**10,000 Fans Incentive Program On the night of February 25, 2009, the much-anticipated auction was held as scheduled at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. The 1,200 seats were packed, and the eyes of the global audience were focused on the auction hall via televised broadcast, all looking forward to witnessing the final ownership of the rat and rabbit heads, the 12 animal heads of the Old Summer Palace.
After fierce bidding, both heads were sold for a staggering €14 million.
A week after the auction ended, Cai Mingchao, who had successfully auctioned the two animal heads, publicly announced that he would not pay for the auction or pay for the greed of foreign speculators.
The news caused an uproar, with some accusing him of being a liar, but more people supported his decision because the auction was specifically aimed at Chinese capital speculation, which should not be paid for despite the desire for the return of national treasures.
So, why did these twelve beast heads become the target of foreign speculators? What kind of bizarre and twisted stories have they experienced?
In front of the Haiyan Hall of the Old Summer Palace, the bronze statue of the head of the 12 zodiac animals once stood there as part of the fountain, showing the craftsman spirit of Qianlong for 24 years. "Haiyan"The meaning is derived from the idiom"Haiyan River is clear", which symbolizes peace and tranquility, these architectural gems symbolize the prosperity of that era.
The designer of the bronze statue, Lang Shining, a missionary, uses the 12 zodiac signs as elements to represent the twelve hours of the day, and each bronze statue is sprayed with water on time, forming a wonderful landscape.
However, this beauty has been destroyed by the fire of history, and now only the ruins can be found in the splendor of the past.
In 1856, the Second Opium War broke out, and Britain and France, with the support of other imperialist powers, joined forces to launch a war of aggression against China. Their plans are not small, and they are trying to obtain more lucrative profits by further opening up the Chinese market.
At this time, China was still a mysterious labyrinth to the Western powers, and although they coveted China's vast market, they could not find out the true strength of the Qing army.
Therefore, they chose Britain and France as the vanguard. After a series of battles, in August 1860, 18,000 British and French troops landed in Tianjin, and successfully captured the Dagukou Fort and the city of Tianjin.
On October 13 of the same year, the British and French forces broke into the city of Beijing, and on the pretext of revenge against the Qing Dynasty, they looted and burned the Old Summer Palace, a treasure of Chinese gardens, and looted the precious cultural relics in the garden.
In this disaster, the buildings that carried the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese people were destroyed, and countless precious cultural relics were destroyed and plundered. When the French writer Victor Hugo learned of this, he was indignant and publicly condemned the atrocities of the Anglo-French forces in the newspapers.
In the East, there is a wonder of the world, and this miracle is called the Old Summer Palace, which is on a par with the Colosseum in Rome, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the pyramids in Egypt. However, this miracle is gone.
One day, two robbers broke into the Old Summer Palace, one of them was called British and the other was called French, they wantonly looted, set fire to it, and carried out a large-scale ransacking of the Old Summer Palace.
We Europeans call ourselves civilized people and regard China as barbarians, and this is what civilization does to barbarism. I have to ** about it! Even the bronze statues of the Zodiac in brass, which were cast in brass, did not escape the cruelty of the Anglo-French forces, who savagely cut off the heads of the bronze statues and brought them back to the West.
A hundred years later, the beast's head was seen again. In 1985, Charles, an American collector and antiques dealer, received news that a veteran had gone bankrupt and needed to repay a large bank loan, and that his home had some ancient artifacts of unknown origin that might be valuable.
When Charles heard the news, he immediately drove to the veteran's house. At the veteran's home, Charles found a bronze statue of a bull's head, and he became intrigued. The veteran claimed that the statue came from China, and that his ancestors had followed the British and French forces in sacking the Old Summer Palace and sitting on the dragon chair in the Forbidden City.
There are three bronze statues like this in his house.
In the garden, the veterans placed the bronze statues of the heads of horses and tigers as mere ornaments by small pools, apparently oblivious to the value of the three animal heads. Charles, on the other hand, was a savvy antiques dealer who pocketed all three heads for a fraction of $1,500 each.
He understood that the value of an antique was not determined by its value but by the story attached to it. It is only through the widespread hype of the antique that the antique can sell for a higher level.
Charles did not become the center of attention, he kept a low-key collection of animal heads, waiting for the best time. Finally, at the 1987 Sotheby's Antiques Auction in New York, the monkey and pig heads of the 12 zodiac animal heads reappeared in front of the world.
