Lu Qinzhai, cultural relics thief, marriedA young wife, ambiguous with her mother-in-law, and died in a foreign land.
He was criticized at home and regarded as a man of great interest, but in the eyes of Westerners, he was a cultural inheritor. What he did was almost a monastic in the eyes of some, but he always stood up for what he believed in, defended himself, and believed that he was doing his best to protect cultural heritage and that he was a true patriot.
Lu Qinzhai: Antiquities thief or patriotic businessman? Lu Qinzhai was the most famous antique dealer in the ** period, but his reputation among domestic collectors was not good, and he was often labeled as a "cultural relics thief".
According to statistics, half of the more than 10 million cultural relics lost overseas during the ** period were transferred by him. Among them, including Tang Taizong Zhaoling's six horses, Salu Purple and Fist Mao, these cultural relics sold by him, so far more than 1.6 million pieces have been collected by more than 200 museums in the world, and they are all treasure-level.
The purchase of these cultural relics is difficult for the state, let alone to get it back. Lo died in Switzerland in 1957, and his death made many people feel sad.
However, his assessment is still inconclusive. He was a complex man, and although he made a fortune in the country, he also used it to finance the domestic war of resistance. He was originally a businessman and was mercenary, but he also donated several treasures for the country free of charge.
Perhaps, this is Lu Qinzhai's most powerful defense of himself. His life is full of controversy, but his life trajectory is worthy of our in-depth **. Lu Qinzhai was born in an ordinary peasant family in Lujiadu Village, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, and his real name is Lu Huanwen.
Lu Huanwen grew up in the turmoil of Chinese society in the late Qing Dynasty. His father, addicted to opium and gambling, gave up farming, adding to the family's poverty.
Lu Qinzhai's childhood was destined to be full of hardships, his mother left him due to fatigue and the death of his father, and he became a 10-year-old orphan. Luckily, his distant cousin was willing to take him in, giving him a place to stay.
In her life under the fence, Lu Qinzhai learned how to take care of others and worked hard. This experience has sharpened his will and made him cherish every opportunity in life even more.
When Lu Qinzhai was 15 years old, Zhang Jingjiang, the second son of the Zhang family, who was wealthy and powerful, was arranged by his father to go to France to take up a post in order to avoid danger abroad, and only took 22-year-old Lu Qinzhai as a domestic servant.
Zhang Jingjiang had a strong rebellious mood in his bones, and he thought about overthrowing the Qing court and overthrowing feudalism all day long. Although the people around him were worried, and Lu Qinzhai was also extremely scared, he resolutely followed Zhang Jingjiang and embarked on a journey abroad.
This is the first time Lu Qinzhai has had the opportunity to go abroad, and the outside world is so wonderful that he has thought about settling down here more than once.
In addition to his work in Paris, Zhang Jingjiang founded the Express Company, which deals in Chinese silk, tea, porcelain and antiques. Lu Qinzhai was placed in charge of the antiques business in the store, and although he had not been exposed to antiques before this, he gradually developed a strong interest in these antiques by carefully observing them every day.
He expressed to Zhang Jingjiang the idea of learning from scratch, and Zhang Jingjiang was very happy and handed over this important task to him. After receiving guidance from Zhang Jingjiang, Lu Qinzhai began as an apprentice, and in addition to learning antiques, he also learned English and French.
After a period of hard work, his abilities have improved significantly. Zhang Jingjiang then promoted him to the shopkeeper and put him in charge of the antique business. Lu Qinzhai's diligence and talent not only helped Zhang Jingjiang realize his wishes, but also made Zhang Jingjiang still care about the changes in the domestic situation even though he was in a foreign country, and often kept in touch with Sun Yat-sen and other people with lofty ideals.
After Zhang Jingjiang made a lot of money in France, he donated most of this income to the domestic salvation movement. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Zhang Jingjiang decided to return to China.
Because of his outstanding contributions to the revolutionary cause, Zhang Jingjiang won the reputation of "revolutionary saint" and became one of the four elders of the Kuomintang. At the same time, Lu Qinzhai, who was doing business in France, had a prosperous business, and he chose to stay in France to concentrate on business.
