Nowadays, when it comes to the big man of collection, the most familiar thing for people is Ma Weidu, talking about the past and the present, a faction of leisure, only because he has encountered a good world; today I introduce you to a strange person in the Collection of the Republic of China, Cai Jixiang, whose fate can be described as ups and downs, creating people, and can't help but make people regret one after another, sighing that life is not timely.
Cai Jixiang is from Dongting West Mountain, Wu County, Jiangsu Province. Born in Changsha on August 17, 1898, four brothers, he is the youngest, so he is also known as Cai Si.
His grandfather Cai Shenmo originally opened a silk satin village in Suzhou, but due to the influence of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom peasant uprising, his family moved west to Changsha to open the Jiukang Silk Satin Shop and the Yongsen PawnShop.
Cai Jixiang studied private school at home for 8 years at an early age, with a deep foundation in ancient Literature, and later entered the high and small class of Jinting Primary School, and the following year he entered the preparatory department of middle school, and his father opened a Changxiang money shop in Hongjiajing, Changsha, and he dropped out of school to engage in business and help his father do some business.
Cai Jixiang had a relative named Ye Dehui, who was a mid-jinshi in 1892, the head of the official department, and then resigned from the government and returned to his hometown, reading, lecturing, engraving books, collecting books, and advocating scripture; however, he was stubborn in his thinking and opposed to innovation.
Ye Dehui was a famous bibliophile at that time, proficient in edition bibliography, fond of collecting calligraphy and paintings, coins, jade, etc., and was also good at identifying calligraphy and paintings, but he easily did not share them with others, and posted a large slogan at the door of the study, saying: "Wife does not borrow books and does not borrow." ”
Ye Dehui has a quirk, in his collection of rare books and ancient books, there are pictures of the Spring Palace to prevent fires; others ask him: "Why is this object fireproof?" Ye Dehui said a novel theory: "The fire god was originally a noble lady with as many as thirty-six maids, and was later demoted by the Jade Emperor to a concubine of the stove because of the incident, and his god was equal to the god of stove." She usually wears yellow clothes, and when she is angry, she wears red clothes; because she comes from a boudoir, that is, when she is angry, she cannot avoid it when she sees a filthy picture. I love books as much as I want, so I have to use it to expel the fire god." Of course, no one will believe this nonsense, but his love of collecting pictures of the Spring Palace is true.
Cai Jixiang learned poetry and song from this relative since he was a child, ancient Chinese classics, but also heard about Mr. Ye's collection, and slowly liked antique calligraphy and paintings when he grew up, including lustful.
Cai Jixiang's original collection of cultural relics and antiques began from the collection of ancient coins, Ye Dehui was very optimistic about this handsome, intelligent and gold-rich descendant, not only gave away the various coin reproductions he had hidden to Cai Jixiang, but also did not hesitate to impart the relevant knowledge he had learned to Cai Jixiang. However, looking at Cai Jixiang's next ups and downs in his miserable life, he certainly did not know how many times he regretted it: why did he take the road of collecting; why did Ye Dehui favor him!
In 1929, the warlord He Jian was in charge of Hunan and concurrently served as the commander-in-chief of the Fourth Route Army of the "Rebel Army" (crusading against the Warlords of the Gui Clan); Cai Jixiang, at the invitation of a friend, served as a clerk in that headquarters, and he was admired by his superiors with a handsome and flowing little Kai, and he was appointed as a lieutenant and lieutenant proofreader; however, Cai Jixiang was not accustomed to that kind of dull work, and resigned after a short time.
Charming Cai Jixiang
Cai Jixiang, who is temperamental and dashing, and under the influence of several friends, he co-founded a tabloid restaurant, and the contents of the newspaper, in addition to reporting some news of street talk in Changsha city, are mainly targeted to touting Xiang opera actresses, he wears suits and shoes all day long, personable, haunts tea houses and theaters, and as a result, Huang Fulian, an actress with excellent color and art, has become his second wife, and as for his lover, there are certainly many.
