In 1860, the British and French allies captured the Yuanmingyuan, and they indulged in wantonness in the garden, and even fought hard to seize the treasure, and finally fell into a temporary state of stagnation because there were too many treasures. According to the Times at the time, the total value of the property lost in the Yuanmingyuan was more than 6 million pounds. In fact, a large part of them are priceless treasures, and the value is already incalculable. However, in a Chinese shipwreck discovered at the end of the 20th century, a British man stole 1 million artifacts from the ship, and even smashed 650,000 of them for hype, which is really deplorable.
The Taixing merchant ship was one of the few giant Chinese sailing ships that set sail from the port of Xiamen in January 1822 and sailed for Indonesia. Because the ship was full of valuable cargo, in order to avoid being looted by pirates along the way, the "Taixing" took a detour from The Paracel. Unfortunately, when the ship reached the surface of the sea between Sumatra and Java, the hull unfortunately hit the reef and eventually sank to the bottom of the sea. According to records, of the more than 2,000 passengers and crew members on the Taixing, only 198 were rescued, and everyone else sank with the 1,000-ton sailboat.
After that, after another 177 years, the whereabouts of the "Taixing" were finally determined. In May 1999, the British shipwreck salvage expert "Mike Hatcher" led a salvage team and the "Restless" salvage ship to explore a 16th-century sunken Chinese cargo ship near Belvedere Reef, and inadvertently discovered the sunken "Taixing". As a treasure lover, Mike Hatcher collected many records of shipwrecks of Chinese merchant ships, and if he one day salvaged Chinese merchant ships, he would become rich overnight.
After the discovery of the "Taixing", Mike Hatcher immediately began to gather people to organize salvage operations, but the underwater salvage technology was not very mature at that time, so it was very difficult. During the three-month salvage, Mike Hatcher spent a total of $3 million, but he was not at all distressed, because the Chinese artifacts on the ship were enough for him to make a lot of money. In the end, Mike Hatcher finally succeeded in salvaging the Taixing and obtaining 1 million Chinese artifacts from it.
The 100 cultural relics are all ceramics produced by China's Dehua, which are printed with the complete "Moon Record" logo, which is a masterpiece. However, although the 1 million pieces of ceramics were salvaged by Mike Hatcher, he did not have legal salvage procedures, and all countries have complete regulations on the salvage of shipwrecks, without which private salvage cannot be allowed. Therefore, before Mike Hatcher could fully open all the cabins of the "Tai Hing", the Indonesian Navy began to want him.
Mike Hatcher saw that the situation was not good, and he could not take care of the two remaining cabins, and immediately fled. When Mr. Cheng Zipeng of China learned of this, he immediately rushed to the salvage site, intending to protect the cultural relics in the remaining two cabins. However, when he arrived there, he found that the local fishermen had already opened the two cabins, and the artifacts inside were missing. Afterwards, Mr. Cheng Zipeng traveled from place to place, bought back 36 pieces of Dehua porcelain, and donated them to the motherland.
According to him, Mike Hatcher did salvage 1 million pieces of porcelain, but for the sake of hype, and because he could not take too much when he escaped, he broke 650,000 of them, leaving only 356,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain. Afterwards, Mike Hatcher also made a profit of up to $5 million through the auction, and every time he talked about it, Mr. Cheng Zipeng was heartbroken.