As a legendary general of the mainland, Zhang Xueliang's life can be described as a mixed reputation, after all, his life has been meritorious, and it is difficult for people to make correct evaluations. Although he lost the three northeastern provinces of the mainland in his early years, fortunately, he woke up in time and forced Chiang Kai-shek to resist Japan, which also laid the foundation for him to become a patriotic general. However, although these two events are offset by merit, one of Zhang Xueliang's events in his later years has always made people wonder and judge clearly. Before Zhang Xueliang died, why did he donate a large number of precious cultural relics to the United States free of charge, but did not leave a single one for China?
After the loss of the northeast, Zhang Xueliang defected to Chiang Kai-shek, and the two had a very good relationship for a long time, and even called each other brothers. However, Zhang Xueliang, the fault of losing the northeast, has always been grumpy, so later he insisted on letting Chiang Kai-shek resist Japan in order to alleviate his guilt. However, Chiang Kai-shek always refused to resist Japan on the grounds that "foreign countries must first be at home", but instead increased his means to attack the Communist Party, which also made Zhang Xueliang feel sad and determined to consult the army.
After the Xi'an Incident, Zhang Xueliang's relationship with Chiang Kai-shek fell to a freezing point, and he was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-shek for more than half a century until he regained his freedom in the 1990s. After his release from prison, Zhang Xueliang did not choose to return to the mainland, but instead moved to the United States, and eventually died in the United States. That is, before the death of the United States, Zhang Xueliang did a strange thing, he donated all the treasures he collected all his life to Columbia University in the United States, but did not leave a single one to China. It is precisely because of this incident that he was criticized again and almost died late.
Later, Zhang Xueliang also explained this behavior of himself, in his view, the handling of the collection is the most important thing in his later years, because he wants these collections to be preserved permanently, so as to facilitate future generations to carry out research. At that time, Columbia University had the most perfect storage measures in the world, and it was precisely for this reason that he would donate all his collections, which made his worries in his later years solved. In fact, he also thought about donating the collection to China, but considering that the political environment in China at that time was too complicated, he decided to donate the collection to Columbia University after deliberation, and only in this way could he feel at ease.
In fact, for Zhang Xueliang, the starting point of his consideration is actually for the safety of the collection, after all, he did not leave these treasures to future generations, and his painstaking efforts can also be seen.