The mainland's tomb robbery culture has been more than 2,700 years, such as Wu Zixu in the Spring and Autumn Period, Cao Cao in the Three Kingdoms, Huang Chao in the Tang Dynasty, Wen Tao in the Fifth Dynasty, and Sun Dianying in the Republic of China, all of whom are famous tomb robbers in history.
Although the ancient law punished tomb robbers severely, but people killed birds for money, people still stole tombs in an endless stream, countless rare cultural relics were destroyed, until after the founding of New China, the mainland government realized the harm of rampant tomb robbery, which increased the intensity of rectification.
In May 2015, the largest tomb robbery case since the founding of the People's Republic of China was broken, with more than 200 prisoners arrested and more than 2,000 cultural relics recovered, with an auction price of more than 500 million yuan.
And the mastermind behind the scenes, Yao Yuzhong, was actually a primary school graduate, he taught himself feng shui to rob tombs, developed hundreds of disciples and disciples, known as the "grandfather" of the tomb robbery industry, before the execution, he still did not think about repentance, and shouted loudly that "I can open the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang".
The little smith became a grave robber
Yao Yuzhong was born in 1962 in Ningcheng County, Chifeng City, where his father was a local smith, that is, a person who supported his family by weaving bamboo baskets and bamboo mats.
When Yao Yuzhong was a child, the three-year difficult period had just ended, and the people of the whole country had to tighten their pants and belts to live, not to mention the Yao family, who had 7 sons, according to Yao Yuzhong's eldest brother: "Several of our brothers grew up eating sorghum noodles."
Yao Yuzhong ranked third, since birth has not eaten a mouthful of milk, after the incident, the family has not appeared several times white noodles, all day is eating wild vegetable nests, so others are also born very thin, every time he sees other people's home with meat and sugar he will be hungry, the desire for material left a deep mark in his young heart.
After growing up, Yao Yuzhong's most enthusiastic thing is to make money, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, he took the bamboo mats and baskets made by his family to do small business in other places, and after saving some money, he began to sell cashmere, skins, bristles and other goods, in the eyes of his family and villagers, "the three children's brains are active, and they are the materials for making big money."
Sure enough, within a few years, Yao Yuzhong made a fortune, changed into a long shirt and coat, and returned home with foreign gold-rimmed glasses.
At first, when people asked him what kind of business he was doing, he always kept his mouth shut, and over time someone saw the clues, and people knew that what he earned was actually the wealth of tomb robbery.
Ningcheng County in the territory of an old Ha River stretched from west to east for thousands of years, as early as 4,000 years BC gave birth to the Hongshan culture known as "the first dawn of Chinese civilization", and later the grassland bronze culture, Khitan Liao culture, Mongolian Yuan culture is also reflected here, generations of people were born and buried here, and a large number of precious cultural relics are preserved in their tombs.
In the course of war and geological activities, many burial items were brought from the ground to the surface, and the villagers would occasionally pick up some pottery bowls, jade bi and other items, but due to their low cultural quality, they did not know the value of these items, and most people would take them home for their own use or exchange them for a few dollars.
In the 1930s, Japan invaded the northeast region and plundered thousands of treasures in the Songliao Plain in the name of archaeology, and the locals knew that there were so many treasures underground, but it was difficult to determine the location of the tomb, so a stubble robber came with advanced tools, and finally returned without success.
Yao Yuzhong liked to read since he was a child, and his grades in school have always been good, but because the family conditions did not allow it, he dropped out of school and went home after graduating from primary school, but in addition to work, he always carried a book with him, sometimes "I Ching", sometimes "Burial Classic", "Water Dragon Classic" and other idle books, and he also had a certain understanding of feng shui geography, so he thought of using the knowledge to make money.
The place yao Yuzhong chose for the first time was in Hongshan, when he was wandering around the mountain for several days, choosing a site by observing the location of the landscape, after choosing it, he made an inconspicuous mark, and then went back to the residence and waited, waiting until the day before it was about to rain.
In the dead of night, he sneaked up the hill with a shovel and a glare flashlight, found the pre-selected location, and began to dig down.
He was just getting started, he knew almost nothing about tomb robbery, and he had never thought that he could succeed once, but when he dug down about 1 meter deep, the sudden appearance of a hole made him ecstatic.
The tomb was not very deep, he easily jumped down, and then dug around in the cave, but this tomb should have been looted, the contents were pitiful, Yao Yuzhong dug in the middle of the night, the only valuable goods found was a piece of jade bi.
However, Yao Yuzhong was not discouraged, although there were not many treasures, but he found the right place, which made him feel more confident, and in order to hide his eyes and ears before leaving the tomb, he refilled the soil and made it look like it was washed by rain.
