In our country, there are two kinds of people who are deeply hated by the people, one is a person who betrays national security, commonly known as a "traitor"; the other is a person who sells state cultural relics, commonly known as a "traitor".
Some people may hate traitors more than traitors. Because they are stealing the cultural foundation of the motherland and destroying the cultural beliefs of the nation. But there is such a "traitor" who not only made a fortune by cultural relics, but also has an unrequited love affair with his mother-in-law. It is reasonable to say that such a person is simply extremely evil, but scholars in our country have mixed praise and criticism of him.
In addition to the world-famous Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral in France today, there is also a famous Red House in Paris.
Surprisingly, the shape of this Red House in Paris is typical of Chinese style architecture. The exquisite murals and classical furniture inside make people have a feeling of traveling to the ancient times of our country in an instant. But how can Paris have such a very Classical Chinese style building?
The former owner of the Red Chamber in Paris was named Lu Qinzhai, and he did not build such a building to promote Chinese culture to foreign countries, on the contrary, he was selling cultural relics of the motherland here and making black money from cultural relics.
In 1880, Lu Qinzhai was born into an ordinary family in Lujiadu, Huzhou, Zhejiang, but unfortunately his father died at an early age.
In an era when feudal ideas were still entrenched, the death of a father meant that a family had lost its source of income. Looking at her son who was waiting to be fed, her mother sent Lu Qinzhai to a distant cousin's house for foster care.
But the cousin also has his own children at home, so Lu Qinzhai has become the extra person in the family. The days under the fence will eventually be sneered at, but in order to keep himself alive, the young Lu Qinzhai can only endure in silence.
The cousin was really unaccustomed to Lu Qinzhai eating and drinking at home, so he sent him to a large family in Nanxun, Huzhou, to work as a servant. However, the cousin did not expect that it was this practice that made Lu Qinzhai fly yellow and Tengda later.
The young master of this large family was none other than Zhang Jingjiang, one of the four elders of the Kuomintang. Looking at the rich and noble Zhang family, Lu Qinzhai secretly swore in his heart that he would one day be so developed.
After having this idea, Lu Qinzhai worked harder and harder, just to get Zhang Jingjiang's appreciation. Kung Fu pays off, and Zhang Jingjiang gradually notices this hard-working and shrewd young man.
Lu Qinzhai's fate was also rewritten at this moment.
Zhang Jingjiang
At this time, Zhang Jingjiang was appointed as the commercial adviser of the Qing government in France, and in the chaotic era of the late Qing Dynasty, who was willing to sincerely do things for the Qing government that was about to die? Zhang Jingjiang also has his own little calculation.
Ostensibly he was an aide to the Qing government, but secretly he opened a shop selling cultural relics abroad and donated the money from the sale of those cultural relics to Sun Yat-sen to support the Xinhai Revolution.
At this time, Zhang Jingjiang's antique shop in France was not manned enough, so he set his sights on Lu Qinzhai, who was clever. In this way, Lu Qinzhai came to France and took care of the antique shop business. However, he had just come to France, and he was stunned for a moment in front of a room full of foreigners.
The language barrier made it impossible for him to communicate with these foreigners, and he knew nothing about playing with them. To this end, Lu Qinzhai desperately learned French and antique knowledge, and his purpose was very clear, that is, to further be valued by Zhang Jingjiang, so that he could walk in peace.
Just like that, a few years have passed, and the young man who didn't know anything had been promoted by Zhang Jingjiang to the manager of a store at this time. However, Zhang Jingjiang did not expect that he actually had a white-eyed wolf.
Years of experience have made Lu Qinzhai see the hope of getting rich from these cultural relics, and now he just needs a chance, a chance to open his own independent shop.
Soon this opportunity came with the sound of domestic artillery.
On October 10, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising fired the first shots to overthrow feudal rule. The country was also mired in civil unrest. Zhang Jingjiang, who was a member of the Kuomintang, naturally needed to return to China to help Sun Yat-sen, and Lu Qinzhai said that he would also return to China to contribute to the revolution. Zhang Jingjiang didn't think much of it, so he took Lu Qinzhai back to China.
