Yao Zheng's speech at the symposium of the Cultural Relics Bureau

Yao Zheng, president of the Civil Relics Protection Committee of the China Academy of Strategy and Management, made an important speech at the symposium on encouraging the legal collection of cultural relics held in the fourth conference room on the second floor of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage on the afternoon of May 15. Focusing on the theme of the speech arranged by the Cultural Relics Bureau, Yao Zheng described the following three aspects:

1. The current situation of folk collection of cultural relics

Yao Zheng said: In accordance with the arrangements of the leaders of the China War Society, the Non-Governmental Cultural Relics Protection Committee of the China Society for the Study of Strategy and Management conscientiously investigated, discovered, and protected the number and current situation of the country's heavy weapons collected by the nongovernmental society to fill the gaps in history before the 19th National Congress. According to this deployment, the results of the survey results of the Cultural Protection Council are briefly described as follows:

Chinese folk have a large number of heavyweight ancient bronzes. Among them, the length of the longest ancient bronze sword reached 6 to 8 meters; the ground motion instrument was 2.4 meters wide and high, and weighed 2,000 kilograms; the smallest group of dings (yiyan jiuding) was 1.66 meters high, the largest was 4.87 meters high, and the gold content of the nine dings with a total weight of 18 tons was no less than 1.5 tons, and there were more than 20,000 inscriptions engraved around the ding; the gilded chimes found by the investigation were as many as 10 sets by a collector alone; and countless bronze carriages and horses (larger than the original objects) were countless.

Ancient Chinese jade. Whether it is Sanxingdui culture, Liangzhu culture or Hongshan Panhongshan culture, there are a large number of large-scale ancient jade jade carvings. A set of Sanxingdui jade soldiers is 3.3 meters long and 1.88 meters wide, and only the bottom back is carved with more than 1,300 ancient Shu characters, which is a rare large-scale jade carving in Chinese and foreign military history to show the theme of war; among the ancient jade ware of Sanxingdui, in addition to a large number of large-scale sacrifice ceremonial vessels, many jade carvings with Buddhist themes have also been found. Liangzhu ancient jade also has large instruments, and it is not uncommon for Tianzi to travel, large chimes, and even golden jade clothes. Pan-red mountain jade, black-skinned jade is even more unimaginable. A set of jade dinosaurs is 54 meters long and weighs 8 tons, a total of 289 pieces are combined; one collector has a collection of thousands of black-skinned jade masks, without any repetition; another collector has a large collection of ancient crystal carvings, including hundreds of crystal skeletons of various colors, while the British Museum has only one 5.5 kg white crystal skeleton, which is the museum's controversial collection.

The large-scale folk cultural relics that have not been collected by these Chinese and foreign museums are the best examples of the spirit of craftsmen of the Chinese nation and the cultural self-confidence of the Chinese.

In recent years, we have organized collectors to visit museums around the world many times, mainly to investigate and understand the loss of Chinese cultural relics overseas. Through the visit and inspection of dozens of famous museums, comparing overseas Chinese cultural relics with similar cultural relics in China, it was found that the collections in these famous museums overseas basically belong to the general products in our opinion, and the truly exquisite ancient cultural relics are still in China, and mainly in the folk. From this association, if 50 exquisite cultural relics can be selected from the folk and supplemented to the National Museum, it will play a major positive role in re-understanding the origin of Chinese civilization and world civilization in the world.

2. How to solve the bottleneck of restrictions on the legal collection of cultural relics by the people

In view of the theme of this speech, Yao Zheng stated from three aspects: First, where is the bottleneck? He took out a supplementary agreement signed with the Palace of National Culture and said: In March this year, the Cultural Protection Association held an exhibition of cultural relics at the Palace of National Culture in Beijing. Soon the above instructions came down, and let the Cultural Protection Association sign this supplementary agreement, the three core contents are first, the "Huaxia Treasure - Chinese Folk Collection Theme Exhibition" was immediately suspended, the relevant promotional materials and packaging bags were immediately sealed and destroyed, and could not be issued again, and the relevant advertisements were dismantled in time; the second was the newly opened exhibition "Folk Collection Theme Exhibition", which was from March 06 to March 26, and the name and explanatory text of the exhibits could not have chronological expressions such as the date and year number Third, during the exhibition, the organizers and individuals shall not take the initiative to invite representatives and members of the two sessions to visit the exhibition, shall not accept any media interviews, and shall not respond to social concerns. What is the problem with the name "Treasures of China - Theme Exhibition of Chinese Folk Collections"? Last year, the Cultural Protection Association held 8 Belt and Road Chinese folk cultural relics in the country, and there was no objection anywhere, so how did it become wrong in Beijing? The exhibits cannot mark the name age, so how will the inheritance of Chinese civilization be reflected? You are not allowed to invite delegates to the two sessions, what are you afraid of? Another thing: A member of the CPPCC National Committee of the Cultural Relics Bureau and a former director of the Bureau of Cultural Relics said in his speech at the two sessions that there is an exhibition of treasures whose exhibits are even seen by the common people as fake. I ask you, which common people see which thing is fake? If the people all know how to identify, what else should the Cultural Relics Bureau do? This is the bottleneck! Second, to solve the bottleneck of restraint, it is necessary to grant amnesty to collectors across the country for cultural relics that have been legally collected. If this historical problem is not solved, no one will dare to collect it later. Third, it is recommended to relax the restrictions on the creation of folk museums. Refer to foreign countries, for example: there is a Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, England, the exhibition hall area is only 150 square meters, and all the things in it are fakes. Because Holmes is only one of the protagonists in the novel, there are no actual characters and physical objects in history, but the hundreds of people who ask to visit the museum are witnessed by us, and the museum ticket revenue is real. For example, the Bug Museum in the United States, the Cockroach Museum, etc., which are not even imagined in China. As long as the restrictions on the creation of domestic folk museums are relaxed, there may be many unexpected gains. It is not terrible to produce an irrational museum, and society and reality will let it fend for itself.

3. How to solve the bottleneck of the legal circulation of cultural relics

Yao Zheng said: First of all, we must solve the public opinion orientation of the mainstream media. For more than a decade, our mainstream media has been promoting that there is no real thing and no national treasure in the folk, so as a person who intends to collect, he does not dare to enter the field of collection. If our media can vigorously promote Director Liu Yuzhu's view that the private cultural relics are several times the storage capacity of the museums in the system, it is actually a reassurance for those who intend to invest in the field of collection.

Finally, Yao Zheng added that in order to liberalize the level of circulation of cultural relics, except for the heavy equipment of the state that cannot be bought and sold, the rest of the cultural relics are all open and allowed to enter the circulation field. All kinds of museums (state-owned and non-governmental) are allowed to sell cultural relics to collectors, and cultural relics exchanges and trades between various museums are allowed. Last year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States publicly sold 501 pieces of Chinese porcelain to the public, and the museum's sale of cultural relics to the public is not without precedent.

May 15, 2017