There is a way is
"Shanghai looks at the heads, Beijing looks at the bricks"
If you come to Beijing to visit the scenery, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace must be indispensable, but if you want to say the most vicissitudes of the classic, it is estimated that it is the Yuanmingyuan.
Especially in recent days, there is a sensational big news, the gambling king Ho Hung Sun will be
HK$69.1 million
The bronze statue of the horse's head that was bought was donated to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and the bronze statue of the seven animal heads that have returned home was reunited in Beijing
"The Road of Return - Exhibition of Lost Cultural Relics returned to the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of New China"
This is certainly a milestone event in the return of cultural relics in the Yuanmingyuan.
Speaking of the Yuanmingyuan, which has long been burned into ruins, even if more than a hundred years have passed, most Chinese sons and daughters are still estimated to be in their hearts. Especially standing in front of the relics of the Western-style Building, the depression and sadness still strongly impact everyone's optic nerve.
So how was the former Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens destroyed? Could it be that the Manchu Qing Empire opened its doors and thieves and invited people in?
Of course not, in the Eight Mile Bridge, which is 8 miles away from Tongzhou, there has been a famous outbreak
Battle of Bali Bridge
It was during this battle that Emperor Xianfeng fled to Rehe, and the Anglo-French army entered Beijing and subsequently looted the Yuanmingyuan.
September 1860 (August of the lunar calendar), this month is more special,
More than 8,000 people
The british and French forces landed and occupied Beitang, and the troops pointed directly at the capital of the Qing Empire, the city of Beijing.
This time it was the "Iron-Blooded Monk King" who was facing the battle.
Monk Greenqin
, and he is
10,000 Mongol cavalry
，
More than 20,000 infantry armed with firearms
。
30,000 vs. 8,000, which looks like a sure-win battle.
However, the tactics of the "monk king" still stayed in the era of traditional riding and shooting, while the Anglo-French coalition army had long been repeatedly tempered by modern military commanders such as Napoleon.
Let's put it this way: one side is still stuck in the era of cold weapon warfare, while the other side has long entered the era of hot weapons. And this gap,
It has become a chasm that cannot be bridged between the two sides
Although the once brave Mongol cavalry was still fearless and courageous in this battle, in the face of the steel defense woven with hot weapons, the Mongol cavalry could no longer charge and capture the flag. Even against the Allied cavalry, the impact and explosive power of the Mongol cavalry were dwarfed.
The outcome of the battle is as obvious as the equipment gap:
The Manchu Mongol Army lost more than 1,200 men
The Anglo-French forces, on the other hand, suffered only 61 casualties
This battle also indicates that the decline of the Qing Dynasty is already the trend of the times.
After that, everyone knows it - on October 6 of the same year, the British and French troops broke into the Yuanmingyuan, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens"... The fire burned for three days and three nights, since the Qin and Han dynasties
More than 1.5 million pieces
The royal collection has since been lost and scattered.
Old Summer Palace
The Yuanmingyuan has since become engraved
Every Chinese indelible wound in his heart
Yuanmingyuan, born in 1709 AD in the 48th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, that year and month is the glorious era of the Qing Dynasty in full swing, sitting on 30% of the global GDP of the Qing Empire is not bad money, then what is the money for?
Make a garden!
The result is this creation
More than 150 years
Let's put it this way— on the eve of its being burned down, the Qing Empire was still transforming and upgrading it, and if there had been no fire, the Manchu Qing Empire's gardening business would have been very likely
"Can't stop at all!"
After 150 years of pouring force into the country, it can be said that the Qing Empire gave the best youth to the Yuanmingyuan. Especially in the Qianlong era, the old man ingeniously engaged in a European-style garden building that combined east and west, which is commonly known as "Western-style building".
This area is made up of Western missionaries
Lang Shining
、
Jiang Youren
Wang Zhicheng
and other design guidance, Chinese craftsmen build.
The essence of the Western-style building is the artificial fountain, which is sometimes called "water law"
。 It is characterized by a large number, a large momentum, and a wonderful idea.
Among them, especially the fountain group of Haiyan Hall has a special feature: its essence is
Bronze statue of the Zodiac
。 These twelve bronze statues spray water regularly according to the twelve hours, and in the era of no automatic control, there is no level of extraordinary cattle, and this technology is really not fun.
In addition, these animal heads are meticulously crafted from material selection to craftsmanship. The material used is
Quasi-pure copper with a purity of 98%.
The melting point of this material is as high as 1083 °C, and the process is also excellent.
In particular, the horse head mentioned at the beginning of this article -
Because the Qianlong Emperor belonged to horses
Therefore, the craftsmen naturally take special care of the horse's head: this horse head is not only realistic in shape, but also the details are meticulous, and every strand of horse mane is made to be delicate.
And there are no casting welding marks on the horse's head, yes
One-shot casting molding
, can be called the fine products of the lost-wax method of copper casting.