Who knows, as soon as Lu Qinzhai returned, he immediately submitted his resignation to Zhang Jingjiang. It turned out that he planned to open another antique shop to continue selling cultural relics, so the Lu Wu Antique Company was established.
Because of her previous experience in antique shops, Lu Qinzhai is more comfortable running her own antique shop. For a time, his business also became bigger and bigger. And the main reason for this is because of the national disaster at that time.
Most of the cultural relics in Lu Qinzhai's shop were provided by the declining nobles of the country. After the Xinhai Revolution, these nobles no longer had the noble status of the past, and in order to eat together, they could only sell all the antiques collected by the family at a low price. And Lu Qinzhai is one of the beneficiaries.
No matter how bad the price of cultural relics sold at a low price is, it is also a real guy who these princes and nobles used their connections and power to obtain, and no one wants domestic wars, and it is different to put them abroad.
So Lu Qinzhai dragged domestic cultural relics to antique shops abroad for high-priced sales, and in the face of these cultural treasures, foreign collectors were willing to buy them with huge sums of money. Lu Qinzhai also made a lot of money in such a series of transactions.
It is just that such a buying and selling behavior is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the historical research in the back of our country. According to relevant personnel now, half of the cultural relics in China at that time were exported abroad by such a way of buying and selling, and there are very few cultural relics that can be returned now.
In this way, Lu Qinzhai became famous in foreign countries for selling cultural relics. He built the money he earned in Paris a red chamber with a very classical Chinese charm, which is the aforementioned Red Chamber in Paris. Of course, he built such high-rise buildings to make it easier to sell cultural relics to foreigners.
At this time, Lu Qinzhai was also more than thirty years old, and the busyness of these years had long forgotten the marriage event. But on the day he actually got married, his friends were surprised to find that he had entered middle age and had married a 15-year-old girl.
What is even more incredible is that Lu Qinzhai married this little girl in order to be able to have an affair with the little girl's mother.
It turned out that as early as when the shopkeeper was in charge, Lu Qinzhai met Olga, who opened a hat shop in the local area. This Olga, like Lu Qinzhai, was sent to help others from an early age. But as Olga grew older, she was favored by the man because of her youth and beauty, and gave birth to a child for him. But the man did not want to give her a name, only let her be his lover.
Olga's experience made Lu Qinzhai very sympathetic, and the relationship between the two became closer and closer in their exchanges with each other. Finally, the two fell in love.
Lu Qinzhai told Olga more than once that he wanted to marry her. But they were all pushed off by Olga, because At that time, Lu Qinzhai was just an antique shop keeper, and the gap between him and the man was obvious. Although she loved Lu Qinzhai in her heart, she was not willing to suffer with him.
So the relationship between the two was so unclear, and after Lu Qinzhai developed, Olga started his idea again.
It's just that olga, who is already 36 years old, does not want to give up the previous host because of Lu Qinzhai, nor does she want to leave the developed Lu Qinzhai. She wanted to have both fish and bear paws, and looked at her 15-year-old daughter Mary and had a bold idea.
Yes, she wanted to marry her daughter to Lu Qinzhai and become Lu Qinzhai's titular mother-in-law.
In this way, she can get the wealth of the man and the wealth of Lu Qinzhai. It was only bitter that this 15-year-old girl, before she even figured out what she liked, was tricked by her mother into marrying someone who was almost 20 years older than herself.
After marriage, Mary bore four daughters for Lu Qinzhai, and even this did not prevent her husband from having an affair with her mother.
Olga became more and more unscrupulous after her daughter Mary married Lu Qinzhai. She would break into the "son-in-law' house without hesitation and speak softly to the "son-in-law". Looking at her mother's behavior, the cowardly Mary could only endure silently in her heart.
As the antique business becomes more and more prosperous, Lu Qinzhai also focuses on various series of cultural relics. Whether it is porcelain or Buddha statues, under his introduction, they will always be snatched up, and domestic cultural relics are also facing a catastrophe.
