long, is held in Taipei's Palace Museum. It was taken to Taiwan in the late 1940s after the Kuomintang lost the civil war.

Even the Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong, who owned part of the scroll in 1746, didn't live to see the masterpiece reunited, Chou said at the opening of the exhibition.

In the Shanghai lecture, Chou said she would spare no effort in promoting more exchanges between Taipei and mainland museums and seek more cooperation across the Strait.

In 2008 she set up a training course for Taiwan's creative industry, offering classes linked to the museum's collections to 15 companies every year. After four years, the experience has inspired development of the island's culture industry.

Based on the five senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch - the classes aim to convey cultural concepts through various interactive activities linked with rare objects. In one class, a museum researcher describes the beauty of porcelain and serves Chinese tea so participants can experience Oriental Zen culture.

"We deliver a message to designers, general managers, sales people, and even accountants in creative companies through the museum's collection, hoping to give them inspiration and impetus when designing and selling a cultural product," Chou said.

Chou uses new media to attract more young people to the museum. Since she assumed the director's post, most of the 690,000 artifacts have been digitalized, so online visitors can examine and learn about them.

"Internet technology makes it possible to appreciate the relics' lines and colors in microscopic detail, so going to the virtual museum is more fun and offers more possibilities," Chou said. The Taipei Palace Museum also cooperates with traditional Chinese opera performers and animators to generate more interest in antiquities.

When meeting Chou at the lecture, her animated speech and black hair belie her age. Though she is widely reported to be a workaholic, she insists on a regular work and rest schedule and knows how to keep healthy. Media reports say she only drinks plain, warm water and likes to play tennis and badminton. Even when she was busy as museum director, she still managed to take a walk with her husband Ling Kung Shan after work, sometimes just around the museum.

Before retirement, Chou's husband Ling was an associate professor of library science at the Taipei National University of the Arts. They have a daughter and a son.

Asked if there's anything special about being a female curator and director, Chou replied: "There's no difference between a male and a female curator. The job needs enthusiasm, devotion and professionalism. That's universal."

Though she has retired, Chou maintains her links and is involved in education programs and publications related to the museum collections.

"I will devote myself to promoting the Palace Museum to the outside world and let more people realize the precious value of Chinese culture," Chou said.

Taipei's Palace Museum of Chinese Art

The Palace Museum in Taipei is one of the world's largest Chinese history and art museums and it contains one of the greatest collections of Chinese art, much of which was collected by Chinese emperors.

The permanent collection, covering 8,000 years of Chinese civilization, contains 693,507 works and is rotated every three or four months, so that 4,000 to 5,000 works are exhibited at any one time. Visitors joke it would take nearly 20 years to appreciate all the pieces.

It was originally established as the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing. When it became clear the Kuomingtang government was losing the Chinese Civil War, a huge portion of the collection, the cream of the crop, was taken to Taipei. These are the national treasures on display today. The collection is built upon the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing (1368-1911) dynasties and has been expanded by acquisitions.

Last year, Taipei City announced a plan to invest around TWD30 billion (US$1 billion) to expand the museum five-fold. The plan involves a 48,000-square-meter creative park beside the museum. When the expansion is complete, around 2015, the museum will be able to display 15,000 objects.