Hao Di
On November 30, 2001, the cultural relics excavation site of Fuxing Road construction site in Hongqiao District, Tianjin. At this time, more than a dozen experts were in trouble around a piece of iron excavated in the pit in front of them.
Because of its age and very peculiar appearance, no one can be sure of what period this object is, or even what it is.
"This thing is an iron coin from the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, when the casting process was too rough to be used, so it was transported to Tianjin as a raw material for iron casting." In the crowd of onlookers, a childish speech caught the attention of the experts.
After the guidance of the teenager, the experts consulted the historical data for repeated comparisons, and indeed confirmed the teenager's statement.
Teenage treasure hunter genius
The teenager who made more than a dozen experts lament his poisonous eyes was named Hao Di. Hao Di was born on March 26, 1985, to a middle-class family.
His father was a businessman who worked wholesale for retail goods, and his mother was a doctor at a public hospital in Tianjin.
Growing up in such a family environment, Hao Di received a good education and growth.
Hao Di is a very introverted person, he is not good at words, often sitting and reading books by himself.
However, his intelligence level was higher than that of his peers, and when his father was calculating at home, he was often able to report the correct addition and subtraction results at the same time as the calculator.
After discovering his son's talent in this area, Hao Di's father originally wanted to focus on cultivating him and enrolled him in several training classes.
But because he didn't like to communicate with people himself, all of these plans failed.
For Hao Di, there seems to be nothing in this world that can arouse his interest, usually his hobby is only to sit on the sofa and read a book.
One day in 1990, my father took 5-year-old Hao Di to the market to buy something.
In the early years of the market, everything was sold, and when passing by an inconspicuous cultural relics stall, the young Hao Di's eyes lit up and he squatted in front of the cultural relics stall and began to look.
The small stalls are lined with a variety of rare objects, which may be imitations of old objects, but there may also be artifacts that are really old.
Hao Di's interest in cultural relics was suddenly stimulated, and he could not leave no matter how his father dragged him. In desperation, his father could only entrust him to the care of the cultural relics stall owner, and he himself went to the market to buy things first.
By the time my father returned, it was two hours later, but according to the words of the owner of the relics stall:
"Hao Di was lying there almost motionless, playing with these relics for two hours, and I had never seen such a patient child."
In Hao Di's eyes, he seems to be able to talk to cultural relics and see through the stories of these objects.
Since then, his love and dedication to cultural relics has begun to become uncontrollable.
However, because he was young, his father did not want him to touch these things, but his grandfather often took him to the antique market.
Since then, Hao Di has often dragged his grandfather to the antique market, staying all day.
He has a frequent cultural relics shop, and the owner will even prepare a stool for him to use for his feet, so that Hao Di can stand on it and watch the artifacts on the counter.
At first, everyone didn't believe that a 6-year-old child would come to an antique shop to buy anything, but he was a child who was curious about this aspect.
In fact, however, Hao Di has begun to collect and buy ancient coins, and this store he frequents is his "supplier".
Although he likes gentleness, the money he buys for cultural relics is saved from his usual pocket money. From the time Hao Di went to elementary school, his parents began to give him pocket money to buy his own breakfast and lunch.
However, he secretly saved the money and kept it to buy his favorite antiques.
At the age of 7, he even spent a hundred yuan in an antique shop to buy an antique bronze sword. However, his small movements were quickly caught by his father.
Because of the long-term lack of breakfast and lunch, Hao Di's physical condition became worse and worse, and he often withered during the day at school. The school teacher approached his father to find out what was going on, and his father immediately thought of his obsession with antiques.
Under Hao Di's bed, my father found a small cloth bag filled with various ancient coins and fragments of some cultural relics.
These things, which look like toys in the eyes of ordinary people, are regarded as treasures by Hao Di.
Looking at his son who was so obsessed with antiques, his father's heart also softened, and he began to fully support Hao Di in his antique collection.
With the support of her parents, Hao Di began to immerse herself in the joy of collecting antiques. Every night after dinner, he would take the antiques he bought and flip through the books to find relevant information.
Gradually, he began to acquire more and more knowledge of history and antiques.
Once, Hao Di's parents returned home late and found only a faint light in his room.