A few days later, Yao Yuzhong sold the jade bi in his hand to an antique shop in exchange for more than 2,000 yuan, which was a huge amount of money in the 1980s and 1990s, when prices were extremely low.
Yao Yuzhong couldn't help but think: Tomb robbery can easily get huge profits, which is much better than doing business in the wind and rain before, so he unswervingly embarked on the road of tomb robbery.
Tomb robber grandfather
Although Yao Yuzhong's first tomb robbery operation was successful, the next few times were not smooth, either finding the wrong tomb or finding that the treasures in the tomb had long been stolen by his predecessors, and he gradually realized that it was not enough to rely only on a few feng shui books he read.
In order to make up for the lack of knowledge, Yao Yuzhong read at home every day, while always paying attention to the latest achievements in tomb archaeology in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, and sometimes he would run to the Palace Museum, the Tomb of the Qing Emperor and other places to listen to the docents talk about the burial culture of the local dynasties and dynasties, and learn about the location of the tombs of the ancients.
As the saying goes, tomb robbery is not terrible, afraid of thieves have culture, Yao Yuzhong will learn the theoretical knowledge and practice of the combination, find the skills of the tomb continues to improve, at the same time he also invented a professional tomb robbery tool - Zazi, this thing is a few sections of steel spliced together, usually can be disassembled into the bag, when the action spliced up to two or three meters.
Each time he selected the location, he inserted the tyre into the ground, and then pulled it out to observe the changes in the soil on the steel bar, according to which he could determine whether there was a tomb below, and by observing the nearby mountain water potential, he could see the identity of the owner of the tomb, so as to determine how many treasures were inside.
With professional knowledge and technology, Yao Yuzhong has hardly lost his hand in tomb robbery after that, and he has gradually made a name for himself in the tomb robbery industry, and many people have come to him and want to make a lot of money with him.
Yao Yuzhong thought about it, after all, robbing the tomb by himself was not the way, and he really needed help, so he selected some people from the familiar village and his colleagues from other places to form a professional tomb robbery team, including his brother- Yao Yufei.
Yao Yuzhong acted calmly, and the tomb robbery operation was generally arranged between May and September, a period of time when the vitality was strong and the mountains were deeply forested and grassy, which was the best cover for bad things.
Before each tomb robbery, Yao Yuzhong would go to the mountain alone to step on the point, choose several excavation locations, and then determine the time of action by observing the sky and pushing the compass.
When robbing the tomb, Yao Yuzhong also arranged it strictly and carefully, he commanded from the side, his cronies were responsible for digging the tomb, the foreigners looked at the wind, the tomb opened and he was the first to go in, treasure hunting, sharing the loot and all the affairs he personally did, never pretending to be a person.
And after each tomb robbery, he would let people fill the tomb and sprinkle a handful of grass seeds on it, so that the next heavy rain grass would grow, and no one would find the traces of the tomb robbery, so he went unpunished and has been robbing the tomb for more than 30 years.
Yao Yuzhong's team can be said to be the most rampant tomb robbery gang in China, only in 2013 to 2014, they have planned and completed more than 200 tomb robbery activities, one after another belonging to the country and the people's cultural relics were appropriated by them, thousands of cultural treasures fell into the black market, for these evil people in exchange for billions of yuan of wealth, Yao Yuzhong "achieved fame", and was even regarded by many people as the "grandfather" of the tomb robbery industry.
However, greed is not enough to swallow the elephant, although Yao Yuzhong has earned immeasurable wealth by robbing tombs and digging treasures, he is desperate to fill it, and constantly finds ways to exploit the workers who follow him.
Every time the tomb is opened, he will put on a smiling face to persuade everyone to rest, dig up later, and then take the flashlight to the tomb to check, take the opportunity to carry some rare cultural relics into his pocket and secretly take them away.
And Yao Yuzhong also has a lot of research on the identification of cultural relics, many things he knows at a glance which dynasty, the value is geometric, so when sharing the booty, he often fishes in muddy waters, and distributes some things that do not have much value to others, and the real valuable ones are left to himself.
At first, everyone didn't know that he had this routine, but after a long time, others knew what kind of person Yao Yuzhong was, and they began to suspect that he was full of private pockets, so some people broke up with him and went out to set up their own portals, Yao Yufei was like this, he saw that the third brother was too greedy for money, even his brother's money was pit, and he was angry, so he left Yao Yuzhong.
Greed for money and good gambling will eventually die
After Yao Yufei left the third brother's self-reliance portal, he turned to play with the antique merchant Feng Jie, and the two of them stole the tomb to dig up treasures, and one sold the stolen money for money, which also did a lot of wind and water, accumulating a lot of wealth, but their success was seen in the eyes of Yao Yuzhong, who was greedy for money, and hated in his heart.