Among them, among the bluestone reliefs of Emperor Taizong of Tang's Zhaoling Tomb, the most research-worthy "Salu Purple" and "Fist Hair" were also exiled overseas through his hands. With such cultural relics, Lu Qinzhai also seems to have fulfilled his youthful wishes: his family is rich and has status.
Such a "traitor" is seen by people as a completely bad person, and such a person is not exaggerated to die a thousand times, but his next actions make people unable to hate.
In 1937, after the Lugou Bridge Incident, a full-scale war of resistance broke out, and Lu Qinzhai, who was abroad, heard that the motherland was suffering from this disaster, so he donated his money to the motherland for anti-Japanese resistance. He himself is involved in the relief of refugees in the country.
It can be said that at that time, domestic refugees could receive timely assistance, and Lu Qinzhai played an indispensable role in it. Not only that, he also acted as an intermediary in Sino-US relations at that time, taking the initiative to spend money to organize some activities conducive to the development of Sino-US relations.
As for the Communists at home, he did not target them as the Kuomintang did at that time, but actively supported the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists in establishing a united front. And when he was abroad, he also subscribed to the publications of the Chinese Communist Party.
From this point of view, Lu Qinzhai seems to be different from those "traitors", he will work with those patriots to help the motherland that was in danger at that time, and he will not hesitate to dedicate his strength when the motherland needs it.
Such patriotic behavior can't help but contradict the previous traitorous behavior, and lu Qinzhai has also been controversial in the world for many years.
Let's say that he is patriotic, he sells the cultural relics of the motherland for his own selfish interests. Saying that he is a traitor, he has reached out to help in the time of the motherland's crisis, as if neither is and it is as if it are both.
Although people now evaluate Lu Qinzhai in two, at that time, Lu Qinzhai's wind evaluation has always been bad. Not only because of his act of selling cultural relics, but also because of his unrequited love with Olga.
After the founding of New China in 1949, the protection of cultural relics was also more stringent. This was a blow to Lu Qinzhai because he could no longer sell cultural relics to foreign countries as unscrupulously as before. After making the last transaction, Lu Qinzhai also officially withdrew from the cultural relics trade.
After washing his hands in the golden basin, Lu Qinzhai, who had entered the old age, found a good excuse to justify his name.
He responded in the media at the time that he had sold cultural relics to foreign countries, in fact, he was protecting cultural relics. Domestic wars will eventually turn these cultural relics into ashes, and the relatively safe environment abroad will make these cultural relics retained.
Obviously, this kind of rhetoric does not convince the people, and it is understandable that you want to protect cultural relics, but why did you buy it? And all sold to foreigners? And at that time, Lu Qinzhai's main sales place was in France, but was France in World War I and World War II really more peaceful than China? Is he protecting cultural relics or is he enriching himself?
In his later years, Lu Qinzhai did not return to China, and in 1957, Lu Qinzhai died in Switzerland, and his death also made people start to look at what he did again.
With the gradual deepening of research, people learned that he sold national treasures that were not very glamorous, but if he wanted to sell his own things well, Lu Qinzhai had to open up the popularity of antiques. And these are indispensable to the publicity of cultural relics exhibitions and research associations, and the opening of activities has also opened up the understanding and respect of Westerners for Chinese culture to a certain extent. And the collection and maintenance of cultural relics requires a lot of money and energy.
In his later years, Lu Qinzhai also began to atone for his deeds, and the cultural relics exhibition room of Tsinghua University today is placed with the Warring States bronze "Heir Pot" donated by him.
Today, more than a decade later, people's evaluation of him is no longer one-sided, but polarized.
From the perspective of cultural relics, he did protect these cultural relics to a certain extent. From the perspective of the country, he is indeed a patriot, taking the initiative to donate money to the country and help refugees in times of war.
But from the perspective of national culture, he was a thief who stole precious cultural legacies.
In the end, it can only be said that Lu Qinzhai is a coexistence of merit and fault, and he may not be a bad person who has committed the most heinous sins, but he is also definitely not a good person. Everything is caused by desire, and now that China's laws on the protection of cultural relics are becoming more and more mature, I believe that there will be no more such incidents of selling cultural relics. And those cultural relics that have been left out will definitely return to the embrace of the motherland!