In October 2002, the Hong Kong Marriott Hotel held an auction called "Royal Faith". When the lots "Lotus Petal Seat Pastel Painting Golden Amitayus Buddha" and "Silver Mandala" were unveiled, Ye Peilan, a cultural relics expert, widened her eyes in shock.
Judging from the number of cultural relics, they are all cultural relics in the collection of the Palace Museum, but why do they appear at auction?
Ye Peilan wrote a letter to report to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, but unexpectedly uncovered a case of self-theft of cultural relics that shocked the world......
The source in this article comes from the official media (Sina.com "From Cultural Relics Expert to Cultural Relics Thief: The Beginning and End of Li Haitao's Transformation", Sina.com "The Two Male Protagonists of Hebei Chengde Cultural Relics Case: From Talent to Thief", China Collection Network "From Cultural Relics Expert to Cultural Relics Thief: The Beginning and End of Li Haitao's Fade (Picture)"), but in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!
The genuine product was sold, leading to a mystery
On October 28, 2002, the "Royal Faith" auction hosted by Christie's Hong Kong was in full swing in the lobby of the Hong Kong Marriott Hotel. The auction mainly auctioned Buddhist treasures from the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and more than 20 wealthy merchants came from all over the world to participate in this rare auction.
The "Royal Faith" auction exhibited a total of 49 auction items, each of which has extremely high artistic value and has been acquired by wealthy businessmen. In a matter of moments, the auction was in the most exciting finale, with the two lots on display being the ones mentioned at the beginning, and the atmosphere was boiling.
Ye Peilan
The first piece on display is the lotus petal base pastel depiction of the Buddha Amitayus, the Buddha statue is exquisitely crafted, and the details are also very well handled. Another cultural relic, the silver mandala, is composed of a pavilion and a disc, although it is a vessel for offering Buddha statues, the shape is also elegant. Everyone flocked to this, but Ye Peilan frowned silently.
Ye Peilan, a professional in the mainland cultural relics industry and a staff member of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, attended the auction mainly to supervise the auction process. When she noticed the original label on the bottom of the Buddha statue and the silver mandala, Ye Peilan's face changed instantly—aren't these all cultural relics from the Palace Museum?
Lotus petal base pastel depiction of gold Amitayus Buddha
The reason why Ye Peilan thinks that the Buddha statue and the silver mandala are both from the Palace Museum is because the labels of both are marked by her personally, and they can be recognized at a glance by looking at the handwriting. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937, the Palace Museum moved some cultural relics to the south, and the rest were marked with "Liuping" and "Old". And the Buddha statue and the silver mandala are one of them.
The original labels of the Buddha statue are "Liuping 20338", "Review 22", and "Therefore 160801", while the original labels of Yinmandala are "Liuping 56004", "Review 515", and "Therefore 141442". Judging from the labels of these two Qing Dynasty cultural relics, they obviously belong to the collection of the Palace Museum, but why did they suddenly "flash" to Hong Kong?
Years of experience in the industry told Ye Peilan that this matter must be extraordinary, and she urgently reported the situation to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage after the meeting. The National Treasure was auctioned off in Hong Kong, and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage attached great importance to the matter, and even organized a special person to investigate. Soon, a place name attracted everyone's attention - the Cultural Relics Bureau of Chengde City, Hebei Province.
According to the database of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, in 1972, the Buddha statue and the silver mandala were assigned to the Chengde Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau of Hebei Province for safekeeping. Together with more than 5,000 other cultural relics, they have been stored in the Cultural Relics Management Office of the Outer Eight Temples for safekeeping, and are occasionally brought out for exhibitions.
Chengde Wai Eight Temples
Since the Buddha statue and the silver mandala are the responsibility of the Outer Eight Temples Cultural Relics Management Office, do the staff members of the Management Office know about the two cultural relics being auctioned? In view of the seriousness of the situation, the investigation team immediately set off for Chengde, Hebei Province, to learn about the situation from the Outer Eight Temples Cultural Relics Management Office. So, will the investigation team get the results they want?
Known as the "Pearl of Purple Plugs", Chengde is a thousand-year-old city with historical buildings such as summer resorts and outer eight temples. It was once the second political center of the Qing Dynasty, witnessing the ups and downs of several generations of Qing Dynasty emperors, and has a profound cultural heritage. Every year during the tourist season, countless tourists gather here to find the footprints of history.
After the investigation team arrived in Chengde, they first docked with the Chengde Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau, and then rushed to the Waibamiao Cultural Relics Management Office to investigate. Li Haitao, director of the security department, was the first person the investigation team met, and as soon as he finished popularizing the law, he received a call from the Cultural Relics Bureau, and rushed to lead the investigation team to the treasury to verify whether the cultural relics had been stolen.
"Impossible! Those two artifacts have been stored in Kufa all along, how could they be stolen?"
Li Haitao muttered while frowning, while opening the door of the warehouse for the investigation team, leading everyone to the place where the Buddha statue and the silver mandala were stored. It is not empty, the "missing" Buddha statue and the silver mandala are standing safely, indeed as Li Haitao said. Moreover, the other artifacts in the treasury are all there.
This is even more wrong, Ye Peilan is a well-known figure in the mainland cultural relics circle, and her judgment will never be wrong. Assuming that the Buddha statue and the silver mandala were not stolen in the first place, wouldn't the two national treasures in the auction be fakes?
