Copied Zhizhihu question - the only surviving silk book from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, is it possible to recover the cultural relic [Changsha Bullet Library Chu Silk Book] that was defrauded
Cultural Relics
Cultural Relics
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Spring and Autumn and Warring States (Eastern Zhou Dynasty)
Contemporary
Cultural Relic Recovery
The only surviving silk book from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, [Changsha Bullet] was defrauded Ku Chu Silk Book] Is it still possible to recover cultural relics?
The Chu Silk Book is a picture and text written on silk fabric. The font is the popular Chu script during the Warring States Period. The book has more than 900 words, divided into two sections, surrounded by 12 images. There is a text on each side, and there are images of plant branches and leaves in the four corners. It is the earliest ancient silk book among the unearthed cultural relics. It is also a unique calligraphy work through the ages and an imaginative romantic art work of Chu culture. Its content is extremely rich, including the four seasons, celestial phenomena, lunar taboos, creation myths, etc. It is of great value to the study of Chu characters in the Warring States Period and the thought and culture of that time.
The process of the loss of Chu silk books was extremely tortuous, and the person directly involved in it has passed away. The reporter only learned about the incident after several visits and inquiries about relevant information.
Treasures were sent as scraps
In early 1942, a group of tomb robbers found a hole in the Changsha bullet depot and went to excavate it together. One of them was Ren Quansheng, who joined the Hunan Provincial Cultural Relics Team in 1953 and made important contributions to the subsequent archaeological excavations of the Mawangdui Han Tomb. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Ren Quansheng once told his colleagues at the museum about the process of excavation of the tomb of Zanku Chu.
Tomb robbers discovered a Chu tomb from the Warring States Period and found a batch of copper weapons, lacquerware, wooden figures and some broken textiles. In the eyes of tomb robbers, bronze and wooden wares are the most sought-after, so the textiles were given to the antique dealer Tang Jianquan as scraps by the tomb robbers. Little did they know that this textile was one of the most exciting discoveries in the history of Chinese culture.
Shang Chengzuo learned that Chu silk books were unearthed and planned to buy them. When he was in contact, Cai Jixiang, a famous antique dealer in Hunan, came back from other places and quickly bought the silk books and other cultural relics for 3,000 yuan in French currency.
When Cai Jixiang first got the silk book, it was folded into several layers and placed in a bamboo basket. There were many broken pieces of silk book underneath. Subsequently, Cai used a brush to wash away the dirt and dirt on the silk script, unfolded the silk script, and copied and studied it. In 1944, Cai printed the research results on the silk script into a book called "Critical Research on the Silk Papers of the Late Zhou Dynasty."
American Ke Qiang defrauded Chu silk books
The fourth volume of the Hunan Provincial Museum Collection published in 1998 published a letter written by Cai Jixiang to Shang Chengzuo on August 21, 1974. The original text of the letter. In the letter, Cai Jixiang described in detail the flow of Chu silk books into the United States.
Because many of the words on the silk script were unclear, in 1948 (Shang Chengzuo wrote a question mark on the letter and changed "8" to "6", it is suspected that it was 1946), Cai Jixiang took the silk script with him I went to Shanghai and wanted to take infrared photos of the silk book to reveal part of the text.
Cai found the "Jin Cai Ji Antique Shop" and asked the owner Jin Congyi to find a photo studio with infrared photography to take pictures of the silk book. Ke Qiang asked someone to introduce him and came to him on his own initiative. Ke Qiang's English name is Kirkus. According to Shang Chengzuo, Kirkus appeared as a teacher at Yali Middle School a few years before the Anti-Japanese War, posing as a "cultural archaeologist" and plundering Changsha cultural relics.
Ke Qiang told Cai Jixiang that he had two new infrared cameras at home that could help. Cai Jixiang brought the silk book to Ke Qiang's residence. Ke Qiang played with it for a while, then asked Cai to keep the silk book for one more day on the pretext that there was something wrong with the camera.
