The Beijing government hadn’t reported any such artifact as missing. Chinese law says that all ancient relics unearthed in the People’s Republic automatically become government property. Violators can be executed. But as the mainland’s commerce with the outside world has grown, grave robbing has become a major industry. Visions of immense profits lure the middlemen and smugglers who haul the loot out through exit points like Hong Kong and Macao. Some treasures end up in those cities, in shops that cater to affluent collectors. The rest crosses the sea, bound for Taiwan, Japan, Europe and America.
Experts on Asian culture regard the strip mining and wholesale export of China’s antiquities as a loss beyond calculation or repair. “I’ve seen priceless cultural treasures for sale in Hong Kong – things we don’t even have in our own museums,” says Wang Gelin, chief curator at Beijing’s State Bureau of Cultural Relics. In some cases the looters are literally robbing China of its history. More than 3,500 years ago, the scholars of the early Shang dynasty began keeping written records on pieces of bone, which were deposited in ruling-class tombs. Nowadays those invaluable archives are more likely to be exhumed by thieves than by archeologists.
The Communist government has condemned “Western imperialists” for systematically looting China of its treasures prior to 1949. But observers of the current trade in smuggled Middle Kingdom antiquities say it couldn’t go on without the blessing of Chinese authorities. Robert Ellsworth, a New York-based dealer in Chinese art, lists the players in what he calls “the game”: peasants, local police, customs officials and politicians. “There isn’t anyone who isn’t participating,” he says, with a trace of hyperbole. “Some of the best pieces have come out in Deng Xiaoping’s son’s wheelchair.”
With or without the direct involvement of China’s First Family, the illicit traffic is soaring. In Hong Kong alone, customs officials seized $5.5 million worth of smuggled artifacts between January and July of this year – almost four times the total confiscated in all of 1993 – and it represents only a fraction of what slips through. The dollar value is misleadingly low in any case, since Hollywood Road shopkeepers complain that the current flood of relics into their market has driven prices down. To offset the depressed market, thieves and smugglers are seeking out rarer items that can command higher prices than common tomb furnishings.
The local peasants’ fear of ghosts used to protect the ancient emperors’ tombs around Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province and China’s most famous archeological center. After the Communists took power, fear of the state performed the same function. In 1974, after a peasant accidentally unearthed the first of the 7,500 life-size terra-cotta warriors that are now known to stand guard at the heart of a 56-square-kilometer necropolis, the peasant’s commune quickly notified local officials. Seven years ago a local peasant was caught with the pilfered head of one terra-cotta soldier; he paid for the crime with his life.
These days, however, the dominant fear is poverty, and Xian has become the grave robbers’ Medellin. The first stop for many unearthed relics is a makeshift antiques market near the city’s East Gate. On a recent afternoon, a man on a bicycle arrived toting a black vinyl gym bag. It held a miniature earthenware stove dating back to the Eastern Han dynasty, nearly 2,000 years ago. Antiquarians say such objects were manufactured for the tombs of aristocrats, to prepare their meals in the afterlife. He happened on the ancient stove at a construction site, the man with the gym bag said. He pedaled from shop to shop in the market, haggling with the merchants and moving on until he found an offer he was willing to accept: about $12.
The best merchandise isn’t for local tourist traps: smugglers send it out of the country as soon as possible. A typical shipment of relics travels to Hong Kong by truck, usually packed in nondescript cartons; the freight manifest identifies it as some common Chinese export such as clothing or appliances. With roughly 22,000 heavy-goods vehicles entering Hong Kong every day, the colony’s inspectors can search only a small percentage of them. But Beijing has not sought international help in stemming China’s cultural hemorrhage. “We have never been asked by the Chinese to look out for stolen or looted works of art,” says Hong Kong customs Superintendent Li. In New York, the executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research, an organization that helps Interpol track stolen treasures, says that almost none of the 60,000 items in the group’s files came from the People’s Republic. Antiquarians outside China say that without drastic measures, there’s no hope of ending the plundering. “I am very pessimistic that it will be stopped, because the demand is so great,” says Harvard University archeologist K. C. Chang. It’s a tempting risk to Chinese farmers, for whom a single $300 statue is the equivalent of a normal year’s income. Police are susceptible, too. Last year an anti-smuggling chief in the Henan city of Luoyang was executed after being found guilty of selling confiscated antiquities to art dealers.
Some Western museums, dealers and collectors publicly cringe at the idea of aiding the despoliation of China’s past. But they sometimes make exceptions to their own rules, as with the ancient Tibetan textiles and paintings that began flooding the market in Nepal in the early 1980s. Buying relics like those is an act of rescue, not the abetting of a robbery – or so the reasoning goes. Everyone agrees that there are plenty of buyers without such scruples. Ellsworth, for his part, makes no apology for doing business with middlemen in cahoots with smugglers. “They offer me things, I buy them,” he says.
The international demand for China’s artifacts is exceeded only by the supply. In Xian, a single tomb – the 2,000-year-old grave of Emperor Jing – is thought to contain thousands of figurines. The stickman-shaped terra-cotta statues, nude and without arms, are easy to identify once you’ve seen them. They sell for just $2,500 apiece on Hollywood Road. No need to rush if you’re interested; more will be available soon.