In short, the grass and trees, nails and rivets in this garden are very beautiful and careful, and it can be called a person who has never come after the ancients. But alas,
While we can build gardens, Europe is undergoing a vigorous first industrial revolution.
Unconsciously,
The Qing Empire has been thrown out of several positions
In the era of the weak and the strong, the result is that if you are backward, you will be beaten.
So unfortunately, there was a fire in the Yuanmingyuan.
The head of the beast in the bronze statue of the zodiac was also looted and exiled overseas during the catastrophe on October 6.
Since then, the so-called "water law" has no glory, only relics.
The beast head returns
Fast forward more than a century, and the heads of the beasts that have been displaced have appeared one after another at the beginning of this century, but their fates are different:
Some were collected as treasures (pig heads) by landlords, but some were lying in the bathroom as clothes racks (such as cow heads).
With the rise of the tide of cultural relics auctions in recent years, the head of the beast has also appeared in major auction houses:
At the auctions of Christie's Hong Kong and Sotheby's Hong Kong in late April 2000,
Bull head
Monkey head
and
Tiger head
A bronze statue appears.
In early September 2007, Sotheby's Announced that it would be auctioned under the name of "Eight-Nation Alliance - Relics of the Old Summer Palace"
Horse head
Bronze statue.
Although this kind of auction is a commercial act, it is clear that the descendants of the robber leaders are descendants
In the name of auction, a second robbery was carried out.
Therefore, the auction in 2000 caused indignation from all walks of life.
However, for the return of cultural relics, china Poly Group Corporation eventually came forward and took care of them separately
7.745 million Hong Kong dollars to win the bull's head
HK$8.185 million won the monkey head
15.44475 million Hong Kong dollars sold Tiger Head
Stanley Ho will be in 2003
Pig head
When the bronze statue was bought back from an American collector, the price was paid
HK$7 million
And 2007's
The auction, in the end, was won by the gambling king Ho Hung-sun, who did not lack money, before the auction was held
HK$69.1 million
Buy it and donate it to the country.
But intriguing, the initial price of these beast heads was not high: the most exquisitely crafted bronze statue of a horse's head in 1985,
It is priced at just $1500
From $15 million to $69 million,
The price of the beast's head soared nearly forty thousand times
This is probably one of the few superbies that can outperform house prices.
The descendants of the robber leader seem to have found the doorway of "knocking on the bamboo bar" - using the feelings of Chinese to continuously raise the price of the beast's head.
At the same time as the sky-high price is also hyping up our sense of shame.
For this kind of happy "slaughtering people" gameplay, some friends think that this
The return of the beast head involves national feelings
If you are more expensive, you have to buy it back.
But some people also believe that the looted things are also auctioned off to sell the stolen goods, which is clearly not cost-effective. As a result, this kind of rip-off behavior has been countered very resolutely:
The 2007 French auction publicly stated that it was about to be auctioned
Rats and rabbits
Two beast heads.
At this time, a lawyer named Liu Yang stood up, and he organized nearly a hundred lawyers to pursue the two beast heads together, but the result did not go as desired.
Obviously,
Reasoning with hooligans and calling grievances, the result can only feel more depressed.
However, the counterattack did not stop, the next spoiler is called Cai Mingchao, he took down the two beast heads at auction for 31.49 million euros, but he played a "rogue" -
Publicly stated that no payment would be made
The two boycotts led to the complete auction of the two animal heads, and then the French Pino family bought the rat head and the rabbit head themselves, and on April 26, 2013, in Beijing, announced that they would donate the rat head and the rabbit head to the Chinese side free of charge, becoming the two animal heads with the lowest cost of returning.
Although Cai Mingchao's boycott behavior is not in line with the spirit of modern contract, this final result also shows that
If you want to win the battle against the hooligans, sometimes you can only be more rogue than the hooligans.
The return of the beast head has been controversial
, this is a foreigner with the help of Chinese emotions to achieve huge profits, high prices to buy back,
It is equivalent to the West's second plunder of China
This time, the gambling king He Hongshen bought back the horse head donation, and some people said: The horse head is just an ancient faucet, not worth so much money, this is the most miserable time by foreigners.
It is also said that the horse's head reacted to the humiliating history of our country that was once slaughtered, and now that we are strong, we will take it back.
The value of historical significance is much greater than its monetary value
History must be respected, and the head of the beast should return, but perhaps the high-priced buyback of "not bad money",
Not the most reasonable way.
After all, it was one of the 12 beast heads
The four animal heads of snakes, sheep, chickens and dogs have not yet appeared
If each beast capital is hyped up for a sky-high price, the final beast head is likely to mark the price tag that we can't pay.
What we're looking forward to is their natural return—
How they snatched it back then, now it should naturally be sent back by their descendants.
With the rejuvenation of the nation, the strengthening of national strength, our world influence is also increasing day by day, just on November 25,
Turkey handed over two chinese lost artifacts to the Chinese side
, a Tang Dynasty cave temple mural and a pottery figurine buried with the late Northern Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty.
We firmly believe that this is just the beginning.
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