He is an extremely complex person, he directly led to the loss of nearly half of China's cultural relics overseas, it is difficult to find, he single-handedly hit the Chinese archaeological community, can be called a traitor, he married the beautiful French girl Marie, but at the same time entangled with his mother-in-law...
Lu Qinzhai, a poor man who changed his life against the sky, a typical combination of contradictions, the complexity of human nature is vividly reflected in his body.
The birth of a "man on man"
In 1880, a family in Lujiadu, a small mountain village in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, welcomed a son, and his parents named him Lu Huanwen. When Lu Huanwen was very young, his father was infected with opium under the torrent of the times.
In order to support his own drug addiction, his father fell into the whirlpool of gambling, and the originally poor Lu family was even more difficult to maintain, relying on Lu Mu alone to support herself in the wind and rain.
When Lu Huanwen was 10 years old, his mother finally couldn't stand it, chose to commit suicide, without his mother's support, his father, who had been invaded by opium, also died immediately, and Lu Huanwen became an orphan child.
Fortunately, his uncle took him in, but his uncle's family was also surrounded by disciples, Lu Huanwen was young and lost, sent to the fence, lived like a thin ice, less than 15 years old to go out to find a livelihood to support himself.
Lu Huanwen entered the Zhang family of the Nanxun giant Jia at that time and worked as a helper in the kitchen. The Zhang family made a fortune in the silk business, Zhong Mingding ate food, and the silver spent on a meal was jaw-dropping.
This made Lu Huanwen, who came from a poor background, deeply feel the difference in the world, and he was not willing to endure this difference, and he worked hard to make a living.
At a young age, he cultivated a heart of seven tricks, and finally was favored by Zhang Jingjiang, the young master of the Zhang family, and luckily walked out of the gang room and became Zhang Jingjiang's personal retinue.
Zhang Jingjiang
Zhang Jingjiang was crippled due to illness, but he was a down-to-earth gentleman, he was an official of the Qing court, but he was dismissive of the Qing government, he knew that the corrupt Qing court could not save the country, so he had been secretly friends with revolutionaries.
As Zhang Jingjiang's attendant, Lu Huanwen was naturally influenced by Zhang Jingjiang, and although he hated the Qing government, he loved the country.
Not only that, Zhang Jingjiang, who has a cheerful personality, will also teach Lu Huanwen to recognize some simple words and learn to make some simple books, and Lu Huanwen has gained some skills in Zhang Jingjiang.
In 1902, Zhang Jingjiang was appointed Counsellor of the First Class and was ordered to France. Before leaving, Zhang Jingjiang considered and finally chose to take away Lu Huanwen, who was diligent and clever.
The inflection point of fate came, and Lu Huanwen, a 22-year-old rural youth, followed Zhang Jingjiang across the ocean and went to the European continent to start his own complex and contradictory life.
During his stay in France, Zhang Jingjiang became acquainted with Sun Yat-sen and was impressed by Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary ideas.
He took aim at the gap in the French market and opened a tongyun trading house, selling antique calligraphy and paintings to earn money to support the revolution, and Lu Huanwen was arranged by Zhang Jingjiang to work as an apprentice in the tongyun trading house.
A young man from a poor background in feudal society, who has lived for more than 20 years and has never seen real antiques, is suddenly stuffed into an antique shop, and the work is not generally difficult.
Lu Huanwen, who vowed to get ahead, was strong in his tenacious heart, and he didn't know anything about antique calligraphy and painting, so he learned from scratch.
Every day, he followed behind the master of the business house to know the antiques little by little, little by little familiar with the various businesses of antiques, in order to identify the value of the antiques, he almost cut the master's expression frame by frame.
The customers of the trading house are all French, in order to communicate with customers, Lu Huanwen had to start learning French and English, no one systematically taught, his language is a little bit from daily life, really self-taught.
Over the past few years, Lu Huanwen is proficient in French and English, slang is more authentic than the locals, for antiques, the vision is also very poisonous, and the antiques handled by him are very expensive.
Obviously, Lu Huanwen can already stand alone and run a trading house, even if it is not a tongyun trading house.
In 1907, Zhang Jingjiang decided to further support Sun Yat-sen in his revolution, and he closed the Tongyun Trading House and prepared to return to China to fight with Sun Yat-sen.
Lu Huanwen had a different choice at this time, he was not the poor servant who could only rely on Zhang Jingjiang to survive 5 years ago, he had his own ability, his own connections, and his own wealth.
Most importantly, his heart no longer allowed him to continue to be a follower, and the prosperous society corroded him and created him.
Zhang Jingjiang respected Lu Huanwen's choice, and the master-servant relationship in the past ten years has been regarded as a thousand and one.