Since the looting of the British and French forces in 1860, these animal heads have gradually made their way into the European antique market.
Some of the Old Summer Palace heads have been in the collections of European museums or magnates, while others have passed into the hands of European antique dealers. After more than 100 years of private circulation, two animal heads from the Old Summer Palace have been unveiled again, attracting widespread attention from cultural relics buyers around the world.
However, due to the brass quality of these bronze statues and their recent age, they did not get a good result in the first auction, and the final price of each piece was only a hundred thousand dollars.
The pig's head was bought by an unnamed private American buyer, while the monkey's head was collected by Taiwan's antiquities collection agency, the Humble House Group. Although it is only 100 times the $1,500 that Charles originally started, this is a very considerable increase.
Charles, after weighing the pros and cons, decided not to buy the bronze statues of beast heads. He has the insight to believe that the history and stories behind these bronze statues may attract the attention and interest of the Chinese, thereby increasing their value.
Charles foresaw that over time, the market for these bronze statues of beast heads would **will**, and he could become a billionaire in the world of antiques collecting. However, fate did not turn out as Charles had hoped.
Due to poor management, his antique shop went bankrupt. In order to pay off the bank's debts, he had to take action. Like the veteran, Charles decided to transfer the bronze statue of the beast's head to a British antique dealer.
Surprisingly, the ** of each of his bronze statues of beast heads is not even $100,000. The result of this transaction is obviously far from Charles's original expectations.
In June 1989, a British antiques dealer handed over the three animal heads to Sotheby's for public display and auction. Although the auction attracted some social attention, it did not attract the attention of international speculators.
In the end, the three heads were purchased by Taiwan's Humble House Group, and due to the lack of competitors, each of them sold for less than £200,000. After collecting the four beast heads in the Humble House, they immediately began to vigorously promote the "special value" of these four beast heads.
After the careful publicity of the Humble House Group, these items, which were originally just copper faucets, have been transformed into so-called priceless national treasures, and their value has soared thousands of times in an instant.
With the end of the Humble House Group, the world's first attention began to focus on those animal heads, especially the United Kingdom, the United States, France and other countries. After a few years of hype, the head of the beast soared to one million dollars, a hundred times more than the $1,500 in its debut.
These changes have given international antiquities speculators a sniff of business opportunities. Foreign collectors of the Old Summer Palace began to rack up their moldy Chinese artifacts and label them as "patriotic" in an attempt to blackmail China, a newly wealthy country.
I have a batch of cultural relics taken from your ancestors, and if you are not willing to pay for it, it will be tantamount to ignoring the shame of history and losing your love for the motherland.
* has put us Chinese in a dilemma, and it is difficult to choose whether to buy or not to buy. After a period of deliberation, in April 2000, the monkey head and the cow head were once again put on the auction table, and the auction was handled by Christie's Hong Kong, with a starting price of 2 million Hong Kong dollars.
As soon as the auction began, Poly Group immediately raised its cards to bid.
On a high-profile occasion, an English-speaking mystery buyer suddenly appears, he is from Taiwan. This person did not show up, but started a fierce bidding war with Poly Group through **.
Obviously, the driving force behind this is an unsightly clown, and his true identity is most likely from Taiwan's Humble House Group. After more than 20 rounds of fierce bidding, Poly Group finally bought the monkey head for 7.4 million Hong Kong dollars.
In the subsequent auction of the bull's head, the mysterious Taiwanese buyer still carried out the tactic of raising the price of Poly Group, forcing Poly Group to buy the bull's head for 7 million Hong Kong dollars.
When the auction ended, the whole of Chinese mainland was boiling, and all the Chinese who knew about it felt extremely happy and proud of the return of the national treasure. However, this is not the end, but a new beginning.
Although the Chinese Cultural Heritage Administration has solemnly pointed out that the 12 animal heads of the Old Summer Palace are cultural relics plundered by the invaders and should be returned to China free of charge, some foreign and domestic speculators still try to use patriotism to continue to extract the hard-earned money of the Chinese people.
In addition, the domestic part of the ** also participated in this hype, using the words "return of national treasures" to attract attention and stimulate the patriotic feelings of the people. However, these efforts were in vain, as the artifacts plundered by the invaders did not belong to any country and should not be a money-making tool for anyone.