For the protection of cultural relics, every country attaches great importance to it, because a country's cultural relics represent the country's rich resume and historical wealth, once these are lost, it is a heavy blow to the country.
Therefore, the cultural relics of each country should be properly kept, so that they can better study the historical problems of their own country, otherwise they cannot understand the history of their own country, then many things cannot be found.
During the invasion Chinese of China by the Eight-Power Alliance, the cultural relics lost in many places such as the Yuanmingyuan were innumerable, and until now, it is still difficult to imagine how much property was lost.
From an early age, he learned to travel to the West with his master
Including foreigners from all over the world, they have come to buy our antiques, or the works left by the literati and inkers, because they feel that these things in China are valuable, and they buy and sell at a low price from the hands of Chinese.
In modern times, there are many literati and inkers who have also made some criticisms of the ruling class, including those people, who did not know how to protect cultural relics before, in order to express the indignation that the Chinese lost and unable to study historical materials.
But is that really the case? Just like this case, a Taoist sells cultural relics overseas, and if we don't know his facts, we may make a wrong judgment about her, but we hope that we can make the most correct judgment.
So we have to look at the historical environment, what did this Taoist priest do? And why did he do this, and why did he do it? So what did he do? Let's take a look.
This man, named Wang Yuanzhen, was born in Hubei, because Hubei was famine year by year, so he fled north to the vicinity of Gansu, where he served as a soldier and a pawn in border defense, after the Qing government could not bear the financial pressure to disarm.
Wang Daoshi really had nowhere to go, so he had to become a monk in the local area and follow a master named Daosheng, who was also a very famous local master, and gave him the Dao name Fazhen.
Since then, Wang Daoshi has been studying with his master until 1897, when the master thought that he had nothing to learn from himself, so he left Jiuquan and traveled west to increase his insight.
Wang Daoshi traveled all the way to Xiyun to the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang and lived in the caves, at that time, the cultural popularity in Xinjiang was not high, because Wang Daochang could preach the scriptures and speak very fluent chinese, so the locals would invite him to do things.
After Wang Daoshi had saved a lot of money in his hands, he thought of doing a great thing with merit, so he began to hire others to transform the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes where he lived, hoping to repair it and make it a great merit to bless future generations.
Began to repair the Dunhuang Mogao Caves and discovered the Tibetan Scripture Caves
At that time, Wang Daochang appointed Yang Guowei, a poor reader in Dunhuang, to help him copy Taoist books such as the Tao Te Ching to sell in the spring and winter, and in autumn and summer, there would be many people who would enter the mountain to incense.
Therefore, he asked Yang Guowei to set up a table in cave 16 of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang to receive people who came to offer incense, and to write peace charms and the like on behalf of him, collect a little money by the way, and then register it in the account book.
Three years later, when Yang Guo was prostrating his cigarette butt in the passage of Cave 16, he suddenly felt that the place seemed to be a vacant lot, and suspected that there was a secret hiding room in the cave, so he told Wang Daochang, and Wang Daochang found a small door from the side.
When Wang Daochang opened the door, he saw that it was full of entire scriptures, Buddhist paintings, bronze Buddhas and other precious antiquities, which was the place where the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes hid the scriptures and the accumulation of many years of accumulation of Buddhist monks.
Although this place was discovered by him, it was only discovered and did not attract much attention, the government did not care about this matter, and local officials were also busy collecting money and fleeing for their lives, and had no time to take care of domestic cultural relics.
But later Wang Daochang wanted to sell these scriptures, and the people who heard the news scolded him bitterly, in fact, he had already made a great effort, and if the blame was attributed to him, it should never be.
Because in fact, the blame is not all on him, it is the whole of China that is sick, not that he alone is sick, so he will make such a move, which is history's ridicule of backward China, and it is also the reason for the corruption in the weak country to the root.
Extremely disappointed, in desperation, had to sell to foreigners
When the Tibetan Scripture Cave of the Dunhuang Mogao Caves was discovered by Wang Daochang, he quickly rushed to the county seat, but the officials of the county town simply ignored him, thinking that these were all a pile of waste paper, so Wang Daoshi ate the closed door.
Later, he had to go to the higher-ranking officials to talk about this matter, but everyone did not pay attention to it at all, and was busy trading with the Russians and buying and selling the land of the motherland, which was not worth mentioning to them, it was a pile of waste paper and broken copper and iron.
But Wang Daoshi had always been kept in the dark, and the Qing government did not tell him until the end to let him seal it, as for transporting these things, they did not want to transport them at all, and Wang Daoist was completely dead hearted and never regulated this matter again.
At this time, Wang Daoshi was already old, and he did not have any legs and feet to travel a long way, and his greatest wish for the rest of his life was to repair the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, so he repaired this place while changing his fate.
Halfway through, he sold some cultural relics to the Western explorer Stein, and used all the money he obtained to repair the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, until 1909, when French sinologists put Dunhuang cultural relics on display in Beijing, and the whole Beijing division was in an uproar.
At that time, Beijing issued an announcement to allocate funds to Gansu to transport the remaining ancient scriptures to Beijing, but in the middle, they were stolen by officials everywhere, and only 8697 volumes of less than 1/3 were left.
Unexpectedly, foreigners did not buy our cultural relics, but on the contrary, their own people destroyed the cultural relics on a large scale, and finally stole them and sold them to foreigners again, which is simply ironic and rotten from the roots.
Wang Daochang was very sad to learn that a large number of scripture scrolls had been stolen and robbed, because there had never been such a thing when he was guarding, but it was handed over to the authorities, but it caused such a result, so Wang Daochang was very angry.
He found someone to write a proposal for the imperial court to send him money, but it was sunk in the sea, there was no news, and there was no news at all.
A Western explorer described Wang Daoshi in his diary, saying that he had worked hard all his life to restore the god in his heart, and he had repaired the temple with all his income, and he personally did not spend a penny on it, in fact, Wang Daoshi was not wrong.
He was only wrong in being born in that era, he had no choice, fortunately he also preserved these things, without him, those things may have been sunk in the sea. He also just did what he should do, but he didn't get the reward he deserved, and even paid a great price for it, and finally Wang Daoshi finally grew up in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes.