Shen Congwen and Qi Gong are both people in the identification of cultural relics in modern times, and have read countless true and false historical relics, celebrity calligraphy and paintings, and ordinary calligraphy and painting playthings cannot enter their eyes at all, but they all like the courtyard of Wang Shixiang's family.
Who is Wang Shixiang?
Moments of exuberance
During the Republic of China period, under specific historical conditions, the leading figures took the lead in opening up many undertakings for New China, and Wang Shixiang was everyone in the plaything, and people called him "the first player in Beijing" at that time.
After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Wang Shixiang, who was in his early 30s, joined the "Qing Loss Society" under the introduction of two big celebrities, the ancient architect Liang Sicheng and the director of the Palace Museum, Ma Heng, which was the beginning of his career.
The "Qing Damage Association" was a committee responsible for investigating the losses of cultural relics in Peiping, and Wang Shixiang took up the post of assistant representative with his own knowledge of traditional Chinese studies and professionalism in art history.
Keenly aware, he found that during the War of Resistance Against Japan, many Japanese and Germans traded with Chinese cultural and business circles to sell cultural relics.
These cultural relics are extremely valuable, how can they be swayed by a few merchants? So he decided to find an opportunity to learn from well-known antique dealers.
In 1946, after having a drink with forty or fifty antique dealers in Beiping, he learned a more detailed clue, and the German Yang Ningshi was very concerned about the excavation of bronzes in Henan, and was active in the Tianjin area of Beijing and bought many cultural relics.
So Wang Shixiang made a secret visit and learned that the company he worked for was called Chanchen Foreign Firm, and he immediately made a secret visit and found that a secretary was sorting out the name catalog of Henan bronzes, which really hammered Yang Ningshi's dirty behavior of selling cultural relics.
Undaunted by power, Wang Shixiang found Song Ziwen of the Song family to explain the original situation, explain the stakes, and finally recovered more than 200 national treasures, including precious treasures such as "Shang Gluttony Pattern Daqi".
Subsequently, Wang Shixiang touched the melon and received more than 1,800 precious cultural relics left by Puyi in Tianjin within a few months.
In order to recover a batch of good books, Wang Shixiang personally went to Japan and recovered national treasure-level works, including the Song periodicals "Selected Writings of the Five Ministers", "Book of later Han", "Book of Rites", and "Yongle Canon", which can be described as a great contribution.
Because of this merit, in March 1947, there was a new candidate for the post of head of the Antiquities Section of the Palace Museum, that is, Wang Shixiang.
Since then, many basic work in the Forbidden City has been planned and carried out, and Wang Shixiang has decided with enthusiasm to build the Palace Museum into a world-class museum.
Junior players
Wang Shixiang's keen mind and obsession with cultural relics are inseparable from his family environment and vision.
Wang Shixiang was born in an elite family, his mother Jin Zhang was a famous Chinese flower and bird painter, authored "Qing Dynasty Painting History Supplement", "Haoliang Zhile Collection" and other works about how to paint fish and study the history of painting.
His father, Wang Ji, worked in diplomacy, served as secretary general of the State Council of the Beiyang government, and was also a collector and connoisseur.
In such a scholarly family, parents hired private school teachers for their children from an early age, but Wang Shixiang in his youth did not love to learn, only to play.
He focused his attention on the crickets in the autumn, the eagles in the sky, the gourds in the courtyard and the flocks of pigeons, and his friends were all brothers who walked the streets.
When he was ten years old, his father sent him to an American school to accept American culture, but wang Shixiang wrote pigeons in his homework even when he learned English.
Stumbling through his teenage years, his mother's death hit him hard, and he was determined to be angry and stronger.
So I read a master's degree in the School of Literature of Yenching University, and the title of my master's thesis was "Research on Chinese Painting Theory", which explored the history of painting from Qin to Song, which was quite a memorial to my mother.
This is not the end, after graduation, it is supplemented by the history of painting in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
After doing this work, he went south under the advice of his father to find a way out, until in the Sichuan area of Chongqing, he met the noble Liang Sicheng, so he followed Liang Sicheng to study and work in the China Construction Society.
Until working at the Palace Museum, Wang Shixiang never forgot his interest in studying literary plays and antiquities.
Misfortune and great luck
However, when his career was in full swing, he was persecuted and arrested and imprisoned.
During more than a year in prison, he was bombarded in turn and suffered great physical and mental damage, but wang Shixiang even joked with the interrogators after he decided that he could never commit suicide.
But even so, life in prison still made it difficult for him to walk.
After examination, it turned out that I had tuberculous pleurisy, which was a great misfortune, but he said: "No matter what kind of impact I have suffered, even out of thin air, I ask myself to be strong, strong, and strong, as long as I live long, I will be able to laugh to the end!" ”
Later, Wang Shixiang was released to go home, but this was mixed news, and it was of course a good thing to release him to go home, but an official letter put him in a low point, that is, the original unit Palace Museum expelled him!
In the end, he was able to live, and the job could be found again, but later, he still had the opportunity to return to the Forbidden City, and after several turns, Wang Shixiang finally did not serve in the Forbidden City, and then he immersed himself in the world of "playing" again.
Play and learn
This big player, who regards interest as learning, often goes to museums one by one and studies pieces of furniture one by one.
In order to understand the structure of the furniture, he studied with the old craftsman, and many of the collections he found on his bicycle from the city tile shop and even the cold stall Xiaoshi.
There are many small things that he also has a unique view, pigeon whistles, gourds, bamboo carvings, lacquerware, grasshoppers are all his best things.
Compared with the current cultural relics program "only see things, not see the text", Wang Shixiang pays more attention to the cultural spirit, charm and history behind the cultural relics.
He is good at summarizing theories from practice and rising to cultural concepts, and the "Ming-style Furniture Appreciation" published in the 1980s is Wang Shixiang's representative work.
"Commentary on the Decoration of the Skull", "Self-Cherished Collection", "Chinese Gourd", "Continuation of Calligraphy and Painting Inscription" and so on are all his works.
In his later years, many of his collections were in his family's courtyard, and many cultural celebrities visited, including Zhang Boju, Wang Zengqi, Qi Gong, Shen Congwen and other figures.
brief summary
The ups and downs of history make people guess that a lifelong disaster, an open-minded attitude to life and an interest that has always maintained a young age are the two magic weapons that he has achieved in his lifetime.
Wang Shixiang has always been the teenager of the Eagle throughout his life.