Of the nine night pearls of the Cixi Phoenix Crown, 4 have been handed over to the state, and the largest one has just begun to emerge
Empress Dowager Cixi, the most powerful person in the late Qing Dynasty, ruled China for nearly half a century. At the same time as her power was in full swing, Empress Dowager Cixi was also very extravagant in her life, showing no sympathy for the people's feelings, nor did she care about major state affairs, and in order to celebrate her birthday, she could embezzle military expenses. The Manchu Qing regime was in her hands, moving from darkness to darkness. Empress Dowager Cixi loved all kinds of gold and silver jewelry throughout her life, and also collected many rare treasures through the legs of her dogs, including the emerald watermelon mentioned by Haiyou earlier. And empress dowager Cixi's most precious thing is the phoenix crown on her head inlaid with 9 night pearls.
It is reported that the crown of Empress Dowager Cixi is extremely luxurious, with 9 golden phoenixes on it, and each phoenix contains a night pearl in its mouth. Each one is priceless, and the largest of them was worth 11 million taels of silver at the time, which translates to the current purchasing power worth at least 800 million yuan. The other 8 smaller night pearls are worth more than 600 million. So where are these 9 night pearls now? Four of them have been found, and the largest one is just beginning to emerge.
In 1900, when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded the city of Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi was frightened, and on the one hand, she strictly ordered the people to resist, and on the other hand, li Hongzhang was sent to negotiate with foreigners quickly, in a vain attempt to betray China's interests again in exchange for the survival of the Manchu Qing regime. In the panic, Cixi unwrapped and wrapped the 4 night pearls on her phoenix crown and sent them to Li Hongzhang in Beijing, preparing for Li Hongzhang to bribe eight foreign envoys with this rare treasure to help the negotiations succeed.
The person who sent the night pearl to Li Hongzhang was a palace girl surnamed Wang, who took advantage of the midnight to throw off many guards in the middle of the night and ran away with the night pearl on the way to transport the night pearl, and since then the four night pearls have been missing. In 1908, Empress Dowager Cixi died, and according to her last wishes, all the treasures she had collected during her lifetime were buried with her. There are both emerald watermelons and phoenix crowns. At the time of the burial, there were only 5 night pearls left on the phoenix crown, and the largest one was stuffed into Cixi's mouth.
The famous warlord Sun Dianying at that time. He was a very fortunate person, he took the wealth of Empress Dowager Cixi as his own, but also in order not to make his own behavior public, he distributed the wealth he obtained from the tomb of Empress Dowager Cixi to many known magnates at that time, at the same time, he gave the pearl contained in the mouth of Empress Dowager Cixi to the famous talented woman Song Meiling at that time, and then, Song Meiling went to the United States to live temporarily, and this night pearl also came to the United States with Song Meiling. This night pearl with a market value of 800 million came to settle in the United States.
What about the other luminous pearls? In 1964, these four night pearls were found in a worker's family living in a cypress forest in Xi'an. The family's surname is Wu, and the husband and wife are both workers in the chemical plant. Once, when cleaning and sanitation, the child took apart a dirty oily black pillow to prepare for cleaning, and found that there was a red cloth bag inside, and the red cloth was uncovered and a layer of yellow cloth was uncovered. A layer of oil paper, a layer of cotton paper inside the oil paper, wrapped in four dragon's eye large, crystal shining night pearls. They dedicated this priceless treasure to the country, and archaeologists identified it as the four night pearls on the phoenix crown of Empress Dowager Cixi, which had been lost for many years.
It turned out that Master Wu had adopted a helpless palace lady surnamed Grandma before liberation and treated her like a mother-in-law. Grandma Wang gave the little pillow when she was dying, and stopped breathing before she could explain the secret. Obviously, this grandmother was the palace maid who was next to Empress Dowager Cixi more than sixty years ago.
And the whereabouts of the biggest night pearl worth 800 million yuan in Cixi's mouth have been ascertained, and it turned out to be in the hands of this tycoon! It was bought at great expense by the American tycoon Rockefeller family, and by now, this pearl of night has become a priceless existence in the market, quietly staying in all the museums owned by the Rockefeller family.
The remaining 4 night pearls, I don't know where they are, it is estimated that they are hidden in the basement of a rich man.