A leaf boat is floating thousands of miles of waves, and a pearl has traveled through thousands of years, which is about this bizarre national treasure cultural relics with a bizarre background and ups and downs - Xijia Pan. It was buried underground, then used as a pan on a kang table by a farmer, and eventually coveted by overseas auction houses, and was lucky to return to the embrace of the motherland. The legendary story of Xijiapan has witnessed the ups and downs of Chinese civilization but it has continued endlessly.
The name Xijiapan seems to be unremarkable, but it contains its origins. The person who made it was named Xijia, and he was a brave warrior in the Western Zhou Dynasty. In 827 B.C., King Xuan of Zhou personally conquered the south and crusaded against the Huainan barbarians. In order to show his glory, Xijia hired craftsmen to create this plate, and engraved the battle history on the bottom of the plate word for word, so as to show future generations.
133 ancient seal handwritings, recording a history of beacon fire. The Xijia plate became one of the most precious bronzes in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, not only because of its exquisite craftsmanship, but also because it carried too many stories to sing and cry about.
Although the plate is small, it has witnessed the rise and fall of most of Chinese civilization. Xijia used it as a burial object, and slept under the loess with its owner, and slept for thousands of years. It was not until the Southern Song Dynasty that the Xijia plate was discovered by chance and rediscovered.
But people didn't think it was anything special at the time. After all, compared with porcelain, calligraphy and painting and other cultural relics of the Song Dynasty, a bronze plate is not a rare treasure. The Xijia plate was buried for hundreds of years, and it was not until the Yuan Dynasty that it was discovered by a discerning minister and collected into a private treasure house.
Since then, it has started a life of wandering and wandering, and has been in the hands of major collectors in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Xijia plate finally fell into the hands of the great collector Chen Jieqi, but it also experienced a tortuous past of "pancake copper pot".
In 1920, Chen Jieqi discovered the uniqueness of this seemingly ordinary "frying pan" by chance.
In the winter of that year, Chen Jieqi wandered around the south of the Yangtze River in search of folk collections. One night, he stayed in a peasant house, and the housewife made him some snacks to satisfy his hunger. Just when Chen Jieqi was chewing slowly, he suddenly found some strange traces on the pancakes, and when he looked closely, it was actually lines of ancient seal characters!
How could a collector who loves cultural relics miss such treasures? Chen Jieqi immediately called the housewife to him and asked where the "frying pan" she was using came from. It turned out that the ancestor of this peasant woman was also a scholarly family, and there were a number of antiques in the family, but unfortunately the ancestors did not pay attention to it, and this plate was regarded as an ordinary living utensil.
Chen Jieqi knew at a glance that this was by no means a thing in the pool, and immediately bought it at a high price. He returned home and carefully cleaned and took care of the plate, removing hundreds of years of old dirt, revealing the whole picture of the 133 ancient seal characters at the bottom. Chen Jieqi was pleasantly surprised when he read it, it turned out that this was the long-known Xijia plate!
For a time, this national treasure caused an uproar. Countless collectors and scholars have come to see the real face. But no one expected that this thousand-year-old treasure would have been a pancake pan in an ordinary farmer's house for many years. This anecdote later became a good story of Xijiapan's life experience.
Chen Jieqi is the last private collector of Xijiapan. After his death, the whereabouts of the Xijia Pan became a mystery. It is reported that it was stolen and plundered in that turbulent era and was exiled overseas, and for a time, Chinese people searched for major museums around the world, but they had no choice but to find it.
At the end of the last century, there was news that the Xijia plate appeared in Japan. Several experts rushed overnight after hearing the news, but it was eventually confirmed that it was just a fake. There is also news that it is on display in a university museum in Hong Kong, and experts rushed to take a look, but it is still an imitation.
Just when people had given up hope, in 2014, a shocking news spread that Xijiapan had reappeared in the rivers and lakes, and it was in China! It turned out that four years ago, an enthusiastic Chinese had won this national treasure at a high price at a small auction house in the United States.
The Chinese usually loves the return of cultural relics, and he fell in love with Xijiapan at first sight, although everyone questioned its authenticity at the time, but he finally spent nearly 210 million yuan to buy it. After several years of research, it was finally confirmed that this is the real Xijia plate. As a result, the Chinese brought his beloved things back to China to share the glory of this culture with his compatriots.
In 2014, Xijiapan was presented to the world for the first time in a museum in China, causing an uproar.
The reappearance of the Xijia plate in the world has attracted the attention of countless experts and scholars. They conducted a comprehensive and detailed appraisal of this national treasure, from the material, craftsmanship, text to its history, all of which were reviewed and verified.
After the interpretation of paleographic experts, the inscription of 133 characters at the bottom of the plate records the battle of Xijia with King Xuan of Zhou to conquer the Southern Barbarians, and describes the battle scene of that year. Bronze experts are full of praise for the craftsmanship of the disc body, believing it to be a masterpiece of bronze casting techniques in the late Western Zhou Dynasty.
What's even more amazing is that through careful inspection of the plate, the experts found a tiny "scar" - a shallow pit, shaped like a spatula scraped by a spatula in long-term use, which can confirm that this national treasure was indeed used as a frying pan by the people for a while.
This small "scar" has witnessed the twists and turns of the bizarre history of Xijiapan, which is like an indelible imprint, which makes people admire the tenacious vitality of this cultural relic even more.
Experts have given a very high evaluation to the Xijia plate, believing that it is the largest and most complete inscription bronze in existence in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it is invaluable. Some experts bluntly said that if it is auctioned, the transaction price of Xijia Pan can easily break the billion mark.
The whole country rejoiced at the reappearance of this national treasure. Some scholars sighed: "The reason why Xijiapan can go through thousands of years of immortality is because it carries too much memory and pride of the Chinese nation. ”
Once used as a frying pan, the Xijia plate has finally been reborn on the land of the motherland, and this cultural pride is born in the hearts of every Chinese son!