From this time on, Lu Qinzhai's choice of nationality and interests has begun to lean towards commercial interests. In 1908, with an economic foundation, Lu Qinzhai opened his first antique shop, called Laiyuan Company, which means antiques from afar.
In order to expand his business, he decided to package himself and at this time gave himself a new name - Lu Qinzhai, as Westerners call him Ct.loo。
Lo was keen to start an antique shop, in part because the antiques market was extremely prosperous at the time. With the collapse of the Qing Dynasty about to become a fact, those royal nobles who once had a prominent position lost their economy for a while.
In order to make ends meet, they have sold their antique collections, which are sold for much less than their actual value, and the domestic antiques market has shown an unprecedented prosperity.
In those years, Lu Qinzhai would return to China every year to buy and order. His ability to appreciate antiques is unique, and he almost never misses a beat, which also allows him to buy artifacts in large quantities at a very low ** every time he returns to China, and then ship them abroad for sale.
Soon after, given the sheer number of antiques, expanding the business was a natural choice.
Between 1912 and 1915, Lu Qinzhai cooperated with Wu Qizhou, a well-known antique dealer in Shanghai, to found the Lu Wu Antique Company, which was established in Paris, which once became the largest local antique shop and the most glorious private antique export company in China's modern history.
At the same time, Lu Qinzhai also continued to acquire a large number of antiques in China, and stored the antiques in the Lu Wu Antique Company, which temporarily became a "warehouse". However, due to the preference of European countries for the Chinese art market at that time, which was lower than that of Japanese culture, a large number of cultural relics could not be sold, and the backlog was serious.
In addition, the impact of the First World War also caused a serious setback to Lu's business. However, these difficulties did not stop Lu Qinzhai's business pace, but instead accumulated strength for his later business explosion.
Lu's business talent lies in his unique vision and strategy, as Laura, senior vice president of Christie's International Auctions, commented on him: "He was the first antiques dealer to understand the global market. ”
After World War I, Lo turned his attention to the rising United States and persuaded Wu to open an antique shop with him on the corner of Madison and 37th Street in New York. Chinese art and culture were suddenly all the rage at this time, thanks in large part to Lu Qinzhai's efforts.
He has held many exhibitions and academic research on Chinese cultural relics, and coined new terms such as "Chinese Baroque" and "Classical Period" to make Chinese culture more acceptable to Westerners.
As a result of this series of measures, the backlog of cultural relics in the earlier period was enthusiastically purchased, and Lu Qinzhai still returned to China every year to buy folk treasures, especially those scattered among the people, and he searched for and purchased Buddha statues and murals from tomb robbers.
In addition, he also collected a lot of porcelain, ancient jade, bronze, calligraphy, painting and ink treasures, etc., and every time he returned to China, his bag was always full.
The relationship between Zhang Jingjiang and Lu Qinzhai made Lu Qinzhai successfully transport a large number of cultural relics under the strict supervision of the first class. Although a series of regulations had been issued at that time to prohibit and restrict the export of cultural relics, this did not affect Lu Qinzhai's actions.
By collecting antiques in the domestic market, Lu Qinzhai has accumulated a large number of collections and customers. The variety of goods he provides is fair, attracting a large number of local and foreign customers, and winning the reputation of "Godfather of Antiques".
During this period, Lu Qinzhai shipped a huge number of cultural relics abroad, causing immeasurable losses to national interests, among which the most famous and controversial cultural relics are the national treasure "Six Horses of Zhaoling of Tang Taizong".
In the mausoleum of Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, six former war horses were carved and placed on both sides of the mausoleum, and they were buried with him in the ground. These six war horses are revered as the "Six Horses", and they guard Tang Taizong day and night and become part of the mausoleum.
However, in 1914, the Great Powers wanted to strip the "Six Horses" from the tomb wall and prepared to smuggle them out of the country. But for a variety of reasons, this did not materialize.
Subsequently, the "Six Horses" fell into the hands of the warlords, and after changing hands many times, they finally fell into the hands of Lu Qinzhai. As a national treasure, the "Six Horses" have attracted great attention.
However, it is not easy for Lu Qinzhai to ship these cultural relics out "above board". So, he decided to destroy the integrity of the artifact and try to get lucky in this way.
However, his plan was eventually discovered, and four "six horses" were seized. Among them, Sa Luzi and Fist Mao were shipped out of China. In 1916, the two horses were transported to the United States and were given as a gift by Lu Qinzhai for a very low price$50,000 was sold to the University of Pennsylvania.
Today, the two horses are on display in the university's museum.
Lu Qinzhai is unique, with his perseverance, he has repeatedly asked for antiques from China, but without success. He is not afraid of difficulties and finds antique problems for the entire Chinese nation, which is his Lu Qinzhai.
In 1920, at the age of 40, Lu Qinzhai decided to devote himself to business, with a particular focus on the development of Paris. He dreamed of building a Chinese-style building in the city of Paris for the ancient director's business.
The city of Paris was very strict in its planning and management, but Lu Qinzhai did not deter from this. In 1926, he bought a mansion under Napoleon III for a large sum of money.
Three years later, he managed to convert it into a five-storey bright red building with a basement floor. He named it the "Red Chamber", while the locals affectionately called it the "Chinese Louvre".
This building is a microcosm of China's 5,000-year-old culture, with a rich interior treasure and a large number of national treasures, which are extremely rare. The basement displays precious objects such as Buddha statues from the major grottoes, and the upper floors display exquisite murals, flower and bird objects, lacquer paintings, reliefs, and foreign cultural relics imported from India and other places.
In order to promote the culture of the Red Chamber, in 1934 and 1935, Lo held exhibitions of Chinese bronzes and cultural toys in Paris and London respectively to promote the business of the Red Chamber.
However, in 1937, when the domestic war of resistance against Japanese aggression entered its most difficult stage, Lu Qinzhai was awakened to the national consciousness, and he mobilized all the staff to donate thousands of francs, and sold 9 treasures at the Geneva auction house, donating all the proceeds to China.
Since that year, Lu Qinzhai has secretly sent $2,000 to his hometown every year, but has never signed his real name.
In 1938, Lu Qinzhai made an important contribution to the promotion of cultural exchanges between China and the West, not only sponsoring the exhibition of Chinese cultural relics in London, but also providing financial support to the American Medical Aid Association.
However, on July 29, 1948, on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Lu Qinzhai's batch of 342 cultural relics, which had been prepared for many years and intended to be shipped out again, were intercepted in China, including a livestock statue in the late Spring and Autumn period, which is now the treasure of the Shanghai Museum.
Since then, Lu Qinzhai has never had a chance to transport out the cultural relics, and a large number of important cultural relics stored in his Shanghai branch have also been confiscated, and at the same time, the "accomplices" groups he established before have also been killed.
Lu Qinzhai's antique business industry is also gradually moving towards the sunset. According to statistics, from 1915, Lu Qinzhai continued to transfer to the outside world for more than 30 years, through his hands of countless cultural relics, only in the two auctions he personally held in New York, more than 2,800 pieces of cultural relics, and in a sale in Paris, he sold more than 3,000 pieces of bronzes, sculptures and jade.
With the many artifacts on display in the Red Chamber, Lu Qinzhai has achieved great success both personally and as a company. At that time, many employees of the Luwu Antique Company received generous dividends, and the annual dividends of a small shareholder could even exceed the total annual income of the Liuli Factory.
However, in 1950, Lo chose to retire and liquidate the New York branch, returning to the main store in Paris. A few years later, he transferred the business of the store to someone else, but left the Red House to his daughter.
The Red House was not auctioned off as family property until 2006. Lo died of lung cancer in 1957 at the age of 77, but he never returned to his longing homeland.
Lu Qinzhai's antiques business empire is history, not because he has no heirs, but because he has no heirs to entrust. His life and family were also full of controversy.
When he opened his first store in Paris, he met Olga, the proprietress of a hat shop. Because the stores are next to each other, they often meet when they open and close the store, and the two are attracted to each other and slowly fall in love.