National treasures are unique, and since the real thing has appeared at auction in Hong Kong, it is impossible for the one left in the warehouse to be the real thing. In order to find out the truth, the investigation team identified the Buddha statue and the silver mandala in the warehouse, and the results surprised everyone. Not only are these two national treasures fakes, but the other artifacts in the treasury are all fake!
The Buddha statue and the genuine part of the silver mandala were taken to auction, and the matter was bad enough, but I didn't expect that the other cultural relics of the Cultural Relics Management Office could not escape the catastrophe. The investigation team immediately notified the Chengde police, who arrived at the scene and conducted a comprehensive survey of the warehouse. After ruling out many possibilities, the police concluded that the incident must have been committed by insiders.
Scenario simulation
The warehouse of the Cultural Relics Management Office is windowless, and the door has two layers of wooden doors and iron doors, and only Li Haitao, who holds the key, can enter and exit freely. As the director of the security department, Li Haitao has more opportunities to contact with cultural relics than ordinary people, and the suspicion is undoubtedly the greatest. So, is the theft of antiquities and fakes really related to him?
Prison guards who steal from themselves will eventually be severely punished
Li Haitao, born in 1960, lives in Weichang Manchu Mongolian Autonomous County, Chengde City. He joined the army after graduating from junior high school, and at the age of 21, he transferred to the Waiba Temple Cultural Relics Management Office. Although he was only an administrator at first, Li Haitao, who loved cultural relics, continued to work hard to improve himself, and finally won the attention of his superiors by studying hard.
In 1985, Li Haitao was sent to the Department of History of Shanghai Fuda University for further study, and returned to the unit three years later to serve as a backbone. In 2002, with the papers on cultural relics published over the years, Li Haitao was promoted to the director of the security department of the cultural relics management office of the Outer Eight Temples. At the same time, he is also a top-notch scientific and technological talent in the city, and his future is bright.
Li Haitao
"He (Li Haitao) lives a very simple life, often riding a dilapidated 28 bicycle to and from work on time, often carrying a big cloth bag, he doesn't like to talk, and he doesn't like to join in the fun. ”
In the eyes of his neighbors and colleagues, Li Haitao is an "honest man" who is quiet and quiet, maintaining a two-point and one-line life between his work and home every day. Although his income is not low, Li Haitao always wears the blue coarse cloth coat and eats a unit meal of five cents every day. But such a person ended up going the wrong way.
As the police put Li Haitao in the police car, the other side hidden under his "Mr. Yes" mask was also exposed to everyone with Li Haitao's confession. In the summer of 1993, a chance encounter with his old classmate Yan Feng in Chengde gave him the idea of stealing and selling cultural relics. Since then, Li Haitao has fallen deeper and deeper into the quagmire called desire.
The first thing Li Haitao sold to Yan Feng was a porcelain pastel Pemba bottle, which was sold at a high price of 40,000 yuan, and Li Haitao traded with Wu Hongkuan, a deputy director of the Haicheng Museum, at the end of the same year. On the condition of selling 24 cultural relics, Li Haitao made a profit of more than 40 yuan from Wu Hongkuan, and also harvested two high-class dogs.
Porcelain pastel Pemba bottle
Human desire is a bottomless pit, and there will never be a time to fill it, and Li Haitao is the same. In 1996, he sold the purple gold and copper Amitayus Buddha and the blue ground pastel entwined lotus flower to Yan Feng for 110,000 yuan; two years later, Li Haitao made a profit of more than 20 yuan from Wu Hongkuan with eight cultural relics such as the turquoise Amitayus Buddha.
Guarding self-theft is a high-risk operation, but Li Haitao has a treacherous mind and has already thought of countermeasures. Whenever he stole and sold cultural relics, he would put the fakes made by the trustee in advance in the warehouse, and then quietly take the real ones out for sale in a large cloth bag or briefcase. This kind of strategy of "stealing beams and changing pillars" can be described as tried and tested repeatedly under the use of Li Haitao.
But Li Haitao was not satisfied with this, in order to obtain greater profits, he later reached a cooperation with Wang Xiaoguang, a middleman in the northeast. In 2001, Li Haitao sold a 100-kilogram Amitayus Buddha to a man named "Little Beijing" for 1.35 million yuan. Later, the Buddha statue mentioned at the beginning and the silver mandala were also stolen and sold.
The Buddha statues and silver mandalas that appeared at auction in Hong Kong were originally handled by Li Chunping, a Chinese-American, from Li Haitao, and then turned into auction items after several turns. And with Li Haitao's confession, this case of self-theft by civil and military guards that shocked the whole country has finally come to light, and the law will finally give him the punishment he deserves.
According to statistics, Li Haitao has stolen a total of 288 cultural relics in the past ten years, involving a number of crimes such as unauthorized alteration of cultural relics files. On 18 August 2003, the Chengde Intermediate People's Court sentenced Li Haitao to death for theft, and he was executed six years later. Li Haitao, who embarked on the road of no return for profit, finally paid for his greed with his life.
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Resources
[1] Sina.com, "From Cultural Relics Expert to Cultural Relics Thief: The Beginning and End of Li Haitao's Transformation", http://collection.sina.com.cn/yjjj/20101130/10133262.shtml
[2] Sina.com, "Two Male Protagonists in the Chengde Cultural Relics Case in Hebei: From Talents to Thieves", https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2004-09-09/15384279478.shtml
[3] China Collection Network, "From Cultural Relics Expert to Cultural Relics Thief: The Beginning and End of Li Haitao's Fade (Picture)", http://news.socang.com/2010/11/29/1104561189.html