Cover news reporter Yang Fan
On December 1 last year, the bronze statue of The Horse Head was officially returned to the Yuanmingyuan, becoming the first important cultural relics lost overseas to return to the Yuanmingyuan.
On February 26, 2021, according to foreign media reports, Warner Bros. will launch a movie about the theft of looted cultural relics in the Yuanmingyuan in Europe, "The great Chinese Art Heist". It is understood that an important section of the film is the theft of cultural relics from the Chinese Pavilion of the Fontainebleau Museum in France in 2015. In 2012, Jackie Chan starred in a Chinese-language film about finding the head of the beast in the Yuanmingyuan, "Zodiac Signs", and "The Great Robbery of Chinese Art" was the first time that the story of the looted cultural relics of the Yuanmingyuan was brought to the big screen in Hollywood.
Fontainebleau Palace Chinese Pavilion
Case backtracking: Two thieves stole 20 artifacts in 6 minutes
On March 1, 2015, a theft of cultural relics in France caused a sensation in the world. According to the Associated Press, at 6 a.m. local time in Paris on March 1, 20 treasures from the Chinese Pavilion of the Fontainebleau Museum in France were stolen. Surveillance video shows two hooded thieves breaking into the Chinese Pavilion, apparently knowing the location of the artifacts they wanted, smashing the display case glass with chairs and taking away the artifacts. To cover up the traces, they also used fire extinguishers to spray foam at the crime site. The alarm sounded, but by the time the night security guards arrived at the Chinese Pavilion, the thieves had fled, and the entire crime was only more than 6 minutes.
Subsequently, the French side released a partial list of 20 stolen cultural relics, including the copper tire filigree enamel unicorn stolen from the Yuanmingyuan by the British and French forces, and the Tibetan Buddhist ritual vessel Kimmanza. There are also 6 artifacts including a gift from King Rama IV of Thailand to Napoleon III. The outside world believes that this determines the difficulty of stealing, packaging, and transportation, and also determines that the number of people involved in this case cannot be only one person, but a gang crime.
The crime occurred at 6:00 a.m., indicating that the thieves had made precise calculations and analyses, and had made many explorations of the exhibition hall and the surrounding terrain, especially the situation in the museum, so as to ensure the possibility of success. This further illustrates the professionalism of the gang and the planning of the entire case in advance. The burglars made at least several visits to the site of fontainebleau, an organized and systematic act.
Zhu Haowei's "Heavenly Demon Bandit Group 2" was a sensation
After the theft of cultural relics in the Collection of the Chinese Museum of the Fontainebleau Museum in France, some foreign media marveled: these treasure thieves are comparable to the high-IQ thieves in the movies "The Trap of Stealing The Sky" and "The Heavenly Magic Road", with strong action plans and superb modus operandi. The case has been unsolved for 6 years. This time Warner invited Zhu Haowei to direct "The Great Robbery of Chinese Art" in order to restore the earth-shattering case of that year to the greatest extent.
Zhu Haowei, 42, is a Chinese-American director based in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. In 2001, he wrote and directed his first short film "Silent Rhythm". In 2002, he directed the song and dance short film After the Kids Left, which was taken in by Steven Spielberg and acquired. In 2016, Zhu Haowei directed the magic crime film "Amazing Monster 2", which was a sensation and won the Asian Society Film Diversity Award. The film tells the story of a group of thieves with extraordinary intelligence, who use their magic skills to complete a difficult theft mission.
Zhu Haowei
It is understood that the film is adapted from the 2018 gq magazine article written by Alex W. Palmer, focusing on the theft of Chinese cultural relics in many European museums such as Fontainebleau, mainly the cultural relics looted by the French from the Yuanmingyuan in 1860.
Fontainebleau Palace has the largest collection of cultural relics in the Yuanmingyuan, and was almost stolen the year before
After the Anglo-French army destroyed the Old Summer Palace in 1860, some of the artifacts were presented to Queen Victoria by British officers, and the artifacts were later entered into the British Museum. The official museum with the largest collection of cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace is the Fontainebleau Palace in France. In 1863, the French commander Montauban dedicated the looted artifacts into seven carts to Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie.
Subsequently, Queen Eugenie built the Chinese Museum on the ground floor of the pierre building in Fontainebleau, which treasured and displayed thousands of treasures such as ancient Chinese Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, gold and jade jewelry, jade carvings, cloisonné, and pagodas. Fontainebleau Palace, a hunting palace of French kings who is said to have been translated by Zhu Ziqing, covers an area of 0.87 square kilometers, larger than the Forbidden City, and the Chinese Pavilion is known as "the reproduction of the Old Summer Palace in the West".
Cloisonné unicorn stolen from the Fontainebleau Palace China Pavilion in 2015
Perhaps the cultural relics of the Chinese Pavilion in Fontaineplea Palace are very precious, or perhaps the "headless theft case" in 2015 gave other thieves confidence, in 2019, on the night of December 27 to 28, six thieves plotted to enter the "Chinese Queen Museum" in Fontainebleau Palace to commit theft, but this time they were unlucky and were detained by the French police before they began committing crimes. According to Le Parisien, police found crowbars, hoods, gloves and hammers in the trunk of the car, which was parked in the parking lot of the hotel where they were arrested. While in police custody, the suspects denied planning to loot the museum on the grounds of "simple sightseeing tours," and several of them were registered with the Spanish judiciary for theft and drug trafficking.
Interior view of the Palace of Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau Palace
Old photos of the Old Summer Palace
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