The network is accompanied by pictures, and the stills have nothing to do with the text
Later, Cai Jixiang's interest and hobbies in cultural relics and antiques increased day by day, reaching the level of obsession.
Cai Jixiang's ancestors in Changsha South Gate with more than 10 shops of the family business, running satin villages, pawn shops, money houses, real estate, etc., in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this family property passed to him, he had the right to decide, he wanted to do what he wanted to do, that is, to play with antiques better and bigger. Therefore, Despite the opposition of his family, Cai Jixiang gradually sold his ancestral property and transferred it to the collection and sale of antiquities.
In the 30s and 40s of last century, tomb robbery in Changsha became a common practice, the government authorities did not have a special agency to supervise, hunan cultural relics and monuments protection and management was still set up under the provincial education department at that time, which led to many large industrial and commercial owners, military and political dignitaries, antique dealers, pawnshops, money houses or ticket merchants, etc., through the "tufuzi" to buy, resell cultural relics or private collections.
Cai Jixiang is good at socializing, has a wide range of contacts, and is very active in personal collection activities, often going deep into the construction site and looking for cultural relics and treasures, he once instructed the "Tufuzi" to excavate the ancient tomb he liked, and he personally sat on the side to direct, and sometimes even slept on the construction site all night, just to take down the newly excavated cultural relics.
With the unique shrewdness and economic strength of the businessman, coupled with the wide range of knowledge and good eyesight, Cai Jixiang gradually became the leader and antique dealer of the cultural relics and antique collection in Changsha and the whole of Hunan, and his collection was the first in the private collection in terms of variety, quantity and value.
Cai Jixiang is different from the general cultural relics merchants, he has a solid family, a hobby of archaeology, diligent research, has made a lot of efforts to collect weighty cultural relics, and has written many insightful research articles, especially the study of ancient coins.
In addition, he has his own set of methods for identifying and restoring cultural relics, and it is even impossible to say that it is difficult for ordinary experts to see flaws in all cultural relics restored by Cai's hand, and the cultural relics copied by Cai's hand can be faked and distorted, such as the Daguan Tongbao Qianwen Bronze Mirror and the Chongning Chongbao Qianwen Bronze Mirror that he falsified.
However, even if a cultural relics such as Cai Jixiang, in that chaotic world, although the surface scenery, but also tasted the human misery, especially on the Chu Shu book planted a big heel.
From 1936 to 1943, Cai Jixiang was doing business in Shanghai and renting out his spare room; once, because of a dispute over rent, he was seized by the Japanese army, and then his friends took the opportunity to find the leader of the Japanese army, Fugang Shigetoku, with more than a thousand ancient coins in his possession, before being released. The Japanese learned that Cai was a person who was very good at studying cultural relics and planned to ask him to serve as the director of the Hangzhou Museum and participate in the Wang puppet regime; at the critical moment, Cai Jixiang still knew the great righteousness of the nation, refused to take up the puppet post, and tried to escape back to Changsha.
But Cai Jixiang did not expect in any way that his later fate would be completely changed by the influence of a rare cultural relic that was related to him, the Chu Shushu.
In early 1942, a group of tomb robbers found a Chu tomb in the Changsha Bullet Depot and went to excavate it together. Grave robbers found a batch of copper weapons, lacquerware, wooden figures, and some fragments of textiles. In the eyes of tomb robbers, bronze and wood are the most sought-after, so textiles stolen from the tomb were given to the antique dealer Tang Jianquan as scraps. Unbeknownst to them, the textile was a Chu Shu book, and its excavation was one of the most exciting discoveries in the history of Chinese culture.
Cai Jixiang learned that the Chu Shushu had been unearthed and quickly bought the Shushu and other cultural relics for 3,000 yuan. After some restoration, Cai Jixiang regarded it as a treasure and copied and studied it.
