In 2021, China's cultural and cultural circles ushered in a good news: the lord of the north wall of Cave 8 of the Tianlongshan Grottoes, which was plundered by the Japanese Kou and lost overseas for nearly a century, returned to the motherland!
On the evening of CCTV Spring Festival, the special program of "National Treasure Homecoming" believes that many people still remember it vividly. The narrator Zhang Guoli and hang kan, president of the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute, jointly announced the news of the return of the Buddha's head to everyone. On July 24 this year, the return ceremony of the Buddha's head was successfully held in Taiyuan City. The Head of the Heavenly Dragon Mountain Buddha Cave returned to its hometown of Tianlong Mountain in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. At this point, the fate of the Buddha's head and many dishes has finally drawn a rest.
Before and after the eighth cave of tianlongshan grottoes was stolen
(Source: Nanshan Offerings/Tianlongshan Grottoes)
What kind of value does the Tianlongshan Buddha Cave have, and what is the origin of this Buddha head that is coveted by the Japanese? If you want to explore this question, you have to go back to that era of war and chaos.
A Buddha's head, more than ten thousand gold
In the last years of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and the masses rose up together. Erzhu Rong, Yuwen Tai, Gao Huan and other tyrants have stepped onto the stage of history. After decades of war, the north entered the era of the parallel establishment of the Eastern and Western Wei Dynasties. Gao Huan, who was entrenched in Jinyang (present-day Taiyuan, Shanxi), became the great boss behind the Eastern Wei dynasty.
At that time, the capital of Eastern Wei was nominally in Yicheng, Henan, but in fact, Jinyang, where Gao Huan was located, was the administrative center of the state. Here, Gao Huan built a summer palace for himself, and also dug grottoes to enshrine the Buddha on Tianlong Mountain, southwest of Jinyang.
Tianlong Mountain Peak
(Photo: Shanxi Dashuang / Figureworm Creative)
Tianlongshan Buddha Grottoes are treasures of ancient Chinese Buddhist culture and sculpture and architectural craftsmanship. Under the excavation of the past generations, the scale of the grotto gradually expanded. By the last excavation and repair of the Ming Dynasty, Tianlong Mountain had a total of 25 Buddhist grottoes, most of which sat north to south, with different shapes, but arranged in an orderly manner.
In the grotto, there are more than 500 statues of large and small sizes, the large ones are several meters high, and the small ones are comparable, but they are all delicately carved and mature in craftsmanship, showing the social style of the time and reflecting the brilliant splendor of ancient Chinese sculpture art.
The statue of Tianlongshan Buddha Cave is not only exquisite in craftsmanship, cultural and historical value, but also its sculptural style is unique, known as "Tianlongshan style". Such treasures were gradually forgotten after the Ming and Qing dynasties, and only the monks and residents of nearby temples knew of the existence of such a group of Buddhist caves.
Before and after World War I, Japanese archaeologist Sekino Sadashi conducted a field survey of the Tianlongshan Grottoes and affirmed the value of the Buddha cave statues. Set off a burst of "Tianlong Mountain fever". Let this Buddhist holy place that has been dormant for many years return to people's eyes. However, this has caused this batch of national treasures to suffer disasters.
Except for Sekino Sadashi
Tokiwa Dading et al., who are well-known in the field of Chinese cave research
I have also visited the Tianlongshan Grottoes one after another
(The first left is Tokiwa Dading, pictured: "Historical Sites of the シナ Culture")
The expedition attracted Japanese antique dealer Seijiro Yamanaka, who brought people to smuggle cave relics and bribed the abbot Jingliang monk with heavy money, and many Buddha statues were betrothed.
A group photo of Shujiro Yamanaka with the monk Junryō
(Photo: Yamanaka Chamber of Commerce)
Regarding the looting, Yamanaka wrote: "Whenever I take a craftsman into a grotto and chisel a Buddha's head, the joy is greater than that of getting gold. ”
(Taijiro Outer Village, "Tenryusan Grottoes")
The theft of cultural relics in the Tianlongshan Buddhist Grottoes was difficult to stop for a while, and more than 150 Statues of the Buddha Grottoes, including the "Lord of the Buddha's Head on the North Wall of cave 8", were lost overseas.
(Theft scene)
Take mine, you have to return it!
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the state attached great importance to the Tianlongshan Buddhist Grottoes, and repaired and rebuilt a number of grottoes and Buddhist temples destroyed in modern times. Late last year, zhang Rong, an overseas Chinese collector, bought the head of the Tianlong Mountain Buddha that had been lost in Japan and chose to give it to the Chinese government.
