Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1604 An Siyuan

In any case, it is useless to wage any more propaganda wars. The relief statue of the general has been seized in the United States, and the auction has basically failed. Now it has entered a real dispute over ownership. The Chinese side has taken the initiative in this lawsuit, and Lu Lirong has to fight it whether he wants to or not.

After the auction relics were seized, Lu Lirong and his lawyer hurried over from Hong Kong Island and claimed to the police and customs officers that the warrior relief was an ancestral relic with a history of more than ten years.

But such an argument is totally untenable, because it is now 1994. Even if it has been owned for ten years, that was 1984, and it was still after the Cultural Relics Protection Law came into effect, so China has full right of recourse.

Moreover, this "ten-year theory" itself is nonsense, because Zhou Zhi immediately pointed out that the state of soil flowers accumulated on the cinnabar at the bottom of the warrior statue showed that this cultural relic was not unearthed for a long time, less than ten years at all.

In response to Zhou Zhi's point, Lu Lirong argued that his elders used improper methods when storing the warrior statue, causing it to be in contact with the soil ground all the time, and therefore the cinnabar accumulated at the bottom of the stone statue did not dissipate.

But Zhou Zhi wanted Lu Lirong to explain like this, and immediately raised another detail, that is, the formation of soil flowers requires not only the contact between the base of the cultural relics and the soil, but also a stable and closed environment. The current state of the warrior statue shows that when Mr. Lu, your elders controlled the sealing conditions, temperature and humidity conditions perfectly when building the warehouse, which shows how much they valued the storage environment. Such a warehouse requires various equipment, and it must be maintained for more than ten years, and the investment must be considerable.

  But such a high-end warehouse does not have a floor and still directly uses a dirt foundation. And such important cultural relics are placed on the dirt foundation like this?

After this came to light, Lu Lirong could no longer find an excuse.

These disputes inside and outside the court were soon spread by interested parties. The news of the seizure of cultural relics and the debate between the two parties were soon widely reported by major media in the United States, Britain, Singapore, Hong Kong and other places. No matter how Lu Lirong defended himself, his logic was no longer tenable based on the examples cited by Zhou Zhi. People increasingly saw the truth of the matter and began to criticize the act of auctioning stolen items.

In the art collecting community around the world, the purchase of stolen items has been going on privately, but it has been unanimously condemned in public. This behavior is despicable. Any art gallery involved in a credibility crisis will inevitably see its business affected.

At this time, the relevant departments of Hebei Province once again sent evidence that the relief was the same size as the traces left at the theft site, and issued a certificate from archaeological experts to refute Lu Lirong's "ancestor legend."

After obtaining further supplementary information, including eleven key supplementary evidence including soil samples from around Wang Chuzhi's tomb that the U.S. Embassy in China and the New York City Customs Bureau sent a second letter to the Chinese side requesting, and facing irrefutable facts, the New York State District Attorney's Office, under the urging of Tony Huang, decided to prosecute Lu Lirong in accordance with the law, and Liang Pingyi represented the Chinese side in the lawsuit.

China's response to this incident was really too quick. When Lu Lirong was still struggling to deal with the problems at the current stage, China quickly produced strong evidence to push the matter to the next stage, leaving Lu Lirong completely overwhelmed.

At this critical moment, a Hong Kong art broker named Hou Zhongjin found Zhou Zhi and told him that the famous American collector An Siyuan wanted to meet him.

Hou Zhongjin was the general agent of An Siyuan in Hong Kong Island. In order to ensure that he could win An Siyuan's "Chunhua Ge Tie", Zhou Zhi sniped the attempts of Anzai Eiichi and Sakamoto Goro from the island country to interfere in the auction and threw out Kūkai's "Mahavairocana" for them to compete for. When Zhou Zhi was explaining the authenticity of "Mahavairocana" to everyone, he was also present, and even connected An Siyuan, who was far away on the other side of the ocean, to participate in the discussion.

The final appraisal opinion was recognized by everyone. The "Great Sun and the Sutra" repeatedly set new auction records at that auction. In the end, Ataka and Sakamoto had to resort to some tricks and use words to force Zhou Zhi to stop bidding before they were able to win it.

Using the Great Sun Sutra as a cover, Zhou Zhi quietly obtained the Chunhua Pavilion Tie for the country. The Chunhua Pavilion Tie was transferred from An Siyuan to China and finally collected in the National Museum. Speaking of private collectors of ancient oriental art, An Siyuan is a well-deserved master. He has been interested in collecting objects since he was a child. He started collecting Chinese stamps and gradually progressed to collecting snuff bottles. In 1960, he opened the An Siyuan Gode Gallery and engaged in antique business. He gradually became the most authoritative international Asian art antique dealer. He is recognized as the most discerning and tasteful antique dealer and collector in the United States and even the entire Western art world, and is known as the "Godfather of Chinese Antiques."

Now An Siyuan has long been "retired" and is only the chief representative of Sotheby's Education Institute in China and a senior art market consultant. His Chinese collections are mostly stone tablets and Ming Dynasty furniture, so when Hou Zhongjin came to tell Zhou Zhi that An Siyuan wanted to meet him, Zhou Zhi was really surprised and happy.

Even just having the opportunity to take a look at the collection in his hands was something Zhou Zhi longed for.

An Siyuan is a master at finding bargains, and these bargains are not limited to ancient works of art.

For example, where he lives now.

In 1977, during the economic depression, An Siyuan bought a 22-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York at a very low price and obtained permission to run an antique business in it.

It is only a ten-minute walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and faces the famous Central Park. It is one of the three best properties in New York.

More than 20 years have passed, and the price of this property has increased many times since it was purchased.

Walking into this residence, Zhou Zhi seemed to have walked into a museum that encompasses the cultures of many countries. The decoration here is extremely luxurious and elegant. The walls are covered with antique wallpapers and oil paintings from Europe. The aisles are filled with traditional Western furniture, and on them are placed various porcelain, bronzes, and sculptures made of various materials from Eastern China, India, island countries and even South Korea.

Many Chinese Ming Dynasty furniture are decorated with various stone carvings, helmets, glassware, gold and silver wares from Europe, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, and the floor is covered with carpets from China and Persia.

All these things are perfectly yet slightly bizarrely combined together. However, due to the owner's ingenuity, not only does no aesthetic conflict occur, but instead a sense of beauty precipitated by history is formed.

This is an experience that is completely different from that in a museum. Every antique and curio is close at hand and within reach. Walking in the corridor seems to be walking in history. This sense of history is often a bit "compressive" because the objects are too close. For people like Zhou Zhi who know their value, it is inevitable to feel awe and worship.

I don’t understand the oil paintings on the wall, but the impact of Chinese paintings on Zhou Zhi is already very strong.