Since the Opium War, the old China, which once thought it was the land of the king under the whole world, has fallen into boundless suffering, so that foreign historians have special words to call China's 109-year history from 1840 to 1949, that is, "a hundred years of shame." The former Heavenly Dynasty kingdom was not only cut off from a large area of territory, the people were oppressed by foreign invaders, and there was also another area that suffered a major blow, that is, the cause of cultural relics protection.
Due to the chaos of the war at that time, many foreigners regarded China as a paradise for stealing cultural relics, and the understanding of cultural relics protection from the government down to the people was insufficient, so that a large number of cultural materials were exported overseas and could not be recovered. In the process of the loss of this national treasure, some Chinese people have also played a disgraceful role in playing the role of playing for the tiger and enriching their own pockets. Lu Qinzhai is one of them, and his chaotic family life shows his character of putting personal interests first and disregarding moral integrity.
Born in Zhejiang in 1880, Lu Qinzhai died of illness in his parents and was raised by relatives. After becoming an adult, he entered the Zhang family in Nanxun as a servant. This Zhang family is not ordinary, and the eldest son of their family is Zhang Jingjiang, who later served as chairman of the Kuomintang and was honored by Dr. Sun Yat-sen as a "revolutionary saint". Lu Qinzhai worked well in the Zhang family, and his mind was quickly appreciated by Grand Duke Zhang. In 1902, Lu Qinzhai followed the master's family to Paris to help manage the Zhang family's business of selling Chinese porcelain calligraphy and paintings in France, which became the beginning of Lu Qinzhai's involvement in the cultural relics industry.
Lu Qinzhai quickly learned French and English in France, and gradually mastered the ability to identify antiques and cultural relics under the guidance of his teacher. Later, Lu Qinzhai did not return to China with Zhang Jingjiang to carry out the revolution, but chose to stay in France to open his own antique shop.
At that time, The Chinese warlords were in a scuffle, and a large number of cultural materials in the Forbidden City fell to the people, and many foreign cultural relics collectors saw this opportunity to want to buy a large number of Chinese cultural relics. Lu Qinzhai keenly realized that this was a good opportunity for him to "soar", so he used his superb ability to identify cultural relics to purchase many valuable cultural relics from China at low prices and then sell them to foreigners. In order to further stimulate the interest of foreign collectors, he also held a number of exhibitions and lectures on Chinese cultural relics in Europe, so that foreign buyers were no longer satisfied with decorative porcelain, but began to be interested in the cultural relics in ancient tombs.
Lu Qinzhai, for his own business to become bigger and bigger, is no longer satisfied with the acquisition of cultural relics on the market, he even secretly contacted tomb robbers, smashed the famous Tang Taizong Zhaoling Liujun and smuggled them out of the country. Four of them were found and detained by the Beiyang government customs in time, but unfortunately, two were shipped abroad and sold to the University of Pennsylvania in the United States at a high price.
However, he often walked by the river, where he could not get his shoes wet, and his career was planted in the hands of Tan Jing, the leader of the famous counterfeiting group, at the peak of his life, and suffered heavy losses. Coupled with the fact that after the founding of New China, this kind of cultural relics was sold and lost the way to purchase goods, and in the early fifties he had to close his company and end all cultural relics business.
At the age of 30 he fell in love with Orga, a French woman four years older than him, but Olga also had a patron who supported her, and she was unwilling to give up the glory and wealth there. So the two discussed and decided to let Olga marry Lu Qinzhai when she was 19 years old as a maid and the daughter Mary of the man, so that the two could live in a house with a proper name.
You must know that Mary was only 15 years old at the time, and after marriage, poor Mary had to endure her husband and mother in front of her, but she also bore him four daughters. But Lu Qinzhai had a serious feudal mentality, and when asked about him, he would always say that he had no heirs and never mentioned China to his daughters.
Lu Qinzhai's life caused the loss of many Chinese cultural relics overseas, and his whereabouts are still unknown. But he also funded Chinese students in France and used a large amount of his family property to aid the anti-Japanese forces during the War of Resistance Against Japan. In 1957, he ended his complicated life in Switzerland.