May 18 is International Museum Day. When it comes to museums, many people think of the cultural relics that have been lost overseas on the mainland.
According to the statistics of the Chinese Cultural Heritage Society, since the Opium War, a total of more than 10 million Chinese cultural relics have been lost overseas, of which the number of national first- and second-class cultural relics is as high as more than 10000000.
When discussing the loss of cultural relics, there is one place that cannot be avoided, that is, Jincun.
For the Chinese archaeological community, these two words mean a memory full of grief and sorrow.
Located in Pingle Town, Mengjin County, Luoyang City, Henan Province, Jincun is an inconspicuous small village, but it is one of the locations of the tombs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.
In the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, eight tombs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty kings and nobles buried in the underground of Jincun for more than 2,000 years were stolen and excavated, and a large number of precious cultural relics were lost overseas, many of which were rare treasures and peerless unique products, and their loss was no less serious than the Tibetan scripture cave of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, which can be described as the death of China's national treasure.
As Zhao Xiaojun, the leader of the archaeological survey and survey of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty Tombs in Jincun (launched in 2022) and the president of the Luoyang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, lamented, "A group of Eastern Zhou Dynasty Tombs, which had been buried underground for thousands of years, unfortunately encountered a group of ambitious foreign cultural relics thieves during the turbulent years of war and chaos, which led to an unprecedented 'cultural relics catastrophe'." ”
"It is enough to keep every Chinese awake at night and sigh..."
1
eventful period
The twenties and thirties of the twentieth century were an eventful period for modern China, with warlords fighting each other and the political situation in turmoil.
In April 1928, the Feng army of warlord Zhang Zuolin attacked Henan and engaged in fierce battles with Feng Yuxiang's defenders.
It was against this background that in the summer and autumn of 1928, an earth-shattering event occurred in the history of the loss of Chinese cultural relics overseas in Jincun, located near Luoyang.
Geographical manifestations of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty Wangling District, Jin Village, Pingle Town, Mengjin District, Luoyang City, Henan Province
Xinhua News Agency (data photo: Courtesy of Luoyang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
The investigation data of the Luoyang Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics "Reading a City for a Thousand Years" wrote:
In the summer and autumn of 1928, heavy rain fell in the area of Jincun, about 1.5 kilometers east of the village, the bottom (ground) layer collapsed, exposing the cave, the local villagers felt very strange, went into the cave to explore, knew that it was an ancient tomb, that is, the robbery and excavation.
Subsequently, Kaifeng Christian missionaries, Canadians Huai Luguang and so on also heard the news, set up tents and stoves, coerced and lured local villagers to openly excavate and steal, from 1928 to 1932, successively excavated eight tombs, unearthed thousands of extremely precious ancient cultural relics.
These cultural relics were loaded into large and small baskets, and then transported to Luoyang by horse-drawn cart, and then dumped overseas.
After stealing a large number of rare cultural relics, Huai Luguang once wrote a report entitled "A Group of Rare Relics Found in China", which was published in the "(National) Peking Library Journal", and later entangled some people to write the book "Luoyang Ancient (Old) City Ancient Tomb Examination", since then the Jincun Tomb has been famous all over the world.
From the above information, it can be seen that in the past four years, thousands of precious cultural relics unearthed from the eight tombs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty kings in Jincun were first transported to Luoyang by horse-drawn carriages by tomb dealers, then looked for foreign buyers, and then shipped overseas after the transaction was completed.
According to the exact information, we now know that the largest buyer of Jincun cultural relics is Huai Luguang.
2
Dual identity
In 1897, at the age of 24, William Charles White was selected by the Anglican Church of Canada to preach in Fujian, China, beginning a 38-year missionary career in China. He worked hard to learn traditional Chinese culture and came up with a Chinese name - Huai Luguang.
Traveling on a rickshaw
In 1910, at the age of 37, Huai Luguang became the youngest bishop in the world of the Anglican Church at that time, and was sent to Kaifeng, Henan Province to establish and preside over the Church in northern China. Until his retirement in 1934, he lived in Henan for 24 years.
In 1924, Huai Luguang returned to Toronto for a sabbatical and visited Charles Corelli, director of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, and proposed that he could collect Chinese artifacts for the museum, and the two hit it off. Since then, Huai Luguang has been openly identified as a missionary of the Anglican Church in Canada, but secretly has another secret identity that is not known, that is, the antiquities agent of the Royal Ontario Museum. The museum provided all the funds for his collection of Chinese cultural relics in China.