Cai was eager to understand the text on the silk book, so he agreed. The next day, Cai asked Ke for the silk book. Unexpectedly, Ke had asked someone to take the silk book back to the United States without authorization. Cai, expecting something bad to happen, angrily asked Ke to return the silk book immediately. Ke Qiang deceived Cai Jixiang and said that after taking the photos, the silk book would be sent back in about a week.
According to Cai's account, Ke Qiang was a US intelligence agent stationed in Shanghai at the time. He was powerful and had "killed first and reported later" and could only be at his mercy.
In the end, the two signed an agreement stating that the silk book was worth US$10,000, and Ke would pay US$1,000 on the spot. If he did not send it back when it was due, Ke Qiang would have to pay Cai an additional US$9,000, which was actually equal to Forced to buy, Cai Jixiang suffered a dumb loss.
Requests for silk books were repeatedly rejected
A week later, Cai Jixiang asked Ke Qiang for silk books again. As expected, Ke Qiang made excuses to evade. After that, Cai went to inquire every two or three days, but Ke either said that he had "written to inquire" or was simply not at home. When Cai pressed Ke again, Ke's servant told Cai that he had already flown back to the United States. In order to find out the news, Cai stayed in Shanghai for more than a month. After all the money was gone, he had to return to Changsha dejectedly.
Cai later found out that Wu Cunzhu, the son of Wu Aimin, the manager of the Changsha Hunan-E Printing Company at the time, was studying in Columbia, USA, and was a student of Ke Qiang. Cai immediately wrote a letter to Wu Cunzhu, asking him to ask Ke Qiang about the whereabouts of the silk book. After a long time, Wu Cunzhu wrote back and said that he had met Ke Qiang, but Ke Qiang never mentioned returning the silk document. He only said that the price of US$10,000 set in the agreement was too high, and he was only willing to pay US$6,000, hoping that Cai would lower the price. Cai immediately wrote to Wu Cunzhu and told Wu Cunzhu that the silk book could not be sold under any circumstances. He asked Ke Qiang to send the silk book back immediately and he would refund the US$1,000 deposit. Wu Cunzhu later wrote back saying that Ke was vague about returning the silk book, unwilling to reply, and unwilling to pay according to the agreement. Cai Jixiang understood that the Chu silk book had actually been taken away.
Efforts after liberation
In 1955, Cai Jixiang, as a non-voting representative at the Hunan Provincial People's Congress, told the story of the gangster Ke who defrauded silk books at the conference, and also told the story of the person who was arrested that year. The contract he was forced to sign with Ke Qiang was handed over to the Provincial Department of Culture.
In the same year, in order to verify the authenticity of what Cai said, the Hunan Provincial Museum sent Gao Zhixi to Beijing to find Wu Cunzhu - who was a professor at Peking University at the time. Gao Zhixi did not meet Wu Cunzhu in person, but after Wu Cunzhu knew Gao Zhixi's intention, he wrote a certificate and handed the correspondence with Cai from 1946 to 1948 to Gao Zhixi through the school personnel department, indicating that Cai Jixiang What is said is indeed true.
In 1974, Cai Jixiang wrote in a letter to Shang Chengzuo that although nearly 30 years had passed, he still hoped to fight a transnational lawsuit to recover the Chu silk books for his motherland. Ke Qiang was still alive at that time.
In 1982, Gao Zhixi went to the United States to attend an academic conference and saw the original Chu silk book on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He measured the dimensions to be 38.5 centimeters high and 46.2 centimeters wide.
In the mid-1980s, Gao Zhixi, then deputy director of the Provincial Museum, compiled the materials written by Cai Jixiang, as well as Wu Cunzhu’s certificates and correspondence, and submitted them to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage , hoping to find a way to recover the Chu silk book, but then nothing happened.
Now that Cai Jixiang and Ke Qiang have passed away, Chu silk books have changed hands several times in the United States, and the hope of recovery is almost slim.
(When writing this article, I referred to two articles, Gao Zhixi's "A Review of the Research on Chu Cultural Relics Unearthed in Hunan" and Xiong Jianhua's "The Legend of Chu Tombs in Changsha Zanku". Special thanks are given.)