Monday, Jun. 23, 2003
Stealing Beauty
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