As mentioned earlier, in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, when various warlords in Kaifeng and Luoyang in Henan Province were fighting, and the military and political rule took turns to sit in the village, the government was unable to control the matter of robbing tombs and smuggling cultural relics, so it gave unscrupulous antique dealers an opportunity. As a bishop, Huai Luguang had a wide range of channels, and he was able to obtain information about new cultural relics and trade them through the network of clergy and many believers in various parts of Henan, as well as antique dealers.
Shen Chen, who now works at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, mentioned in his paper "The Legend of Jincun: Huai Luguang and the Mystery of Luoyang Cultural Relics":
"The purpose of Huai Luguang's collection is to establish a museum collection...... As a result of his work in Kaifeng, he took advantage of his geographical position to maintain close ties with local antiquities brokers, and mainly collected pre-Han bronze and jade artifacts excavated from Anyang and Luoyang. These middlemen would take out the antiquities they had in their hands and let Huai Luguang make the first round of selections before sending them to the antique market in Beijing. ”
It can be said that most of the Jincun cultural relics collected by the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada came from the hands of Huai Luguang.
On February 4, 1930, in a letter to Miss Greenway, Curator Curator Creilly's secretary, he informed him that a batch of cultural relics had been mailed to Canada from Kaifeng, and that for the first time he had reported to the museum the origin of these "Golden Village" cultural relics: these cultural relics were acquired on February 16, 1929. Due to the civil war here, the postal parcel delivery address was wrong, which caused the shipment of this batch of goods to be delayed for a period of time...... These artifacts (Nos. 96~98) are from a site in the ancient capital of Luoyang, which is about three miles away from present-day Luoyang (Henan Province).
The "cultural relics" mentioned in the letter include one bronze kneeling figure, five gilded bronze chariots and horses, and a pair of bronze bow bearers.
When he heard that two or three similar bronze statues had been unearthed in the same pit, he did not hesitate to buy another one and wrote in another letter to the museum:
Another bronze kneeling figure has appeared, and I must make a decision at once, and I will not have time to wait for your telegram to reply... It's truly a beautiful work of art, and as soon as I saw it, I had the idea that I wanted to get it... As for the information about the excavation, it was unearthed a few weeks ago from that site in the former capital of Luoyang.
This bronze kneeling figure is indeed "exquisite" as Huai Luguang said, and it can be called a rare masterpiece of Jincun cultural relics. The figure is in a half-kneeling state, with his hands folded forward in front of his chest, holding a cylinder, and the pipa-shaped belt hook on the belt on his body is delicate and beautiful, and the overall shape is vivid and simple, intriguing. Regarding this bronze kneeling figure, it is speculated that it is the base of the utensil, most likely the lampholder.
Bronze seated figure, Royal Ontario Museum, Canada
Huai Luguang was full of indifference to the robbery and excavation of the Jincun Tomb, and once said: "As for whether those tomb robbers will be in trouble, I don't think so?" Because local warlord forces and government officials are involved. Besides, I don't care. ”
It was an open secret at the time that Huai Luguang sought and used every opportunity to buy all the artifacts unearthed in Jincun. Therefore, he is always the first to get new information about the excavated artifacts and get satisfactory harvests from antique dealers and antiquities brokers.
In about ten years, under the promotion of Chinese and foreign cultural relics agents and brokers such as Huai Luguang, the precious cultural relics of Jincun were swept away.
Various sources, including Huai's writings, show that between 1925 and 1934, Huai Luguang acquired more than 8,000 Chinese artifacts for the Royal Ontario Museum. According to the statistics of the Royal Ontario Museum in recent years, as many as 1,182 of them belong to the Golden Village cultural relics.
In 1930, the Nationalist Government promulgated the first Antiquities Protection Law, and a year later, the Enforcement Rules of the Antiquities Protection Law were promulgated and implemented, which stipulated archaeological excavations and the export of cultural relics.
China's antiques market has shrunk rapidly, the number of antiquities traded has plummeted, and the export of antiquities has been restricted. Thus, the "golden age" of selling Jincun cultural relics for export came to an end.
In August 1933, Huai wrote to Curator Corelli about his decision to withdraw from collecting artifacts for the Royal Ontario Museum, writing with mixed feelings: "Now the opportunity to do more for the museum is over." ”
In March 1934, Huai Luguang returned to Canada on a cruise ship from Shanghai.
