What is the meaning of cultural relics?
The precious legacies left by countless dynasties from the Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties also contain the immortal glorious history of the Chinese nation and the essence of the ingenious skills of the predecessors, and their symbolic significance is more than their own value. Originally, these beautiful crafts should have been collected in the major museums across the country for the endless stream of tourists to enjoy, and at the same time, they praised the incredible and proud of the wisdom of our nation.
However, since the late Qing Dynasty, China's national strength has declined, the great powers have all come to attack, and countless foreign merchants have flocked to it, but they are actually cultural relics dealers, and the cultural disaster of the Chinese nation has broken out.
Those precious cultural relics that have endured thousands of years of ups and downs have been looted or bought at pitifully low prices, the most well-known of which is the difficulty of the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing and the difficulty of Dunhuang in Gansu, the heirlooms left by the ancestors have been exiled overseas in large quantities, they have been piled up by foreigners like worthless ordinary goods, and some unique orphans have disappeared, and the charm it should have shown has also disappeared in the long river of history.
As Mr. Yu Qiuyu put it in his essay "Taoist Tower": "That evening, when the adventurer Stein was about to leave for a bunch of ox carts filled with boxes, he looked back at the bleak sunset of the western sky, where the wounds of an ancient people were dripping blood. ”
This is a shame that cannot be named or forgotten.
However, with the end of the war and the establishment of new China, the dragons of the East are gradually recovering while licking their wounds, and our national strength is improving by leaps and bounds, and there have been qualitative changes in all aspects, which naturally include cultural relics and archaeology.
China will never lack patriotic descendants.
At the beginning, there was war and war everywhere, many ordinary people were forced to go into exile overseas in order to survive, and after a long time, they became overseas Chinese, but they never forgot where the blood flowing in their bodies came from, and after the country's turmoil subsided and the construction was restored, the overseas Chinese also settled down and established a family, and they had a patriotic heart and wanted to do something for the newborn motherland.
Some people return to their hometowns to set up factories, some people start schools, and some people donate charity.
Others have begun to search around the world for lost cultural relics, which, like themselves, have become homeless children in the shattering of mountains and rivers, and now, when people want to return home, cultural relics cannot continue to be lost.
As a result, batch after batch of precious treasures returned to the motherland from overseas Chinese around the world, and they either donated their own ancestral property or snapped it up from foreign auctions at a large price, but no matter how arduous the process was, in the end, only two words were left: free.
Among them, the representative figure is Mr. Sun Yingzhou, who as early as 1956 donated more than 3,000 rare treasures he had collected in his lifetime to the state, and did not take any point from the country, his collection includes ancient ceramics from the two Dynasties of the Jin Dynasty, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, as well as rare calligraphy paintings, precious rhinoceros cups, etc., and also contains a total of 25 pieces of national treasures of immeasurable value, such as the Ming Chenghua Doucai Sanqiu Cup.
There are many selfless sons like Mr. Sun Lao, which is why tens of millions of treasures have been reproduced in front of our eyes, just like the most representative zodiac beast head in the Yuanmingyuan, in the nearly one hundred years after being plundered by the Eight-Nation Alliance and lost overseas, it has been successively recovered by countless patriots through auctions and other ways, and now in addition to dragons, snakes, sheep, chickens, dogs, the others have returned to Chinese museums.
But those who have patriotism have people who betray the country, patriots will forever be passed on, and those who betray the country will be left behind for thousands of years.
In the storm of the late Qing Dynasty, a champion named Weng Tonggong was born, who won the championship in the temple examination of Xianfeng for six years and began to walk on the road of Qingyun.
He was the teacher of the two emperors of Tongzhi and Guangxu, and successively served as the minister of military aircraft and the ministry of works, the ministry of punishment, the shangshu of the hubu, and the imperial history of the left capital of the Duchayuan, who was indisputable as an official, but he was entangled in personal grudges with Li Hongzhang, and even caused a major defeat in the Battle of Jiawu to a certain extent.
But these are not the main points we want to say, in addition to politics, Weng Tonggong in poetry, paintings are quite accomplished, calligraphy is very accomplished, he likes to collect a variety of cultural relics, because of the status of the relationship, and even obtained a lot of treasures in the Qing Dynasty Palace, plus many people of the Weng family are officials in the dynasty, so six generations of accumulated family property treasures of ancient books and antiques countless.