However, it was the time of World War II, and although Japan had been defeated, it was still stubbornly resisting. In April 1944, when the Japanese army attacked Changsha, Cai Jixiang and his family had to join the fleeing army, and before leaving, he rolled up the Chu Shushu and put it in a tin bucket.
He first temporarily took refuge in Shilintang, a southern suburb of Changsha, and planned to flee to Xiangtan; soon after, Xiangtan was in a hurry, and fled to Xingmazhou in the Xiang River, where he unfortunately encountered the Japanese army. On May 6, Japanese soldiers tried to rape Cai Jixiang's wife and daughter, and his wife Huang Fulian and eldest daughter Cai Lingyi, who were humiliated, sank into a pond and died embracing each other.
Cai Jixiang and his other children fled to Anhua, the country was destroyed, the family was lost, and his wife and daughter were painfully lost, in order to gather his spirit and reduce the pain, Cai Jixiang turned to continue to study the Shushu more intently, and in the case of neither communicating with other scholars, nor having a basic bibliography to refer to, Cai Jixiang used his profound knowledge to study the meaning of most of the words on the Shushu; he collected his research into a document, that is, the "Late Zhou Shu Shu Examination", and drew an accurate map of the excavation site of the Bullet Library; in addition, To explain why he did all this, he also attached a detailed account of his friend's suicide to his wife and daughter.
Cai Jixiang went to Nanjing with his monograph "Examination of the Late Zhou Dynasty" and submitted it to the Central Research Institute of the National Government for printing and distribution; the reply he received was: "Now that the country is in trouble, even Hua Luogeng's "Theory of Pile Prime Numbers" cannot be paid for, so you should not open your mouth for this work of thinking about ancient leisure!" ”
Cai Jixiang was not willing to let his own painstaking efforts flow in vain, indignantly poured out all his possessions, and published the "Late Zhou Shu Shu Examination" at his own expense in Lantian Town, Lianyuan County, Hunan Province, which immediately aroused strong repercussions in the archaeological circles; "Late Zhou Shu Shu Examination" is the starting point and beginning of all the study of Chu Shu shu.
Later, Chu Shushu was tricked by the American Ke Qiang into going to the United States, and has not yet returned. The specific tragic process can be seen in the previous articles "The loss of more than 10 million overseas cultural relics, but the loss of Chu Shushu is the most heart-wrenching, too shameless".
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Cai Jixiang returned to Changsha and still engaged in his business of collecting and buying and selling cultural relics, but he did not have much economic strength.
In early 1949, Xie Shaochu, the "Tufuzi", excavated a painting of "Figures of Dragons and Phoenixes" in a Chu tomb in the Chen Family Mountain. Because Cai Jixiang is cheerful and good at making young friends, the relationship between the two has long been extraordinary, and the first time they were unearthed, they made a deal. Cai Jixiang realized the importance of this work, and despite the difficult conditions at the time, he tried his best to protect the dragon and phoenix figures and find someone to copy them.
This picture is a silk painting from the Warring States period, which belongs to the banner used for the deceased, and is not a purely painterly work. It depicts a woman (the owner of the tomb) praying to the dragon and phoenix, implying that the deceased is guided to ascend to heaven with the dragon and phoenix. The figure of the person in the painting is slender, the figure is symmetrical, and the image of its thin waist is reminiscent of a well-known story of "the king of Chu has a thin waist, and the palace starves to death": In the past, the king of Chu Ling liked people with slender waists, and the concubines and courtiers around him were afraid of their own fat waists, and did not invite the king of spirits to like, did not dare to eat more, and reduced three meals a day to one meal. Every day I get up and get dressed, first hold my breath, tighten my belt, and then stand up against the wall...
This painting is the oldest known figure painting in China, dating back more than 2,000 years, which is of great significance for the study of the artistic characteristics and modeling methods of the Warring States period.
