The opening of a cultural relics lawsuit on January 6, 2005 attracted a lot of people's attention. There are very few cases in which ordinary people sue the Cultural Relics Bureau. They are usually filed by the Cultural Relics Bureau. According to the relevant provisions of the Cultural Relics Law , there are more public prosecutions against criminals who resell cultural relics.
This case 20 years ago is a rare typical case in which the plaintiff and the defendant are reversed. Judging from the detailed history of the entire case, the cause and effect are very bizarre, and both parties insist on their own opinions.
The doubts and difficulties of this cultural relics case suddenly shrouded the mind of the chief judge. So both sides insist on their own opinions. What happened to this incident that happened in 1983? Which of them is telling the truth?
Two miraculous magic weapons
The ancestral magic weapon mentioned by Liu Cuichai is a stone medicine grinder identified in the Tang Dynasty, and the other is a black pottery bowl from the Qin Dynasty that appeared much earlier.
Why were these two antiques of great archaeological value handed over to the state by Gao Yingmin, who was appraised at the time? Is Gao Yingmin the only middleman in this whole thing? What kind of links did publish during this period that led to the two parties going to court?
Gao Yingmin's statement is as follows: "These two antiques were given to me by the staff of the Cultural Relics Bureau, and based on the soil on them, I concluded that they were cultural relics unearthed from the tombs of the Tang Dynasty."
This resulted in a difference in understanding. Gao Yingmin and the first recipient of the two cultural relics, Wang Yuwen, a worker from the Cultural Relics Bureau, had a different understanding of the two antiques.
Liu Cuichai's original intention was to take out two of her ancestral treasures and ask cultural relic experts who happened to be doing archeology near her home to help identify her ancestral treasures.
Gao Yingmin did not donate the two antiques to the Cultural Relics Bureau as he said, and Liu Cuichai also denied that he promoted Liu Cuichai's deeds and rewarded her with 600 yuan.
In this way, the causes and consequences of the entire case become even more confusing. Which of them is telling the truth? Both the plaintiff and the defendant insist on their own opinions, and no one has evidence. The only evidence in this case is the IOU written by Wang Yuwen to Liu Cuichai for receiving two cultural relics.
In the first instance, the court did not directly pronounce the verdict. During the period during which the verdict was announced, the collegial process still supported Gao Yingmin's statement and believed that the age of the two antiques coincided with the burial objects of the owner of the tomb at the archaeological site.
The dust on these two antiques is evidence that Liu Cuichai participated in the discovery and guided the archaeological team to excavate the Tang Dynasty tombs in Beizhangli Village. Therefore, the consensus was that the two antiques Liu Cuichai gave to the Cultural Relics Bureau were national cultural relics. identified it as Liu Cuichai’s cultural relic donation and did not support Liu Cuichai’s appeal to return the cultural relics.
The confusing antique judgment
Liu Cuichai was obviously dissatisfied with the judgment. Wang Yuwen wrote an IOU, but it was not returned after twenty years, and he believed that Liu Cuichai had donated the cultural relics.
Gao Yingmin's statement also has a very logical memory that supports his position. When Liu Cuichai and her brother discovered a large tomb in the north of the village and unearthed two cultural relics and handed them over, they led an archaeological team to excavate a large tomb from the Tang Dynasty and unearthed 6 cultural relics.
And during this excavation, the archaeological site was still eating at Liu Cuichai's house, and there was a lot of publicity for the documents donated by Liu Cuichai. The most important thing is that Wang Yuwen recalled that there was a lot of soil on these two antiques when they were handed over to Liu Cuichai. They were clearly just excavated antiques, so they determined that these two antiques were funerary objects in the tombs of the Tang Dynasty.
Then the focus came to the evidence of ownership of these two antiques. When the cultural relics were unearthed, the cultural relics unearthed by the archaeological team all followed a strict process of identification and trial..
More than twenty years ago, how many treasures were unearthed when the tombs of the Tang Dynasty were excavated? How was it identified and reported at that time?
It has been verified that only six cultural relics were found during the archaeological excavation of the Tang Dynasty cemetery, and each cultural relic was identified and reported to the Cultural Relics Bureau.
Among the six collections, there were no stone medicine grinders and black pottery bowls mentioned in this case. At this time, Liu Cuichai took out a contract for the purchase of cultural relics from the 27th year of the Republic of China. At this point, the case had a basic collection of evidence, which laid a good foundation for further advancement of the case.
This difficult case entered the column group of " Today's Statement " and attracted the attention of all parties. The trial party of this case also reorganized the trial team and added many judges with many years of experience in the trial of cultural relics cases.
Final conclusion
In the second instance, Zhengding County , after intensive data collection and deliberation, believed that the process by which the Cultural Relics Bureau identified two antiques donated by Liu Cuichai as cultural relics did not comply with the procedures for donating cultural relics.
determined that the stone medicine grinder and black pottery bowl that Liu Cuichai handed to Wang Yuwen were not cultural relics. However, the purchase contract from the Republic of China period in Liu Cuichai's hands cannot be used as the legal basis for antique ownership due to its age.
Although the second instance ruled that the two antiques were not cultural relics, the issue of ownership of the two antiques was still not clarified. In this way, both the plaintiff and the defendant lost ownership. Obviously both parties were dissatisfied with the judgment. Both parties then started to appeal again. Both the plaintiff and the defendant came for the ownership.
After the appeal, the intermediate court ruled that the case should be retried. After several discussions, Zhengding County invited experienced case-solving elites to join this complicated cultural relics lawsuit. After re-summarizing the data, found that the Cultural Relics Protection Law did not list stone medicine grinders and black pottery bowls as cultural relics.
Moreover, the plaintiff Liu Cuichai did not accept the donation award recognized by the Cultural Relics Bureau that year, and the Cultural Relics Bureau did not issue a formal donation process certification.
is not considered an established fact of donation, and Liu Cuichai has two antique sales contracts in his hands, which is regarded as a very good proof and evidence of Liu Cuichai's ancestral antiques.
Zhengding County re-ruled that two antiques should be returned to their original owners. Liu Cuichai’s nearly 30-year-old appeal was supported by the court. regained her ancestral stone medicine mill and black pottery bowl, two heirloom antiques. During the nearly thirty years of appeal, she ran around looking for lawyers to help her realize her appeal.
Summary
Different from many cultural relic cases, the reason why this is regarded as an ancestral antique is that Liu Cuichai has a lot of evidence that this is an antique passed down from her ancestors.
Moreover, the Cultural Relics Protection Law did not clearly provide for classifying these two antiques as cultural relics. Therefore, Liu Cuichai’s appeal finally regained the ownership of the two ancestral antiques with the support of the law.
However, in many cultural relics trials, the defendants are often tomb robbers or criminals who resell national cultural relics. This reversal case of
has also provided a brand-new case to the judicial community, providing a very clear answer to the importance of formal execution of judicial processes. The focus and attention of this case have made more and more people pay attention to cultural relics and the Cultural Relics Protection Law.