Mary Rose Olga was four years older than Lu Qinzhai, and when they fell in love, they seemed to have the same opinion on everything. However, Olga is no ordinary single woman, she used to be a nanny working in a wealthy family, but she was born to a daughter Mary Rose at the age of 19 by the male host**.
In order to satisfy his selfish desires, the male owner has always treated Olga as a lover and opened a hat shop for her to cover up the truth. At this time, Olga's mind was completely attracted to the Chinese man in front of her, Lu Qinzhai, but in order to protect the hat shop and keep in touch with Lu Qinzhai, she made a bold proposal to let her daughter marry Lu Qinzhai as a cover.
Lu Qinzhai agreed to the ridiculous proposal, and they married at the age of 30, after which they gave birth to four daughters. During this time, however, Lu Qinzhai maintained a special bond with Olga.
The attitude of Lu Qinzhai's four daughters towards Mary changed from initial jealousy to later blatant behavior. During Mary's pregnancy, they behaved more brazenly. Olga has lived with her daughter's family for a long time, as if she has become the mistress of this home.
She was in charge of Lu Qinzhai's life, interfering in the affairs of the family, which made Mary very distressed. Mary gradually realizes her true relationship with Olga and confronts her mother, but Olga is justified.
Lu Qinzhai was busy with his career and turned a blind eye to all this. Eventually, mental stress made Mary spirit**. Her marriage has always been a **, and now that she is sick, she has accepted her fate, and even when she is a little sober, she no longer raises the idea of divorce.
Since this marriage is a **, let it continue, her life can only be like this.
Lu Qinzhai's daughters may feel their father's indifference compared to Mary's four daughters. Because Lu Qinzhai never taught them antique knowledge, Chinese culture, or even Chinese, let alone let them inherit their own property.
So, to this day, Lu Qinzhai's descendants have almost no connection to China, except for their Chinese ancestry. Regarding his greatest wish in his later years, he hoped to return to his roots, even if he only returned to China once, but at this time, he was constantly scolded in China, and was even regarded as a shame by many people in the antique industry as a shame in the Chinese collecting world.
He once defended himself against the evaluation of the outside world: "Art has no borders, and instead of forcibly leaving Buddha statues in China to become tools of commodities and suffer theft and destruction, it is better to keep them properly in foreign museums as living cultural messengers." ”
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Lu Qinzhai could not accurately understand China's future development and what happened to cultural relics, so it seems somewhat inaccurate to say that he "lost cultural relics in order to save Chinese culture".
Whatever the reason, Lu Qinzhai's actions have undoubtedly dealt a serious blow to our country's wealth and culture. For example, the monument of Buddhist art and thought in the late period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which is now displayed in a corner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was sold by Lu Qinzhai to the oil magnate Rockefeller.
For another example, the Shang Dynasty bronze Fang Wei body, known as the pinnacle of Shang Dynasty bronzes, is also because of Lu Qinzhai, so that China ** experienced a lot of trouble, but fortunately, this cultural relic was later repurchased with a lot of money and returned to the motherland, avoiding the country's economic losses.
Despite this, Lu Qinzhai in his later years also tried to make some redemption for himself.
He has donated many top-level cultural relics, including the Bodhisattva picture, which was praised by Ma Weidu as "the real treasure of the Five Dynasties period", and the Warring States bronze "Heizi Pot" unearthed in Luoyang, Henan.
Although many people thought that his trade in cultural relics was a reasonable business practice, in fact, he was one of the sources of the loss of these national treasures, which made him deeply ashamed in his last letter.
However, it is thanks to him that many artifacts have been preserved to this day, giving us the opportunity to see them in their glory.
The balance in Lu Qinzhai's heart is the choice between interests and the nation, and his behavior has already told us the answer. In the business world, he is undoubtedly successful, but at the national level he has some regrets.
It is not that interests and patriotism cannot coexist, but they need to be weighed in time. Perhaps for businessmen like Lu Qinzhai, making money first and then loving the country is one way, but people who truly love the country always believe that the country is their best interest and their only interest.