Shortly thereafter, the whole country was liberated and New China was founded. Since 1950, some authoritative newspapers and periodicals have successively exposed that "the US imperialists have carried out large-scale plundering of mainland cultural relics", and "Cai Jixiang is a confused accomplice"; in 1950, the 11th issue of "Cultural Relics Reference" even named and criticized The Changsha antique dealer Cai Jixiang, saying: "The most absurd thing is that Cai Jixiang sold a piece of the Warring States Period "Book of Silk" unearthed in Changsha, which is the earliest brush-drawn painting and pen writing on the mainland, to John Cox students at Yale University for 10,000 US dollars. The American left only $1,000 and took this priceless treasure away."
In view of the misjudgment and worry of the current situation, in 1950, Cai Jixiang signed an agreement with an antique shop in Shanghai to sell all the cultural relics stored in it abroad, when all the cultural relics were packed and ready to be shipped. Cai was also invited to the Public Security Bureau and spent several days in prison.
When asked by relevant parties how to deal with this batch of cultural relics, Cai Jixiang thought of the helplessness and pain of his decades of collecting career, and after some consideration, he donated all the cultural relics he collected to the state, and the state also rewarded him. The collection includes ribbons, hooks, Eastern Han Pottery Houses, Chicken Coffins, Copper Lords, Copper Square Pots, Tang and Song Dynasty porcelain, thousands of rare ancient coins, jade, talcware, seals, lacquered wood, etc. In the warring states period, there are many types, varieties are complete, well preserved, and people are praised, which greatly enriches and enriches the collection of the Hunan Provincial Museum established later
The most famous of these cultural relics is the "Character Dragon and Phoenix Painting" of the Warring States Period, and the "Peng Eight Buckets and Six Liters" copper square pot, the copper sword with lacquer sheath, the lacquered wood secret copper spear, the "Right Sacred Blade" iron foot copper ding, the dragon and phoenix pattern wrong silver decorative lacquer shield, the triad stone seal, the "Changsha First Year" copper ding, and so on have all been designated as national first-class cultural relics.
In 1951, the Hunan Provincial Cultural Relics Management Committee had just been established, and cai Jixiang was in need of such talents, and upon the recommendation of Fang Shuzhang, a member of the provincial people's government at that time, and Chen Yuxin, a member of the Cultural Affairs Management Committee, he was hired to serve as a member of the Cultural Relics Management Committee, becoming a national archaeology worker and enjoying the treatment of senior intellectuals.
In 1956, the Provincial Cultural Management Commission received Swedish sinologists to visit the Chu cultural relics for a group photo. The one on the right in the front row is Cai Jixiang
Cai Jixiang devoted himself to the new work with great enthusiasm, and made remarkable achievements in the collection, restoration, protection, reproduction and cultivation of talents of cultural relics.
He cleaned up thousands of cultural relics from local material reserves and scrap copper warehouses, saving many precious cultural relics from the doom of being burned. The famous Siyang Fangzun is one of the examples, this national treasure-level cultural relics have been broken into more than 20 pieces, which cai found from the warehouse of the Hunan branch of the Chinese Bank, first carried out preliminary restoration, and then cooperated with Zhang Xinru and others to restore a rare treasure for the country. The national first-class cultural relics of the Western Han Dynasty copper stirrups were also collected by Cai from the waste pile.
Cai Jixiang played a special role in the restoration and protection of cultural relics, he first tried the "wax sealing" method to protect lacquerware, and also used distilled water to soak bamboo Jane, the effect was excellent, and was invited to Henan to help deal with the bamboo Jane unearthed in Xinyang.
Cai Jixiang's contribution to the cause of culture and bo is also counted by the fact that he discovered a brush in the Warring States period, which is also the earliest and only brush found in the country.
In April 1954, archaeologists rescued and excavated a Warring States samurai tomb in Zuojiagong Mountain (now Changsha 11 middle) in the southern suburbs of Changsha. When excavated, the staff only paid attention to the remains of the tomb owner and large-scale burial objects, and handed over some things such as bamboo chips mixed in mud to Cai Jixiang of the provincial cultural relics task force for indoor sorting and cleaning.