Lu Huanwen thanked the young master who had provided him with a high platform so that he could see a different world, and he would not forget the young master's kindness, but he also had to grow up from this mountain.
The "Redemption" of a Smuggler of Antiquities
Lu Huanwen, who got rid of his entourage identity, gave himself a rather antique name: Lu Qinzhai to celebrate his "new life", relying on the contacts accumulated in the past, Lu Qinzhai quickly opened his own antique shop - Lu Wu Antique Company.
At the same time as the establishment of the Lu Wu Antique Company, the Qing government fell, the great powers were insatiably greedy, the antique dealers were countless, and most of the priceless treasures were exiled abroad.
Lu Qinzhai relied on the poisonous and spicy eyes he had cultivated over the years to identify and acquire these priceless treasures everywhere.
Selling it to Europeans at a high price not only made a lot of money, but also became a famous Chinese antiques appraiser in the eyes of Europeans.
Every time Lu Qinzhai returned from smuggling from China, many European customers lined up in front of his house, and the things he brought back were often snatched up. How ironic it is that the crystallization of an ancient civilization is bought and sold like a dish in a wet market.
At this time, most of the Europeans' love for Chinese cultural relics only stayed on decorative porcelain, as if it were Dong Shi Gong, and it was only a good look at the home, and it did not understand its true cultural and artistic connotations.
They borrowed a five-thousand-year-old artifact to show their upbringing, but they were completely unaware of the background behind these cultural relics.
The emergence of Lu Qinzhai broke this phenomenon, and while Lu Qinzhai's antique business grew, Chinese tomb culture and art and Buddhist culture and art set off a boom among European antique lovers.
Europeans have set their sights on the cultural sense of antiques, forming a certain cultural output.
However, this kind of cultural output is not Lu Qinzhai's original intention, his original intention is actually to obtain benefits, but the two-sided nature of this behavior itself has caused this cultural output.
And the price paid for this cultural export is extremely heavy - the Six Horses of Zhaoling are six bluestone reliefs placed on the two sides of the altar of Emperor Taizong of Tang Taizong' Zhaoling.
Painted by Yan Liben Yan Lide and carved by a collection of Datang craftsmen, it is rare in the world and is a treasure that can see the style of Datang in the world today.
And it was Lu Qinzhai who secretly sold the "Salu Zi" and "Fist Hair" in the Zhaoling Liujun to the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States at a high price, resulting in the separation of the Six Juns, and the Chinese side repeatedly begged for it, but did not succeed in retrieving the "Salu Zi" and "Fist Hair".
If it were not for the Chinese side's obstruction, the other four horses of the Zhaoling Six Jun would not have been able to live in another country.
In addition to the "Salu Purple" and "Fist Hair", other lost cultural relics are innumerable, and since 1915, Lu Qinzhai has focused on the American antique market.
He sold cultural relics to the United States for thirty years, making huge profits every year, and the dividends of his company's minority shareholders were worth a year's sales of an ordinary antique shop.
According to statistics: "Lu Qinzhai personally held two auctions in New York, selling more than 2,800 Pieces of Chinese cultural relics. At an exhibition in Paris, he sold more than 3,000 pieces of bronze, sculpture and jade. ”
This is a very frightening number, just two auctions, the number of cultural relics is close to 6,000 - Lu Qinzhai, who is difficult to turn back in the capital, has torn apart a deep crack in the archaeology and cultural relics circles of the motherland.
Those cultural relics that represent China's profound heritage stay in the hands of foreigners and are used as tools of vanity, which is time-consuming and laborious for the Chinese side, but it is difficult to recover.
The difficulty of archaeology has thus been greatly increased, causing immeasurable losses, which can be said to be a heavy blow and difficult to heal, but Lu Qinzhai's behavior cannot be simply judged as a traitor.
Lu Qinzhai left Zhang Jingjiang, but the influence that Zhang Jingjiang brought to Lu Qinzhai was far-reaching, and after Lu Wu Company had the proceeds, Lu Qinzhai followed Zhang Jingjiang's example and donated part of the proceeds to the Xinhai revolutionaries.
In 1926, Lu Qinzhai established the famous Red Chamber in Paris, which provides free meals for Chinese students studying in France every day.
In 1937, when the Japanese invasion of China broke out, Lu Qinzhai donated 2,000 francs and auctioned 9 precious cultural relics to rescue the wounded compatriots in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
The following year, he held an exhibition of cultural relics and donated the money of the exhibition to the China-friendly American Medical Aid Association; in 1942, he used his connections and money to promote Sino-US relations.
But in the final analysis, Lu Qinzhai is an unscrupulous businessman, and all he does is more to save his reputation and provide convenience for his domestic procurement.
The madness of an emotional hypocrite
In addition to the complexity of personal behavior, Lu Qinzhai's marriage is actually quite outrageous.
