As a place of storage and enjoyment for the royal family, the Old Summer Palace has always been known as the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens. It covers an area of ??35,000 square kilometers and has a construction area of ??160,000 square kilometers. It was built by the Qing Dynasty at a huge cost and took more than 200 years. Its structure is very simple. Among them, there are not only famous gardens and scenic spots in the south of the Yangtze River, but also transplanted Western garden architecture, which can be called a masterpiece of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign gardening.
However, in 1858, the Old Summer Palace welcomed a group of uninvited guests. With the connivance of Britain and France, the Old Summer Palace was destructively looted. Countless treasures and palaces were burned to the ground, and more than 17 million treasures were stolen and lost overseas, never to be seen again. And this has become a pain that can never be healed in the hearts of the Chinese nation.
In 2009, Christie's auction house suddenly put two auction items on the market, which caused an uproar in the international community. It turned out that they were two of the twelve animal heads in the Haiyan Hall of the Old Summer Palace, the rat head and the rabbit head! However, even after my country's State Administration of Cultural Heritage expressed its opposition, the auction eventually started as usual.
After a fierce competition, two songs, Rat and Rabbit, started with a bid of 9 million euros, and finally sold for as much as 31.49 million euros (approximately 252.7 million yuan) in the early morning of February 26. After the sky-high price, the hammer fell. On the morning of March 2, the identity of the bidder was also revealed. He is Cai Mingchao, a collector from China.
As soon as this incident came out, Cai Mingchao immediately became a hero in the eyes of the Chinese. However, just as people were praising Cai Mingchao, Cai Mingchao refused to pay. Facing doubts and accusations from all walks of life, he publicly stated: "As a Chinese, we should stand up at this moment. I just fulfilled my responsibility and made our voice heard. However, I cannot pay this amount."
In fact, although the copper heads of the 12 zodiac signs are handicrafts, they are not worth such a high price. What foreigners are sure of is the "Old Summer Palace" and other labels hanging on it. This can be said to be a shame in the hearts of every Chinese people. In order to "avoid shame", we seem to have no choice but to spend money to take them back. Mr. Cai's refusal to pay is actually the opposite attitude.
However, his approach still brought him a lot of trouble! Because according to French law, Mr. Cai may face criminal sanctions for this move, not only having to pay a fine of 22,500 euros, but also being jailed for at least 6 months. Even if he leaves the criminal category, he will still have to pay a huge amount of fines. All this depends on Christie's attitude.
In this way, Cai Mingchao, who was regarded as China's "hero" before the filming, suddenly became a shame in the eyes of the Chinese people. An angry Mr. Ma Weidu once criticized his approach as "disgracing all the Chinese people." Face". However, many people understand Mr. Tsai's actions and believe that he is safeguarding the interests of the Chinese nation and France cannot sanction our national hero. In fact, Cai Mingchao was not punished in the end.
On April 26, 2013, the French Pinault family decided to donate the previously acquired rat and rabbit heads to our country, and the two heads finally returned to their home country. In response, Mr. Cai Mingchao asked his friends to express his joy: "I'm finally back, congratulations, congratulations!" When talking about his original actions, he expressed no regrets. However, this approach is indeed against the rules and has affected the image of the Chinese people to a greater or lesser extent, so he decided to quit the auction industry for life.