With the great changes in the situation later, Weng Tonggong had no heirs, and this huge family property was passed on in the family until it was passed on to his fifth grandson, Weng Wange, who was only two years old at the time, in 1920, which was tantamount to a windfall for such a child.
Although he did not understand it at the time, he also understood the value of these treasures later, but Mr. Weng Tonggong, as a person who was loyal to the country, probably could not imagine the final destination of his own treasures.
In 1938, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was in full swing, Weng Wange, who had a well-to-do family, crossed the ocean to study at Purdue University in the United States, obtained a master's degree in mechanical and electrical engineering, and then transferred to the Fine Arts Department of the University of Wisconsin to start studying oil painting, and he spent a quiet and leisurely time abroad.
During this period, China experienced the baptism of war, and Weng Wange did not return to China until the final victory of the Liberation War in 1948, and the purpose of his return to China was to sort out all the family heirloom collections, load them on vehicles, transport them from Tianjin to Shanghai, and then load them on freighters, and all of them arrived in New York in 1949.
In this way, this large collection was stored in a warehouse in Manhattan for 30 years.
Since then, Ongwango has lived in the United States and has taken American citizenship.
Ongwango later bid farewell to the film industry. After his retirement, he deliberately carefully selected a good place, and took out a large amount of money to build a collection, named "Lai Xi Ju", which was specially used to preserve the collection.
In fact, in that chaotic era, there were not a few people like him, after all, in the midst of the war, everyone hoped to find a place to hide away from the threat of death, which was not something that should be condemned.
And if Ongwango lived in peace like this, with his assets and his own abilities, he could eat and drink without worry, and life could be extremely free.
But until 2018, a donation message publicly announced by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the United States, caused an uproar in China, which was the largest and most significant donation of Chinese paintings and calligraphy in the museum's history, spanning five dynasties in the thirteenth century, with a total of 183 pieces, including 130 paintings, 31 calligraphy, 18 rubbings and 4 pieces of embroidery, all of which are valuable Chinese cultural relics.
The donor of this collection is a Chinese-American, and I believe everyone can guess that he is Weng Wange.
In the face of his behavior, countless Chinese indignant, scolding him as an out-and-out traitor, but Weng Wange has his own reasons, he believes that every piece of the Weng family's collection does not belong to himself, but belongs to the museum, there is no border between cultures, and the inheritance and continuation of civilization should also transcend the boundaries of the country.
The reason why he will do this is because only museums can better collect and preserve cultural relics, and can better publicize and disseminate China's broad and profound culture to everyone, just like the Boston Museum of Art in the United States, which itself has a large blank in the field of Ming and Qing collections, and his donation can fill the gap well, and it is more conducive to the spread of Chinese culture to the outside world.
Admittedly, we must admit that Onwango's statement has some truth, and from the perspective of human culture, his donation is not meaningless, but there are two major errors between his approach and his statement.
First of all, this donation in 2018 is not the first time that Weng Wango, who is actually a long-term patron of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in the past decade or so, he has donated a total of 21 very important Chinese artworks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.
On the day of Weng Wange's 100th birthday that year, he donated the huge masterpiece "Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River" by Wang Yi, one of the sixteen-meter-long "Four Kings of the Qing Dynasty" that was also extremely precious in his family collection.
This painting is known as Wang Yi's "first masterpiece of his life", depicting the landscape along the Yangtze River for thousands of miles, the weather is magnificent, and it is naturally of extraordinary value.
When Weng Tonggong first saw it, he loved it so much that he even spent the four hundred taels of silver that he was going to buy a new house in order to buy a painting.
The loss of this masterpiece has shocked countless cultural relics experts and has become one of the most tragic tragedies in the history of China's national treasures.
And Weng Wange's two donations have won himself high praise from the American media, and also made the Boston Museum of Art jump into one of the most important collections of ancient Chinese paintings in the world.
The donation to the outside world is only a part, not enough to represent his character as a person, so did Weng Wange also donate his own collection to China? The answer is yes.
Since China entered the process of steady development, historical relics have also received more and more attention and strong support from the national government.
