Have you ever heard of Captain Touching Gold? This is not a fictional character from a TV series, but a real grave robber that exists around us. Imagine that while most people are still struggling to make a living, some people are looking for the tombs of ancient emperors with metal detectors in the middle of the night, trying to get rich overnight. In 2014, something like this really happened. In Chaoyang, Liaoning Province, two ordinary people unexpectedly dug up precious cultural relics at the national treasure level in three days. What kind of courage and madness is this? Don't they know it's a crime, how did they find these treasures that no one knows? Join me in an in-depth look at this shocking grave robbery.
Tomb robbery, the word sounds a bit mysterious and taboo. Before the TV series "Notes on Tomb Robbery" became popular all over the country, many people were full of curiosity about it, but the tomb robbery in reality is far more thrilling than the TV series. Tomb robbers, nicknamed "Captains of Gold", are often of extraordinary courage and skill, and are often part of a clan that has inherited ancient crafts.
In China, tomb robbery has a history of thousands of years, and since ancient tombs, some people have coveted the gold and silver treasures that accompany the burial. In modern times, with the progress of archaeological technology and the improvement of laws, tomb robbery has been reduced, but it is still repeatedly prohibited. Especially in some areas where the protection of cultural relics is not strictly protected, grave robbery incidents occur from time to time, which brings great challenges to the protection of national cultural heritage.
Let's go back in time to 2014, a lesser-known town - Chaoyang, Liaoning Province, although not as prosperous as Beijing's Chaoyang District, but in the eyes of archaeologists, it is a treasure. This is the core area of Hongshan culture, which is one of the important birthplaces of the ancient culture of the Chinese nation, with many precious cultural relics and ancient tombs.
It is this preciousness that attracts the covetousness of tomb robbers. In the summer and autumn of 2013, Hongshan suffered two large-scale excavations, and although some stolen artifacts were later recovered, they shook the entire archaeological community and the public security system. The police have begun to increase patrols and surveillance of the area, but the methods of the grave robbers are constantly being renovated.
Just when everyone thought that the Hongshan site had a chance to breathe, one winter night in 2014, two ordinary locals, who did not have any deep historical knowledge and did not understand any advanced archaeological technology, had a whim and tried to try their luck through a metal detector because of the influence of "Tomb Robbery Notes". Who knows, they really found the entrance to the ancient tomb in an inconspicuous woodland.
It's not a movie, there's no special effects, there's no background sound, everything is so real. Using the most primitive tools, they began to dig. The soil layer was gradually excavated, and a layer of dust for an unknown number of years was lifted. As they went deeper, a radiant cultural relic began to be revealed, the most shocking of which was a national treasure called "Jade Pig Dragon", a kind of prehistoric jade, there are only three remaining pieces in the world, each of which is priceless.
These two ordinary people were carried away by the huge wealth for a while, and they began to dream of overnight wealth. The good times did not last long, after all, tomb robbery is illegal, and the laws of the country are inviolable. As they prepared to move the artifacts on the third day, the police had already begun to intervene and quickly arrested the two of them.
This tomb robbery case not only unravels a theft gang, but also reflects the loopholes and challenges in the preservation of cultural relics at a deeper level. As a result, the cultural relics protection work in Chaoyang City has been pushed to the forefront. Wang Hongyan, director of the Chaoyang Public Security Bureau's Cultural Relics Protection Bureau, said in an interview that many of the ancient tombs are located in remote fields that ordinary people simply cannot notice. This has brought great difficulties to the protection of cultural relics.
More worryingly, as the Redhill culture has become more and more popular, more and more tomb robbers are attracted to the treasures here. Although the local government has set up the Hongshan Cultural Reserve, which covers an area of more than 90 square kilometers, it is almost impossible to completely prevent theft in such a vast area.
In the years that followed, Chaoyang's cultural relics protection work was gradually strengthened, and there were significant improvements in technology and staffing. Drone patrols, the use of underground detection technology, and a stricter legal system are all part of protecting this cultural treasure. But the problem remains, and the technology of the tomb robbers is constantly improving, and this is a war without gunpowder.
In this war, every cultural relic that has been successfully protected is not only a respect for history, but also a responsibility for the future. In the dead of night, there may be countless treasures waiting to be discovered in the great underground of the rising sun, but we prefer that these treasures can be properly excavated and studied in the hands of professionals, rather than destroyed by those greedy hands.