This month the Shanghai Museum is displaying the best Northern Song rubbings of the "Chunhua ge tie", recently bought from an American collector for US$4.5 million, reports Shanghai Morning Post.

Museum Director Chen Xiejun described the Chunhua ge tie as the "Model-Letter Compendia of the Chunhua reign".

Its return to China is regarded by many experts as a great and historic event.

In the third year (AD 992) of the Chunhua reign of the Northern Song Dynasty, Emperor Taizong assigned an imperial compiler, Wang Zhu, to select calligraphy masterpieces passed down from the Han Dynasty through the Tang Dynasty and engrave them on stones to create the Chunhua ge tie.

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