Stealing Beauty

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Chinese police have revealed details of what they are calling the largest theft of cultural artifacts in the history of the People's Republic—and the heist was allegedly an inside job. Li Haitao, who was head of security at the Waibamiao museum complex in the northeastern Chinese resort town of Chengde, has been accused of carting off 158 ancient relics, some of which ended up on the black market and at the Christie's auction house in Hong Kong, according to police. (Christie's says it researched ownership and found no evidence that the pieces were stolen.) Li was allegedly a classic bag man, removing the items one at a time in a sack. When authorities raided his home in December, they found that it "looked like a museum inside," recalls one Chengde police official. Although corrupt museum officials and tomb-raiding peasants face periodic crackdowns—and occasionally even the death sentence—countless stolen relics still flow out of China each year. Other antiquities that have circulated on the black market include:

Akshobhya Buddha
The founder of a Taiwan-based Buddhist association received this 1,300-year-old head—sawed from its torso at the Four Gate Pagoda in northeastern China in 1997—as a gift from his disciples. He returned it to China in 2002

Bronze Ox Head
China failed three years ago to persuade auctioneers to return four bronze animal heads believed to have been stolen from a Summer Palace fountain 140 years ago by British and French troops. But it eventually managed to repatriate three of the bronzes—by buying them at auction for $4 million

Terracotta Figurine
The U.S. last week returned to China six of these 2,000-year-old relics stolen from the tomb of a Western Han dynasty princess. They had been slated for auction in New York