Retrieval of overseas cultural relics has always been an international problem. Being able to recover successfully often requires the current collector to have a high degree of cultural relics ethics and international morality, which is also closely related to the comprehensive national strength and international status of the original country of the cultural relics.
There is a statue called "Eastern Venus" in my country - Qingzhou Longhua Temple Eastern Wei Cicada crown statue. This rare treasure was stolen by thieves after it was unearthed and was left in a foreign country for fourteen years. Its journey to return to the motherland can be regarded as a model for China's lost cultural relics to return to the embrace of the motherland.
Longhua Temple Ruins , the beautiful god appears in the world
In the last century, in a county town called Boxing in Shandong, there have been many discoveries of copper Buddha cellars, stone carvings, and brick relics. These findings suggest archaeological team members, where a large-scale Buddhist temple ruin is buried.
The first time was in March 1976. 10 kilometers northeast of city in Boxing County, a farmer in Zhangguan Brigade accidentally found a cellar while bulldozing the foundation. Many Buddhist statues were neatly buried in the pit. When unearthed, they were neatly arranged in the pit. The specific quantity was no longer verified. However, when the cultural relics management personnel arrived, the scene was damaged and the unearthed statues were scattered among the people.
However, after being collected by the Boxing County Cultural Relics Management Institute, 72 statues were recovered from the public, including 1 statue stele and 25 relatively complete statues. Among them, 9 have clear chronological inscriptions, and the year names are: Wuding, Tianbao, Qianming, Taining, Tiantong and Wuping, all of which are from the Eastern Wei Northern Qi period.
Among the recovered cultural relics, there is a statue of a Bodhisattva broken into three sections, with a very beautiful shape. Because there is a cicada engraved on the Bodhisattva's crown, it is called the "Cicada Crown Bodhisattva statue".
The second time was in 1983. When Chongde Village was taking soil, it found a copper statue cellar and cleaned up 101 statues. Between 1981 and 1984, Li Shaonan from the Boxing County Cultural Administration Office conducted an investigation and found many related relics here.
The third time was in 1990. When the villagers of Zhangguan Village were digging fish ponds in the north of the village, they discovered statues, building components, ceramics, etc.
After looking up historical records, archaeologists have determined that this is the ruins of Longhua Temple in Qingzhou, Shandong.
From the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Eastern Wei Dynasty and Northern Qi Dynasty, Hebei and Shandong ushered in the climax of carving Buddhist statues. Qingzhou was the statue center in Shandong at that time. The statue styles of Qingzhou Longxing Temple and Boxing Longhua Temple are relatively similar. They can be regarded as the "specimens" of the stone sculptures in Qingzhou during this period and are an artistic model of this era.
The statue of the cicada crowned Bodhisattva collected for the first time is 133 cm high. There is a huge head light behind the statue. It has a cicada crown, with a slightly raised corner of the mouth and a smile on its face. It is wearing a right robe on the upper body and covered with silk; it is wearing a long skirt on the lower body, with dense folds that are exactly the same as the description of Cao Yi coming out of water. Experts judged that its age should be the Eastern Wei Dynasty.
Such a slender, light and charming statue is no longer just an object for worship, but a work of art of extremely high standards. Because of his broken arm, he has the reputation of "Eastern Venus".
However, we probably don’t need this title of decoration with Western beautiful gods, and the following is called “Cicada Crown Bodhisattva statue”.
was accidentally stolen, and the long pursuit of the road
This statue was widely praised as soon as it was exhibited, and it was coveted by thieves.
Late at night on July 4, 1994, it was raining heavily in Qingzhou, Shandong Province. This precious inheritance was stolen by criminals and smuggled abroad.
The archives of this cicada-crowned Bodhisattva statue from Boxing County Cultural Administration Office clearly record "unearthed from Zhangguan Village in May 1976" and "stolen on the night of July 4, 1994". After
was stolen, the statue disappeared.
In 1999, the Boxing County Cultural Administration Office obtained a news from a foreign friend: the MiHO Museum in Shiga Prefecture, Japan auctioned off a Buddhist statue from the London art trading market in 1995, which was very similar to the stolen Bodhisattva statue in Boxing County. This statue is now on display at the MiHO Museum.
Japanese Mixiu Museum
This foreign friend is named Mario Robert. He is the chairman of the Minnes Foundation, an ordinary organization in Swiss , which specializes in pursuing lost cultural relics for various countries. He showed the relevant picture album to the people from the Boxing County Cultural Administration Office, and they exclaimed at the sight: This is ours!
Boxing County Cultural Administration Office then reported the news from Mr. Robert to the Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau.
At the end of 1999, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Mr. Yang Hong received a letter titled "Su Bai" and sent a catalog of the Japanese Meixiu Museum. One of the pages was a photo of a Bodhisattva statue, and the page contained a piece of paper with the words "national treasure" written on it. It was identified that this bluestone cicada-crowned statue was a statue of the cicada-crowned Bodhisattva stolen in July 1994 and unearthed at the Longhua Temple site in Boxing County. Mr. Yang Hong also asked the students to transfer the content of the letter to the Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau.
In 2000, after taking into account the above situation, the Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau officially reported to the State Cultural Relics Administration, hoping to recover cultural relics belonging to China.
In August of that year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage visited the Misoo Museum in Japan and decided to negotiate the purchase of this precious cultural relic.
was successfully recovered, achieving win-win results and is widely praised
This cicada crown statue has information and photos recorded in the archives and newspapers. The theft is also clearly registered in the archives. It is an irrefutable stolen cultural relic.
The evidence was conclusive. At that time, many media in the United States and Japan reported that they focused on the international ethical issues of the lost cultural relics returning to their original countries, and raised this incident to a moral level.
Meixiu Museum had to seriously consider how to deal with this statue.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage has a firm position and is willing to establish a cooperative relationship with the Meixiu Museum, and negotiate with the Japanese side by retaining ownership and renting within a time limit.
Since both parties are more sincere, the negotiation was relatively smooth. In April 2001, the agreement was reached that the Meixiu Museum would return the statue to China for free. At the same time, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage rented the statue to the Meixiu Museum for exhibition until 2007.
In January 2008, the erected statue of the Northern Wei Bodhisattva who had been lost overseas for 14 years finally returned to his hometown of Shandong Province and entered the Shandong Museum. This year is also the tenth anniversary of the construction of the Shandong Museum.
Meixiu Museum paid a huge amount of money to purchase the statue in the British art market. In order to make up for its losses, according to the agreement, the statue of Cicada Guan Bodhisattva went to Meixiu Museum for exhibition every five years, each exhibition lasted for half a year.
Domestic media praised this cultural relics recovery operation very much. Overseas media such as Japan's Kyoto Shimbun also reported on this incident from a positive perspective. On the one hand, it praised the internationalist spirit of the Misoo Museum for returning cultural relics free of charge, and on the other hand, it praised China's just compensation for the Misoo Museum.
The return of the statue of the Cicada Crown Bodhisattva is a very typical successful case in the pursuit of cultural relics in my country, and it is a win-win situation in international reputation for both China and Japan.
At present, this statue is located in the exhibition hall of "Buddhist Statistics Art Exhibition" of Shandong Provincial Museum, welcoming the world who are visiting.
The past lasts thousands of years, under the focus of the light, the broken arms reveal the vicissitudes and heaviness of history; the eternal smile silently tells the past that has gone through the dust.
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