Source: CCTV.com
02-20-2009 08:18
Two lost treasures of Beijing's Old Summer Palace will go on the auction block in Paris on February the 25th. The controversial sale has raised concerns among Chinese societies around the world. Many are teaming up to retrieve the items in the courts. Our reporter Pan Deng follows the latest development.
Take a wild guess on how much these two sculptures are worth.
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| Two lost treasures of Beijing's Old Summer Palace will go on the auction block in Paris on February the 25th. |
Many say 10 million Euros each. That's nearly 200 million yuan in total.
This is where they come from, Beijing's Old Summer Palace, built almost 300 years ago. They were looted when British-French allied forces burned the palace down during the Second Opium War in 1860.
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| This is where they come from, Beijing's Old Summer Palace, built almost 300 years ago. |
The spokesman of old summer palace park Zong Tianliang said, "The bronze rabbit and rat heads were among 12 animal head sculptures that formed the zodiac signs on display behind me. We have always opposed the auctions of any lost treasures of this park. We don't encourage Chinese people to buy those looted treasures back, either."
China's National Treasure Fund is the organizer behind some of the previous buys. It encouraged leading enterprises and Macao's gaming mogul, Stanley Ho, to buy back some sculptures through negotiation. But the current holder refused to talked to the Fund.
Niu Xianfeng from National treasure funds said, "We sent an official letter to Pierre Berge in October, 2008. We told him how China had lost these two items. We made ourselves very clear that we are against this auction, because it's against international agreements and the basic rules of commercial auctions. We haven't got any reply from him."
