I don’t know what everyone’s definition of patriotism is, and what do you think as a Chinese, what should you do for your motherland? What kind of words and deeds meet the standards of patriotism? What we are going to talk about today is also a Chinese who is quite famous at home and abroad in modern times and who claims to be very patriotic. He is Mr. Weng Wange.
The six generations of the Weng family have loved collecting cultural relics, calligraphy and paintings, and have worked hard to protect the collection at home. The most prominent period of the Weng family should have been during the period of Weng Tonghe, who went through four dynasties more than 150 years ago, served as an official in three dynasties, and served as the emperor's master in the second. In our eyes, Weng Tonghe is the favored person of heaven. At the age of only 26, he became the number one scholar in high school. It is precisely because of this status and influence that the Weng family began its long journey of guarding the family collection.
As a rising star, Weng Wange, although not the direct great-grandson of Weng Tonghe, is still the most outstanding child in the collateral lineage. He has taken on the important task of guarding the family collection since he was two years old. For the next ninety years or so, he has been a calligrapher, a poet, an artist, a photographer, a director, a Chinese social activist, and an ambassador for the promotion of Chinese culture. He has inherited many honors from his grandfather Weng Tonghe. At that time, he was the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Since he studied in the United States and settled in the United States in his twenties, he has been traveling among various countries to promote Chinese culture.
On his 100th birthday, such an outstanding old man with strong patriotic sentiments did something that shocked the Chinese people. He protected the family for six generations. Most of the precious collections, including 183 immeasurable cultural relics spanning more than a thousand years, including paintings, calligraphy, rubbings and embroidery, were donated to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the United States completely free of charge. It has become the museum with the most Chinese cultural relics abroad.
Even before that, Mr. Weng Wange even used the extremely precious 16-meter-long masterpiece "Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River" by Wang Cui, a master of calligraphy and painting in the Qing Dynasty, which took seven months to create. Donated to this museum.
This incident actually happened on July 28 last year in the United States. That day happened to be Mr. Weng Wange's 100th birthday, and his birthday party was also very interesting. The Boston Museum organized it for him. After this decision was announced, it immediately aroused the anger of countless Chinese people at home and abroad. Even if these cultural relics are all collected by the Weng family, there is absolutely no reason to give them to outsiders. What's more, Mr. Weng Wange has done something before. Compared with the two, it is even more incomprehensible and unacceptable.
It turns out that in 2004, Mr. Weng Wange sold his family's collection of 542 volumes and more than 80 rare ancient books from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty at a very low price of only 4.5 million US dollars. The rare books were given to the Shanghai Library. This won him a good reputation at the time, and it was precisely because of this that more Chinese people realized that this Chinese who had settled abroad for a long time had always been caring about the motherland.
The huge difference between the two actions before and after is indeed difficult for countless people to accept. Even if you don't donate cultural relics to the country, you can't give them to outsiders without taking any money. And we learned that Mr. Weng Wange has actually donated dozens of cultural relics to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the past few decades and has supported the museum for a long time. In the words of Mr. Weng, this is the first museum he has come into contact with after coming to the United States. He trusts it and can safely entrust these family treasures to their protection.
Faced with the abuse, accusations and anger of countless Chinese people, Mr. Weng seems unmoved. He believes that culture and history have no national boundaries. He just does what he thinks while he still has the ability. The right thing. After all, in addition to the more than 500 rare books he had sold to the Shanghai Museum earlier, he also donated the "Shaoyuan Garden Exorcism Picture" and "Shaoyuan Exorcism Picture" painted by Wu Bin in the Ming Dynasty to Peking University. The Shanghai Museum successively donated the manuscripts of "The Diary of Weng Tonghe" and "The Collection of Weng's Documents", "Portrait of the Taoist Lord" by the Southern Song Dynasty painter Liang Kai, "Lin Dai Jin Xie Andong Mountain Picture", Qing Dynasty painter Wang Yuanqi's "Du Fu's Poetic Paintings" Giant Axis" and even donated the former residence of his ancestor Weng Tonghe.
Mr. Weng believes that his collection is too precious. After a hundred years, what he needs to consider most is how to best place them. In his consideration, he no longer has the ability to continue to protect these precious cultural relics, so he must find someone who has the ability to protect them. The Boston Museum was the museum he had the most contact with, the most familiarity with, and the most trustworthy museum. Without being biased, he distributed some of the cultural relics and either sold or donated them back to the country, and the rest was put here. He thought There is no problem.
In the seventy or eighty years since he settled in the United States, he has been committed to promoting cultural exchanges between China and the United States, and has also been very dedicated to promoting Chinese culture. In Mr. Weng's understanding, culture has no national boundaries. On the contrary, after he donated these cultural relics to the Boston Museum, wouldn't it be more conducive for foreign friends to understand our Chinese culture and history? There is no such thing as forgetting one's roots and one's country. This is just a very common thing and cannot rise to that level.
And he believes that the Boston Museum is indeed better equipped to protect these cultural relics than most museums in the country. For the sake of the cultural relics themselves, he is right to do so. Just like why most of the cultural relics donated to China are only for the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Museum's various software and hardware facilities are up to standard, so that he can deliver them with confidence and deserve his trust.
After these donations to museums at home and abroad, Mr. Weng’s collection at home is already very small. Maybe he will leave some for future generations, or maybe he will slowly donate all of them. out. The collection of cultural relics he donated to the Boston Museum last year is expected to be on display this fall. Regardless of whether Mr. Weng's decision is correct or not, as outsiders, we really can't make too much evaluation.
But as the guardian and owner of these precious cultural relics, he naturally has the right to arrange their fate, and the sacrifices made by the six generations of the Weng family for these cultural relics are great and worthy Our hon. In fact, if you think about it from another perspective, as long as these cultural relics can be properly preserved, it doesn't matter whether they are placed at home or abroad.
When the motherland becomes stronger and becomes unstoppable, the various cultural relics that have been scattered abroad will always be taken back by us, passively or actively, all because we are not strong enough now.