In 1985, two well-known scholars on the mainland, Qi Gong and Mr. Fu Xinian, were in the United States, and they stumbled upon the "Weng's Collection", which had disappeared for more than forty years, and suddenly appeared at the "Chinese Books Exhibition" of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States.
After learning about Weng Wange, an overseas Chinese who sits on a large number of valuable cultural relics, the relevant cultural relics institutions in the mainland naturally found him not long after, and under many communications, Weng Wange agreed to give away a part of the family collection.
Subsequently, he transferred a batch of 542 rare and rare ancient books of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties to the Shanghai Library.
But I believe that many people have noticed that Weng Wange is a transfer, and this transfer is actually through China Guardian International Auction Co., Ltd., and let Chinese buy back the precious cultural relics that originally belonged to the country at a sky-high price of 4.5 million US dollars in the hands of his compatriots.
Of course, there was nothing wrong with Ongwango's behavior, after all, this kind of thing is like donating blood, some people are willing to pay for free, and some people want to pay.
And those cultural relics are irreplaceable, and the value to the country is certainly more than the transfer price, but Weng Wange's subsequent donation of a large number of cultural relics to the American museum without compensation is in stark contrast to his reaching out to the motherland for money.
In this way, the reasoning about culture that he said in awe does not seem to be so valid, so it is naturally not surprising that he has been jointly denounced by domestic cultural relics experts and ordinary people, since things can be given to the United States for free without money, and this is regarded as selfless, so why not be ashamed to ask for money in the face of the needs of his compatriots in his homeland?
And from an objective point of view, Mr. Weng Wange sits on six generations of family property, countless rare treasures, he has also worked in the United States for most of his life, 4.5 million US dollars is a huge amount, but is it really rare for him?
The Weng family has a long inheritance, and there have been countless dignitaries and dignitaries in the clan, many of whom have made certain achievements in calligraphy and painting in addition to politics, and because of this, they also have a deep understanding of Chinese culture, and will pass on the treasures from generation to generation.
And Weng Wange from the age of two years to take over the ancestral huge property, and live abroad for many years, he preached the unity of culture, if he can not choose his origin, but feel that the American culture and land nurtured him, in order to know the gratitude of the map, then it is really not to squander the ancestral heritage, if he is also aware of the Chinese blood flowing in his body, then he should not treat the motherland and the United States differently, elbows turn outward.
This kind of behavior is indeed difficult to accept, the primary quality of any dignified Chinese is patriotism, and the state is willing to pay a high price to buy from Weng Wange, on the one hand, because these things are indeed precious and irreplaceable, on the other hand, it is also a gratitude to Weng Wange for protecting these precious cultural relics for a long time and perfectly, but he has not received his equally sincere attitude, which cannot help but make everyone feel very cold.
And with the passage of time, those orphans who have wandered overseas will become more and more scarce, some cultural relics are even unique, if China's descendants can not see the precious cultural relics left by their ancestors in their own land in the future, but also have to cross the ocean to foreign countries to visit, it is really sad, which is also the original intention of the country to vigorously find cultural relics.
Cultural relics carry the soul of a nation, let us continue to inherit, but also unite as one, but the Western powers that once burned and looted in China, now are still difficult for China, just like the yuanmingyuan beast head mentioned earlier, since the first world, the world knows their value to China, so the price of the back one after another is deliberately raised, until the last rat head and rabbit head were auctioned for 14 million euros.
You know, these twelve bronze statues were originally only architectural components, the independent value is not high at all, the reason why they can be auctioned at such a price is entirely because they are witnesses to the original humiliating history, and this matter itself is not inferior to the second humiliation.
Weng Wange only said lightly about the tide of condemnation in China: "What I donate is donated, and I don't care what others say." ”
Maybe he went abroad too early, maybe he inherited his ancestral inheritance, but he didn't inherit the spirit of his ancestors, so he could say such things alone, and he didn't understand Chinese feelings, and he didn't know that what he donated to the United States free of charge was the spiritual sustenance of thousands of people, and they represented neither art, nor culture, nor money.
That is part of our history, of every Chinese, and we look up at history to look to the future, which has never changed in the vast years of thousands of years.