Out of jealousy and greed, Yao Yuzhong's evil thoughts of "robbery" arose in his heart, and he found the local evil forces Wang Jingshan and discussed using Wang Jingshan's men to kidnap Feng Jie and use violence to force Feng Jie to hand over the cultural relics they had stolen, and then Yao Yuzhong was responsible for selling the stolen goods, and the two divided the stolen money equally.
In August 2014, Wang Jingshan took his subordinates An Shenming, Li Xueguo and others to Feng Jie's antique shop and around the community for a period of time, found out Feng Jie's movements, and then discussed the process and details of the kidnapping together and arranged everything.
One day three months later, According to the prior plan, Wang Jingshan and his party tied Feng Jie to an abandoned mine in the mountains on the way to the black market, threatening him to kill him and throw his body into the ancient tomb if he did not hand over the stolen cultural relics.
Feng Jie had no choice but to offer the key to the safe, and Yao Yuzhong and others successfully took away 11 pieces of hongshan jade that were extremely valuable.
Soon after, Yao Yufei, who learned the news, had a big fight with the third brother, and the two brothers eventually turned against each other, but for Yao Yuzhong, who was greedy for money, brotherhood was obviously not as good as the temptation of money.
However, although Yao Yuzhong is greedy for money, he is not a scrooge and a miser, on the contrary, his favorite is to spend money, and the life of the four walls of the family when he was a child made him become more intense when he grew up, going in and out of luxury cars, eating and wearing luxuriously, and spending thousands of dollars on the casino.
He almost never saves money, and the first thing he does after every time he gets the stolen money is to run to the casino to play all night, often winning and losing million yuan in one night, and once in a casino in Hebei Province, he lost nearly ten million yuan in one night and still did not want to stop.
According to media reports, he has debts in many casinos in the northeast, Hebei and Inner Mongolia, the most of which is more than 70 million, sometimes he has no money to give, he casually takes out the cultural relics in his pocket as collateral, and treasures worth more than 1 million yuan are mortgaged at a discount, and almost never redeemed.
Yao Yuzhong has been robbing the tomb for more than thirty years, relying on a keen sense of smell and a cautious style that has not been discovered by the police, and he himself is very proud of it, but with the continuous improvement of the mainland police's case-handling ability and technology, Yao Yuzhong's tail was finally caught.
In the second half of 2014, when the Chaoyang Municipal Public Security Bureau of Liaoning Province was investigating the tomb robbery case, it accidentally found an unusual person, who wore glasses, was neatly dressed, looked very elegant, like a university professor, but he often ran to the mountain for more than a day, staying for a day, not like a hobby of climbing, but like "stepping on the point", this person is Yao Yuzhong.
The experienced police quickly locked their eyes on him and began to explore all his social relations and account transactions in detail, and after several months of hard work, Yao Yuzhong's Laodice was stripped of all, and his crime of stealing cultural relics was also put to fruition.
On November 26, the public security bureau set up a special team to arrest Yao Yuzhong, and that day was his birthday, the next day at 3 a.m., when Yao Yuzhong and his gang were digging graves on the mountain, the police with guns and live ammunition rushed up and took all the tomb robbers to the ground.
After dawn, the police rushed into Yao Yuzhong's mansion and found more than a dozen valuable bronzes, jade wrenches and other cultural relics in the safe, and later found 4 strings of red agate beads in the dry well of Yao Yuzhong's hometown, which were funerary products from the Liao Dynasty.
Under the strict interrogation of the police, Yao Yuzhong clearly explained his decades of experience in tomb robbery, and then the police pulled out a series of tomb robbers, arrested 225 criminals, destroyed 12 criminal gangs, recovered 248 first-class cultural relics, 142 second-class cultural relics, 262 third-class cultural relics, and 1411 general cultural relics, with a total value of more than 500 million yuan.
On October 17, 2017, the Liaoning Provincial High People's Court issued a final judgment, saying that Yao Yuzhong was sentenced to death with a two-year suspension of execution for the crimes of excavating ancient cultural sites, ancient tombs, robbery, and reselling cultural relics.
Yao Yuzhong, who had enjoyed more than thirty years of glory and wealth, finally came with nothing and left with nothing, and he said that he never regretted it, and even shouted, "If I don't die, I can open the Tomb of the Qin Emperor!" ”
bibliography
1. Legal System Cloud: "Tomb Robber Yao Yuzhong: More than 200 tomb robbers worth 500 million yuan, but there was not a penny in Kali when he was arrested"
2. China Daily: "The Chief Offender of the Largest Tomb Robbery Case Was Sentenced to Death Suspension for Two Years"