When Cai Jixiang cleaned the Chinese of the bamboo basket, he saw a "bamboo pipe", both ends of which were filled with dirt, so he carefully cleaned it, and accidentally found that both ends of the bamboo pipe were empty, Cai peeped that there were small wooden poles hidden in the pipe, so he soaked it with water many times, and finally used the tweezers to repair the clock to dial the wooden pole hidden in the bamboo pipe, a good Warring States period brush, and broke out of the pipe in surprise.
This brush is 21 cm long and 0.4 cm in diameter, the pen is very similar to the brush used now, the tip of the pen is 2.5 cm long, the pen shaft is also tied to a bamboo tube, the difference is that the pen tip is not inserted in the bamboo pole sleeve, but with the split end of the bamboo pole to clamp the pen tip in it, wrap the silk thread outside, and then paint it. This Warring States brush, which has been buried in the ground for more than 2,000 years, is considered to be the earliest physical brush found on the mainland so far, called the "Warring States Pen"; and because Changsha belonged to the Chu State in ancient times, the oldest brush in the world is also known as the "Chu Pen"; at that time, it was used to write bamboo and wood Jane.
The discovery of this "national treasure" grade brush shocked people at home and abroad, and the press rushed to report it, and it is now in the collection of the National Museum.
The discovery of this brush is the most important evidence for the history of the invention of the Chinese brush, which has great value in the study of the history of Chinese culture, and the previous record is that Meng Tian of the Qin Dynasty invented the brush, and it is obvious that the brush excavated from the Zuojia Gongshan Warring States Tomb in Changsha City 11 was earlier than the "invention" of Meng Tian.
After liberation, Cai Jixiang also wrote "Notes on the Historical Relics of The Five Dynasties of Hunan Ma", "Tu Kao of the Currency of the Han Dynasty", "A Brief Discussion on the Inheritance, Evolution and Use of Chu Characters", "Examination of the Historical Relics of Changsha Ming Dynasty", "Cultural Relics of Hunan Province, Scattered Cultural Relics", "Examination of the No. 1 Han Tomb of Mawangdui in Changsha", "Illustration of Chu Ci Artifacts" and other works, with a total of more than one million words.
However, before the liberation, Cai Jixiang, as an antique dealer engaged in the business of cultural relics, sold some precious cultural relics to outsiders, causing the loss of Chinese cultural relics overseas, and he had an unshirkable historical responsibility. Therefore, in the successive movements of trial and adjudication, anti-rightism, three anti-five antis, and the "Cultural Revolution", Cai Jixiang was successively shocked and treated unfairly, and his writings were difficult to publish publicly, and finally they were sold as waste paper to antique bookstores, and almost burned to the ground. Fortunately, after the Hunan Provincial Museum learned of this information, in 1978, it bought back this batch of precious manuscripts for 308 yuan, so that Cai Shi spent half his life to avoid bad luck. These manuscripts provided first-hand precious materials for later cultural relics researchers to open up ideas and write papers.
Cai Jixiang's later life was not satisfactory, the child was sick, and he himself almost spent in poverty. At the end of 1979, the 81-year-old Cai Jixiang died of illness in Changsha, and the glory and loneliness of his life were also lost to history.
Personal fate can not escape the wrapping of the times, the times, on the one hand, created the collector Cai Jixiang, on the other hand, also fell into the rolling torrent, so that his life ups and downs. For Cai Jixiang, perhaps the most angry thing for us is that he finally lost the Chu Shu. However, we must not forget that his later years played an irreplaceable role in saving the fate of many important cultural relics of the country, and he also passed on what he learned in his life to future generations and wrote so many books.
After many years, Gao Zhixi, former director of the Hunan Provincial Museum, said in an interview with reporters: Some words are not suitable for being put on the table, and throughout his life (Cai Jixiang), a more accurate evaluation is that the merits are mixed and the reputation is mixed.