introduction
In China's thousands of years of history, countless cultural treasures have been born, but with the turmoil of the country, the chaos of the war, many precious cultural relics have been destroyed or lost overseas. As the saying goes, "When hard work arises, there are few stars around it." The mountains and rivers are broken and the wind is fluttering, and the life is floating and raining." In the face of the chaotic national situation, the people are all in danger, and those national treasures and cultural relics naturally have a miserable fate.
But there are also some people who hold the treasures handed down from generation to generation, and some of them either dedicate themselves to the motherland for free, while some choose to sell them to the motherland at a high price. For example, there was once such a person who collected precious cultural relics left by his ancestors, but at that time he chose to sell some of them to China for a high price of 32 million, in fact, this practice was not reprehensible, but shockingly, he chose to donate 183 precious cultural relics to the United States free of charge. And the person who made such a ridiculous move was Weng Wango.
Born in 1918, Weng Wange was also the fifth-generation grandson of Weng Tonggong, a well-known politician in the late Qing Dynasty. As we all know, Weng Tonggong served as the prime minister during the Tongzhi Guangxu Dynasty and the Imperial Court at that time, and Weng Tonggong himself loved works of art and loved collecting all his life, and in 1875, he used more than 400 snowflake silver from his plan to buy a new house to buy the famous painting "Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River".
Because Weng Tonggong did not leave any descendants in his lifetime, he also left all the painstaking collections of this life to his brother before he died, and then the brother passed on to his son, and finally these collections also fell into the hands of Weng Wange, the fifth grandson of Mr. Weng Tonggong. It is said that Wengwango was only two years old when he took over the treasures of his ancestors, and he did not understand the value of these things at all, and when he grew up, Wengwango once said: "It is like pie falling from the sky."
Although these treasures were thrown into his hands out of thin air, Weng Wango was also angry, and he had been doing his best to protect the treasures of these countries all his life. In 1948, in the social unrest in China, in order to escape the war, Weng Wange and his family went overseas to live. However, after another change of living environment, he naturally needed to take these collections with him, when he went from Tianjin to Shanghai, and then from Shanghai all the way to New York, after a year, in early 1949 they successfully arrived in the United States, under the careful care of Weng Wange, these hundreds of ancestral treasures were not damaged, which also provided an important basis for future generations of research.
Onwango once said that he had lived all his life for his family, and this made his life. In fact, the Weng family is a collector, and Weng Wange, as a descendant, naturally guards these treasures as well as the ancestors expected, and for decades, Weng Wange has continuously introduced China's long cultural history to Western countries, and has also participated in the filming of dozens of educational films and documentaries about Chinese history.
In this way, Mr. Ongwango should be regarded as a patriot who has done his best to protect the country's protection, but what is unexpected is that on July 28, 2018, on the day of Ongwango's 100th birthday, he made a puzzling decision, on the same day, Mr. Wenwango announced that he would donate a total of 183 cultural relics to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA, and in the previous ten years, Ongwango also donated 21 cultural relics to this museum. This includes the Yangtze River Wanli Map that Weng Tonggong bought at a heavy price that year.
What is even more puzzling is that in 2000, 19 years ago, Weng Wange transferred a total of 80 kinds of rare ancient books from his collection totaling 542 copies of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties to the Shanghai Library for $4.5 million by auction. For a while, there was a lot of discussion in the outside world, and many people did not understand why Mr. Weng Wange did this, donating Chinese cultural relics to the United States free of charge, but selling them to China for tens of millions of dollars. Although these cultural relics belong to Mr. Weng wango himself, he has the right to choose and dominate, but as a Chinese he should also know that the motherland has been trying to save those treasures that have been lost overseas.
In response to the outside world's doubts, Weng Wange and his nephew also made some responses, first of all, they believed that China could not protect these cultural relics, and the impression of the motherland in Weng Wange's mind was still very solidified, and even stayed in the previous assessment of China's strength. In fact, because Weng Wange had moved to the United States in the early years, he had not witnessed the vigorous development of the motherland, and he did not realize that China's current economic take-off had enough strength to protect and inherit these cultural relics.
In addition, because Wengwango has lived in the United States for a long time, but the United States has strict regulations and controls on the export of cultural relics, Wengwange also needs to go through various cumbersome and complicated procedures to donate to China. And for Weng Wange, he has almost been running for the protection of cultural relics all his life, although he is a collector, but he has also been a collector, so for Mr. Weng Lao, these years of keeping cultural relics have made him physically and mentally tired, so now he chooses to donate to the United States, which is also his own heart.
epilogue
However, despite this, most people still cannot understand Weng Wange's behavior, even if at the rational level, what kind of choice Weng Lao makes is beyond reproach, but from the perspective of affection, this is also a bruise on national feelings.
"Over Zero Ding Yang"