As we all know, before the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large number of national treasures were shipped overseas. The country has been making unremitting efforts to return the national treasure to the motherland. Today, I will introduce you to a cultural relic, this cultural relic was partially lost overseas, and finally the state bought it back for 20 million US dollars, this national treasure is the dish of heaven Quanfang (léi).
It is in the collection of the Hunan Provincial Museum
It is a wine vessel in the late Shang Dynasty, with a height of 84.8 centimeters and a height of 63.6 centimeters. The lid is engraved with the seven-character inscription "Dish Tian Quanfu Cha Zun Yi"; The body of the vessel is engraved with the five-character inscription of "Vessel Father Chazun Yi". Because this vessel is the largest of the Shang and Zhou Fang Wei found in China, it is also known as the "King of Fang Li".
The sky is all right
It weighs 51.5 kilograms and can hold 50.93 liters of wine. The body is decorated with animal face patterns, the collar is decorated with bird patterns, the shoulders are decorated with quilt patterns, there are eight hook-shaped ridges from top to foot, and the whole body pattern is lined with delicate thunder patterns, which is very exquisite.
It is a national treasure-grade bronze vessel consisting of two parts: the body and the lid. After this national treasure was unearthed, it passed into the hands of many people, and finally the body was lost overseas. In 1919, a local farmer named Ai Qingyan in Taoyuan County, Hunan Province, accidentally discovered this national treasure while plowing his fields. At first, Ai Qingyan didn't know its value, so he casually placed it in a corner of his home. It wasn't until five years later that the lid of the Dish Tian Quanfang was bought by a regimental commander of the local garrison for 3,000 silver dollars.
On June 11, 1925, the seventh edition of the "Ta Kung Pao" in Changsha, the Republic of China, reported this incident with the title of "Taoyuan Found Antiquities of the Taimiao Temple of the Shang Dynasty, Regretting to Buy Them for Others' Private Travel".
The body was purchased by the American oil tycoon Rockefeller for 800,000 US dollars, and Rockefeller wanted to buy the lid at that time, but the head of the regiment who bought the cover sat on the ground and asked for $500,000, and the two broke up unhappily. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the lid of the vessel was nationalized according to law and has been kept by the Hunan Provincial Museum.
Compared to the lid, the experience of the body is more complicated. After Rockefeller purchased the artifact, the artifact was also in the hands of more than 20 collectors. Judging from the overall situation of the body and the lid of the device being combined in one, the body is obviously mottled in color and is not well protected.
In order to make the body and lid of this national treasure complete, the Hunan Provincial Museum has not been able to find the whereabouts of the body after years of efforts. In March 2001, it was surprising that the body of the vessel appeared at Christie's in New York. At that time, China hoped to buy back the national treasure, but in the end, it was defeated by a French collector who offered a high price of 9.24 million US dollars.
Just when it was thought that this national treasure might never return to China, in 2014 Christie's will auction it again. In the end, after hard work, the Chinese side bought back the body that had been overseas for nearly 100 years at a price of 20 million US dollars.