When Lu Wu Antiques first opened, it was next to a hat shop. The owner of the hat shop is a French girl named Olga, a mixed-race Man, and Lu Qinzhai is quickly attracted to the French neighbor.
The two often walked into each other's shops to talk, and the romantic and ambiguous atmosphere emanating from Olga's hands and feet made Lu Qinzhai gradually sink, and soon fell in love, and even had the idea of marrying her.
But Olga had other plans. The hat shop she now runs was given to her by a lover, and she didn't want this hat shop, and naturally she didn't want the old lover, so she scoffed at Lu Qinzhai's idea of getting married.
But at the same time, Olga did not intend to let go of this rich oriental "big fish", so she came up with a very absurd idea - to give her 15-year-old daughter Mary Rose to Lu Qinzhai, and she continued to be with Lu Qinzhai in the name of her mother-in-law.
Lu Qinzhai even agreed to such a ridiculous offer to marry Mary, and married Mary after Christmas in 1910.
Mary Rose is an unblessed being: Olga worked as a maid in a family when she was young, and after being deceived by the host, accidentally brought Mary into the world.
She has always loved herself more than her daughter, and despite her daughter's thoughts, she married Mary to Lu Qinzhai, who was 15 years older.
Mary, who had always been meek, had to accept this arrangement, and after marriage, she conscientiously took care of the housework for Lu Qinzhai and gave birth to four daughters one after another.
However, Olga's shadow has always hung over Mary's head, and Olga often intervened in Lu Qinzhai and Mary's family affairs with a straight face, and even held the key to Lu Qinzhai's safe, and Mary even suffered from mental illness.
And Lu Qinzhai is not very satisfied with this marriage, even if he lives in France, where the status of women has risen, he still has the idea of preferring sons to daughters.
Mary gave birth to four daughters in a row, and Lu Qinzhai believed that she had no heirs, no successors, ignored the four daughters, and was unwilling to teach them Chinese, resulting in the four girls with oriental faces having no feelings for their father's motherland.
And Olga was also quite dissatisfied with Lu Qinzhai taking Mary to various important occasions, and the relationship between the three was like a mess, until Lu Qinzhai died.
The dissection of a sinner
With the liberation of the whole country, the protection of cultural relics in China is very strict, Lu Qinzhai's business can no longer be done, and Lu Wu Antique Zhai is closed.
He issued a statement in New York: "My antiques business has been exhausted and unsustainable... Therefore, I have decided to withdraw from the antiques trading industry from now on. ”
However, behind his so-called gloom is the tragic fact that thousands of cultural relics can no longer return to the motherland, and it is the disease-free groan after the pot is full. According to people in the antiques industry, about half of the Chinese cultural relics lost overseas are sold by his hands.
At the end of the 1950s, Lu Qinzhai, who had entered his old age, missed his hometown quite much, but he was well aware of the crimes he had committed and did not dare to return to his motherland. But even when the fear of being judged by the people of the motherland was already lingering on his face, he still palely defended.
"Art knows no borders. Instead of reluctantly leaving the Buddha statues in China, reducing them to valuable commodity chips and being robbed and destroyed, it is better to keep them in foreign museums and serve as living cultural ambassadors. ”
This defense, which is completely contrary to his actual actions, reveals that Lu Qinzhai's motives during the War of Resistance Against Japan were not all patriotic.
In fact, he is not ashamed, and he knows clearly that his behavior is wrong, and he is afraid and uneasy about it, and in order to suppress this uneasiness, he chooses to make up for it.
Lu Qinzhai is not a person who can simply be judged by the standard of good and evil, he tasted the taste of poverty and destitution when he was young, and he was determined to be a superior person, and for this goal, he allowed himself to be selfish and selfish, and became a smuggling merchant of cultural relics who made a fortune in the country.
After making his fortune, he displayed some patriotic behavior for the sake of his own reputation, but these behaviors could not be determined to obtain commercial convenience.
Lu Qinzhai also donated the Warring States bronze "Heir Pot" to the Cultural Relics Exhibition Room of Tsinghua University, but this thin act of redemption is ridiculous compared with the countless precious cultural relics he stole and sold.
Maybe he once had a sincere heart, maybe the influence brought to him by Zhang Jingjiang had never dissipated, maybe the yellow blood vein in his blood had not disappeared.
But because of his harm to the nation and the state, his motives are inevitably overshadowed, and he truly interprets the complexity of human nature.
Nanxun's moonlight may have been shining in his heart, but no one had ever seen its brilliance.
Resources
[1] "Oriental Collection", July 1, 2021, "Lu Qinzhai and the Collection of Ancient Chinese Cultural Relics in the West"
[2] China Auction, July 8, 2020, The Life of Legendary Antique Dealer Lu Qinzhai