Father pushed the door in and found him crouching on the ground next to a small oil lamp smirking—it turned out that he was feeling the life of ordinary people who lit oil lamps at night hundreds of years ago.
Hao Di also found that this small oil lamp could burn for exactly an hour when it was full. Using oil lamps to keep time, the wisdom of the ancients is really infinite.
Fame rises
When Hao Di was eight years old, he had already made some achievements in identifying ancient coins.
Some other people could not see the ancient coins of the doorway, and he could accurately say the origin of these coins and the characteristics of the craftsmanship of their production.
It is precisely because of these things that Hao Di encountered the biggest lucky event of his life on a trip to the antique market.
As Hao Di passed by a construction site, he noticed that the workers were digging something out of the ground. Because he especially likes antiques buried in the ground, he is driven by curiosity to find out.
This look made his eyes widen.
The workers dug out a lot of ancient coins from the construction site, but because they were buried for a long time, most of them were not proud, and the workers said that they would sell them as scrap iron.
But Hao Di in the crowd knew that the "scrap iron" that could fill four sacks in front of him was a real ancient coin from hundreds of years ago.
Hao Di made a clever move, pretending to be particularly interested in these things and planning to pay for them.
When the workers saw that the child's bid was higher than that of the one who collected the scrap iron, they thought that the child of a rich family was a good liar, so they quickly sold four sacks of ancient coins to Hao Di for dozens of yuan, and helped him deliver them to the door of his home.
After returning home, Hao Di took a large basin of water at home and found a brush to carefully wash each ancient coin.
According to his preliminary judgment, the history of these coins dates back to at least the Ming Dynasty. He packed the coins in batches and took them to the antique market he was familiar with to sell.
It is said that this humble pile of "scrap iron" made Hao Di earn a huge amount of 170,000 yuan, which was definitely not a small amount in 1993.
"There was a teenager who specialized in ancient Coins of the Ming Dynasty in the Tianjin Antique Market" After the news spread, many big names in the antique industry came to find out.
However, under their appraisal, it was unanimously believed that the coins in Hao Di's hands were genuine.
"A child of 8 years old, even if he did find these coins, how did he identify them?"
With such doubts, Wang Peng, a famous collector in Tianjin, came to the antique market and planned to try Hao Di's skills.
Wang Peng took out 300 ancient coins in full view of everyone and asked Hao Di to help identify them. In full view of everyone, Hao Di found 7 fakes in only half an hour.
Afterwards, Wang Peng said that these 7 fakes were deliberately put in to test Hao Di's eyesight.
As soon as this matter came out, Tianjin's antique collection circle was suddenly in an uproar. An 8-year-old antique identification prodigy was born.
Someone described Hao Di this way: "He is like an old man who has 5,000 years of experience just born." In his heart, he was born with a sense of mission for China's ancient cultural relics.
Hao Di's father said: "Once I took Hao Di to visit the Luoyang Museum, and when he called out his son's name, he attracted the attention of several researchers next to him. ”
"You are Hao Di's father?" A researcher asked. "It's me, what's the matter with you?" Father asked incomprehensibly.
"I am the deputy director of this museum, and your son is now very famous, please be sure to cultivate him well." An old man walked up enthusiastically, shook Hao Di's father's hand and said.
At this time, Hao Di was still looking at the cultural relics on display, while pointing out the errors in the interpretation of the cultural relics, such as "which cultural relics were written in the wrong year", or "which cultural relics were not accurately described." ”
The deputy curator listened to the side notes and asked him questions from time to time.
Later, someone told Hao Di's father that the deputy curator was Mr. Puzuo, a famous cultural relics appraisal expert and cousin of the last emperor Puyi.
Mr. Puzo
By the age of 11, Hao Di had begun to independently conduct cultural relics identification.
Under the condition of ensuring his normal study, he taught himself books such as "Twenty-Five Histories" and "Ancient Chinese Coins", and people often visited him to ask him to identify cultural relics.
Someone asked him, "How did you start identifying artifacts at a young age?" ”
Hao Di said: "Ancient cultural relics have their own unique charm, and the older the objects, the more they exude a unique charm. To me, they are as clear as heaven and earth, and I can feel the breath that these objects have emitted after thousands of years. ”
When Hao Di was 12 years old, he claimed to have solved the "Platinum Sanpin" and "Fish Intestine Sword" that "plagued the Chinese antique industry for thousands of years" with the research of ancient coins, and published many papers on this topic.
