After seeing the China cultural relics in museums all over the world, including the tortuous course of the zodiac in Yuanmingyuan, it is estimated that everyone has a question. Why are China cultural relics all over the world? Of course, China's 5,000-year-old culture does not lack these things. Underground, in the collections of various dynasties, precious treasures accumulated for thousands of years were finally destroyed in a catastrophe in the late Qing Dynasty.

China cultural relics have experienced three "lost tides";

The largest loss of cultural relics in the history of China occurred in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. According to statistics, during this period, more than 6,543,800 pieces of China cultural relics were lost to Europe, America, Japan and other countries and regions, including more than 6,543,800 pieces of national first-and second-class cultural relics.

The second time was during World War II, when the Japanese invaders protected the Ming and Qing antiques and then collected them and shipped them to Japan. During the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, a large number of Japanese officers immigrated to San Francisco, bringing many China cultural relics.

The last time was the smuggling tide after 1980, which formed a smuggling chain of China cultural relics from the mainland to Europe and America with Hong Kong and Macao as the springboard.

Smuggled cultural relics seized by the customs

I won't elaborate on the first two times, but I'll talk about the last time this time. First of all, there are four sources for the rise of the domestic antique market: first, cultural relics scattered among the people are collected by cultural relics dealers; Second, family heirlooms or old things on the market; Third, the ancient famous old kiln site is now antique to make old-fashioned handicrafts; The fourth is to rob the tomb.

Due to the rise of the market, more and more people begin to pay attention to and join the army of reselling collections, and it is logical to smuggle out of the country for the benefit. It is reported that about 200,000 ancient tombs have been stolen in China in recent decades, and the theft rate of princes' tombs is over 90%.

Since the 1960s, the smuggling of cultural relics has gradually increased. Smuggling in the 1990s surpassed any period since the founding of the People's Republic of China, even any period in history, and the problem of grave robbery reached the most serious level in thousands of years. At that time, there was a slogan called "To get rich, dig more graves and dig ten thousand households overnight" (even the rich people who reached out to their ancestral graves). 90% of Liao tombs in Inner Mongolia were excavated in1990s, and many precious cultural relics appeared in the British cultural relics auction market. Not to mention Henan and Shaanxi, because there are too many cultural relics in these two places.