3
Only 3 remain in China
At that time, the news of the cultural relics unearthed from the tomb of King Jincun spread far and wide, and the undercurrent surged, attracting many antique brokers to this small village. Huai Luguang is not the only foreign agent, there are also Ofa Kalbock with a Swedish background, Yamanaka Chamber of Commerce with a Japanese background, and Lu Qinzhai from the multinational company "Lu Wu Company", and so on. As a result, the cultural relics of Jincun have found their way into the hands of major museums and private collectors in the West.
There are thousands of cultural relics unearthed in Jincun, and there are still many that do not know what to do. Huai Luguang's "Luoyang Ancient (Old) City Ancient Tomb Examination", Mei Yuan Sueji's "Luoyang Jincun Ancient Tomb Juying", is only a part of the collection of all the unearthed cultural relics. At present, the museums and individuals that can be identified as the collection of cultural relics excavated in Kanemura are: the Royal Ontario Museum of Art in Canada, the Harvard University Art Museum in the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, the Freer Museum of Art, the Art Center of Chicago, the National Museum of Sweden, the Eisei Bunko and the Izumiya Hakukokan in Japan.
For example, in 1928, the Warring States Biao bell unearthed from the Kanamura Tomb, a total of 14 pieces of this set of bells, 2 pieces are now in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, and the remaining 12 pieces are in the Izumiya Hakukokan Museum in Japan.
Chimes of the Gelding, Collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada (2 pieces)
From the inscription, it can be seen that the casting date of this set of bells is the 22nd year of King Weilie of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and the owner of the instrument is a general of the Jin State "Biao", who was rewarded by the monarch in a war of war because of his bravery. This set of chimes was unearthed in a complete set, intact and precious.
The bronze mirror with gold and silver dragon patterns in the collection of the Freer Museum of Art in the United States is engraved with 6 entwined dragons between the button seat and the edge, and the dragon body is inlaid with gold and silver wrong patterns. The embedded gold and silver threads are as thin as a hair, and the craftsmanship is extremely exquisite.
Wrong gold and silver dragon pattern bronze mirror, collection of the Freer Museum of Art, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA, collects a dragon-shaped jade pendant, cyan jade, carved into a dragon, and the end is connected into a ring. Open mouth and show teeth, there are horns on the head, the body is engraved with twisted silk patterns, the idea is peculiar, the demeanor is vivid, it is a masterpiece in the ancient jade carving.
Twisted dragon-shaped jade pendant, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
A jade belt hook in the collection of the Harvard University Art Museum in the United States, cyan, with brown dip marks in some places, is more quaint. This jade belt hook is pipa-shaped, the head of the beast, there is a hook button at the bottom, and the back is carved and decorated. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the jade belt hook shape system has three parts of the structure of hook head, hook body and hook button, this is because the clothing shape has undergone major changes at this time, and the top and bottom clothes have begun to appear as a whole, and the exquisite jade belt hook has been favored by the princes and nobles and has become a symbol of status, which has brought an opportunity for the use and popularity of the hook.
Jade Belt Hook, Collection of Harvard University Art Museum, USA
At present, there are only 3 pieces of Linghu Jun's heir pot in the Warring States Period, Jincun Dading and wrong gold and bronze ruler in the Warring States Period, which are collected in the National Museum of China, Luoyang Museum and Nanjing University.
Linghu Jun's heir pot is said to be unearthed in Jincun in 1927, with a straight mouth and a short neck, a lid, a hollow pan mantis pattern lotus petal around the cover, and five ways around the body of the pan mantis. There is an inscription of 50 characters on the neck, which is a eulogy for the heir of the Linghu clan to cast a pot.
Linghu is in the southwest of present-day Shanxi, and belonged to Korea during the Warring States period.
Linghu Jun's heir pot, collection of the National Museum of China
When Chen Mengjia, a famous bronze expert, met Lu Qinzhai in Europe, he proposed that Tsinghua University was preparing to build a museum, hoping to get Lu Qinzhai's sponsorship, and named this Linghu Jun's heir pot, so it was sent back to China to be owned by Tsinghua University, and later transferred to the National Museum of China.
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Text | Chen Wenping is a professor at Shanghai University and deputy director of the China Overseas Cultural Relics Research Center
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