Since then, Hao Di has established his position in China's cultural relics industry.
Someone said: "There are 10 people in the country who can discuss the academic issue of ancient coins on the same level as Hao Di." ”
With such achievements, Hao Di was invited to join the Chinese Society of Culture and Science at the age of 13 and became the youngest member of it.
Although he is still young, his covetousness is unusually mature, like a weathered heritage scientist.
At the age of 15, Hao Di claimed to have become a guest expert or appraisal consultant for dozens of museums around the world.
From Tianjin to the northwest, from Beijing to Jiangnan, he has always been admired as a master, because he has never looked at it, and every cultural relic is quite carefully identified.
By the age of 16, Hao Di claimed to have been the designated appraiser for many domestic and foreign cultural relics buyers.
More and more people are proud to invite Hao Di to identify cultural relics, in their eyes, Hao Di's conclusion can determine the sale and purchase of tens of millions of yuan of cultural relics, and Hao Di's remuneration is 10% of the transaction price.
At a young age, Hao Di relied on his fame in previous years, using treasure hunting and acquiring collections to make hundreds of millions of yuan, and even his father became his agent.
Hao Di's collection also slowly grew with the improvement of his level of identification. From jade to pottery, from armor to bronze mirrors, Hao Di's collection is growing.
Hao Di said: "At his peak, the number of bronze mirrors in his personal collection reached one-third of the world's total extant. ”
Is it really a wise eye or a vain name
Hao Di's collection claims to have hundreds of thousands of pieces, more than 10,000 varieties.
Hao Di's father once said that an antique collector from Japan offered 130 million yuan to buy it after seeing his collection, but he politely refused.
However, after 2009, Hao Di's name began to gradually disappear from the public's vision.
Some people say that Hao Di has completely become a businessman after making money, and he no longer has the previous profession in appraisal.
Some people also say that Hao Di's story is completely made up, because a lot of information comes only from the Internet, without any formal reports.
From the current point of view, some of Hao Di's achievements may be exaggerated.
For example, becoming a "visiting professor at Peking University" was denied by the dean of the School of Resources and Cultural Relics of Peking University.
Mr. Ma Weidu, a well-known collector in China, also said in an interview: "I have never heard of this so-called 'first chinese archaeology'. ”
Ma Weidu
Wei Xiaomin, the first reporter of Tianjin's Daily News, who interviewed Hao Di, also said publicly:
"Hao Di is not as godlike as everyone says, he is now a businessman, his father just knows how to use his reputation to make money, he is not a god."
In 2014, according to the in-depth visits of some reporters, it was found that Hao Di had boasted that the two papers "written to solve the 2000 mysteries of the archaeological community, "Exploration after the Discovery of the Fish Intestine Sword" and "Preliminary Exploration of The Thorn Coin" did not have any published information.
Wang Zongfa
It cannot be found in core journals and ordinary search engines, and can be confirmed to be privately fabricated.
In the same year, Wang Zongfa, an expert in ancient numismatics and a director of the Tianjin Numismatic Society, exposed Hao Di.
In the early years, some of Hao Di's remarks about the field of ancient coins were "stolen from" in his published articles, and he himself did not have any independent opinions at all.
Some reports also pointed out that Hao Di was able to go to the Luoyang Museum to pick out the mistakes of cultural relics when he was only seven or eight years old, which was purely a fabrication.
Cultural relics appraisal is a technical work, without years of precipitation, a seven- or eight-year-old child cannot master such a comprehensive knowledge of cultural relics.
Now Hao Di should be nearly 40 years old, whether he is a genius or an ordinary person who loves to collect, he is only an over-exaggerated member, and this "genius myth" in the archaeological community has been shattered.
Resources
[1] China News Network, July 30, 2014, "Archaeological Prodigy Seven or Eight Years Old Picks Mistakes for Cultural Relics of the Forbidden City Ma Weidu: Deviating from Common Sense"
[2] Shenzhen Special Economic Zone News, July 29, 2014, "Experts Debunk 'Archaeological Prodigy': Seven or Eight Years Old Pick Mistakes in the Cultural Relics of the Forbidden City"