Six generations of Weng family loved to collect cultural relics, calligraphy and painting, and several generations tried their best to protect the cultural relics at home. The most prominent time of Weng's family should be 150 years ago, when it experienced four dynasties, three dynasties were officials, and it was also the period of Emperor Weng Tonghe. Weng Tonghe is a favored son in our eyes. He was the top student in high school at the age of 26, and he rose to the top in the world. In just a few years, he became a big shot in North Korea. It is precisely because of this position and influence that the Weng family's long road to family collection and protection will begin.
As a rising star, Weng Wanghua is not the great-grandson of Weng Tonghe, but he is also the most outstanding child in the collateral department. Since he was two years old, he has taken on the responsibility of guarding the family collection. After more than 90 years, with the attitude that the waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves before, he has successively served as a calligrapher, poet, artist, photographer, director, social activist in China, ambassador for the promotion of Chinese culture and many other honors, quite inheriting his grandfather Weng Tonghe's demeanor as prime minister and minister of state at that time. Since studying in the United States in his twenties, he has been traveling around the world to promote China culture.
It is such an outstanding old man with strong patriotic feelings, but on the occasion of his centenary birthday, he made a move that shocked the Chinese people. He donated more than half of his precious collections, including calligraphy and painting, copybooks, rubbings, embroidery and other cultural relics spanning over 1000 years *** 183, to the Boston Museum of Art in the United States with immeasurable value. Make it the museum with the largest number of China cultural relics abroad.
Even before that, Mr. Weng Wange generously presented this museum with a disgusting masterpiece of16m by Wang Cui, an invaluable painter and painter in Qing Dynasty.
This actually happened on July 28 last year in the United States. It happened to be Mr. Weng Wanghua's centenary birthday, and his birthday party was also very interesting. It was organized by Boston Museum. After the announcement of this decision, it immediately aroused the anger of countless China people at home and abroad. Even if these cultural relics are hidden by Weng's family, there is no reason to raise your hand to outsiders. What's more, what Mr. Weng Wange did before is even more incomprehensible and unacceptable.
It turns out that in 2004, Mr. Weng Wanghua presented 542 precious ancient books collected by his family from Song Dynasty to Qing Dynasty to Shanghai Library at an ultra-low price of only 4.5 million US dollars. At that time, it won him a good reputation, and it was for this reason that more people in China realized that this China native who had already settled abroad had been worried about his motherland.
The huge difference between the two movements is really unacceptable to countless people. Even if you don't donate cultural relics to the country, you can't give them to outsiders for nothing. In addition, we know that Mr. Weng Wanghua actually donated dozens of cultural relics to the Boston Museum of Art in the first few decades, and has long funded the museum. In Mr. Weng's words, this is the first museum he came into contact with after coming to the United States. He trusts and believes that they will protect all the wealth of these families.
Faced with the abuse and anger of countless Chinese people, Mr. Weng seems unmoved. He believes that culture and history have no national boundaries, and he only does what he thinks is right when he still has the ability. After all, in addition to more than 500 rare books sold to Shanghai Museum earlier, he also donated paintings and paintings from the Ming Dynasty to Peking University, and donated the manuscripts of Diary of Weng Tonghe and Weng Literature Series to Shanghai Museum and painters from the Southern Song Dynasty.
Mr. Weng thinks his treasures are too precious. After a hundred years, what he needs to consider most is how to arrange them, which is the most suitable. In his consideration, he can't continue to protect these precious cultural relics, so he must find someone who can protect them. The Boston Museum, which he contacted the most, is his most familiar and trustworthy museum. He sent some cultural relics back to China or sold or donated them, and the rest stayed here. He thinks there is no problem.
During his 70-80 years in the United States, he has been devoted to promoting cultural exchanges between China and the United States, and he is also very attentive to promoting China culture. In Mr. Weng's cognition, culture has no national boundaries. On the contrary, after he donated these cultural relics to the Boston Museum, wouldn't it be better for foreign friends to understand the culture and history of China? There is no such thing as forgetting your roots and your country. This is just a very common thing, and it is impossible to rise to that height.
Moreover, he thinks that the Boston Museum is indeed more capable of protecting these cultural relics than most museums in China, and he is right to do so for the sake of the cultural relics themselves. Just like why most of the cultural relics donated to China are only given to Shanghai Museum, all kinds of hardware and software facilities in Shanghai Museum are qualified, so he can safely deliver them and deserve his trust.
After these donations to museums at home and abroad, Mr. Weng has few collections in his home. Maybe he will leave some for later generations, or maybe he will donate it all slowly. The cultural relics he donated to the Boston Museum last year are expected to be exhibited this fall. Whether Mr. Weng's decision is correct or not, as an outsider, we really can't make too many comments.
But as the guardian and owner of these precious cultural relics, he naturally has the right to arrange their whereabouts, and the sacrifices made by Weng's six generations for these cultural relics are enormous and deserve our respect. In fact, from another perspective, as long as these cultural relics can be properly preserved, it should not matter whether they are placed at home or abroad.
When the motherland becomes more powerful and unstoppable, all kinds of cultural relics exiled abroad will always be taken back passively or actively by us. Everything is just because we are not strong enough now.