According to the principle of original territory, on July 24, 2021, the return ceremony of the Buddha's head was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi, so that the cultural relics that had been lost overseas for nearly a century returned to their homeland. This Buddhist temple, which inherits the cultural vein of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and gathers the atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty, has finally begun to show its original appearance.
Inside the Jinci Museum,
Statue of tianlongshan grottoes protected by the masses
(Photo: 杔格)
The seated statue of Maitreya on the upper floor of Cave 9
It was too large to carry and survived
(Photo: dimamoroz Adobe Stock/Figureworm Creative)
The return of cultural relics was certainly not smooth sailing, as it was taken away by the Japanese in that tumultuous era and through Chinese unremitting efforts to bring the national treasure home. It also shows the determination of Chinese to guard the national treasure: if you take mine, you must return it to me!
In that turbulent era, such as the Tianlong Mountain Buddha Head lost overseas cultural relics, the just released movie "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" tells the way home of a "Wu Ze Wu Ze Ming Tang Jade Buddha Head" that has been wandering in Japan for many years.
At the beginning of the film, a large-scale world view comes into view of the audience.
The story takes place in the 1990s, when China's antiques industry has been silent for years. However, the identification of cultural relics and the tasting of color are still the needs of various collectors. In the market, fish and dragons are mixed, people are impetuous, and fakes are rampant.
This craft of identifying the authenticity of antiques is the secret of the five ancient families in China. These 5 ancient families are called the Five Pulses: the main wooden ware of the Qingmen, the main calligraphy and painting of the Red Gate, the bronze mingware of the Yellow Gate, the main porcelain of the Xuanmen, and the main golden stone jade ware of the White Gate. The five veins complement each other, but they are also responsible for different aspects, so as to control the entire antique industry, like a small river.
However, in the Chinese Ancient Society, only four of the five veins are seated, and the Xu family of the Baimen family has been shot by Xu Yicheng because he gave the jade Buddha head of wuze Lantern Mingtang to the Japanese, and can no longer find the descendants of the Xu family to inherit the seat of the White Gate.
Three generations of treasure guards crack the middle of the game
Wish, played by Lei Jiayin, is the last person in the world of the Baimen Xu family. Master the golden stone identification secret of the White Gate inheritance for thousands of years. In order to avoid the open and secret struggle in the ancient circle, he lived a life of incognito. But unexpectedly, fate still found the door.
Kido Kana, a descendant of the Japanese who stole the jade Buddha's head, named the return of the Buddha's head to the descendants of the Xu family. And this Buddha's head was already worth hundreds of millions of dollars at that time, and its preciousness can be imagined.
The return of the Buddha's head has attracted the attention of the wenbo and the ancient circles, and the benefits of one hundred million are enough to make people crazy. Around the struggle for the Buddha's head, many forces competed. Li Xian, Xin Zhilei, Ge You, Yong Mei, Aruna and other starring actors have entered the team and joined the treasure hunting team.
As a descendant of the Xu family, Wish was also targeted and became the center of the Storm Eye. The lonely wish has no choice, knowing that it is a game, and it is indispensable.
In the midst of this whirlpool, no one can really control the situation. Rao is the prince of the family family, the fierce and vicious ground snake, and the old fritters who have been mixed with antiques for many years, and it is also difficult to face this delicate and complex mechanism and mysterious puzzle. And can a wish with no background rely on the secrets kept by the three generations of the Xu family to successfully break the situation?
It is worth mentioning that the Buddha head in the movie is made by 3D printing technology, which took 7 months, and the shape is exquisite and lifelike. However, there is more than one Buddha's head, can the real national treasure go home safely?
The infinite reversals and routines in the film are amazing. The plot is meticulous, as if it were a deeply immersive escape room. As all the puzzles are solved step by step, a magnificent era, a chess game that has been laid out for generations, is finally revealed in front of the eyes of the world.
In the movie, we watch the open struggle between the forces of all sides, immersively feel the charm of the "antique jianghu", in addition to the movie, the reason why we can feel the "cool" and "burning" of the plot, in addition to the progression of the film plot, but also from our understanding of this period of history. The reason why these national treasures have been exiled overseas is that in modern times, the land has been lost and the mountains and rivers have been broken, resulting in the looting of our national treasures to other places.
Chinese has been working hard for decades to recover lost overseas cultural relics. After experiencing disappointments again and again, we witnessed the return of the zodiac rabbit and rat in the Yuanmingyuan, the return of 796 pieces (sets) of national treasures and other national treasures in Italy, which is the result of the silent efforts of countless Chinese people, and it also shows the improvement of our country's comprehensive national strength.
The return of national treasures is equivalent to declaring to the world that we are getting farther and farther away from that humiliating history, and China has successfully staged a "counterattack script" with its own development.