Lost ritual bronze back to China

A 3,000-year-old Chinese bronze wine vessel, called Mingfanglei, is finally going on display to the Chinese public after being overseas for about 100 years.

Chinese art collectors from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and abroad worked together to bring an ancient bronze piece used in rituals that was lost for nearly a century back to China on June 28 from New York-based fine arts auction house, Christie's.

The bronze piece is a large ritual wine vessel made in the late Shang Dynasty, which means the bronze piece is more than 3000 years old. It was unearthed in Taoyuan County, central China's Hunan province, in 1922. Named Minfanglei, as showed by the epigraphs engraved on its bottom, it is the biggest bronze piece of its kind ever found in China.

The wine bronze vessel is considered as one of the works representing the greatest achievements in the golden era of Chinese bronzes art in the Shang Dynasty.

After spending more than three-thousand years buried under the earth, the big bronze piece went through vagrancies. A businessman named Shi from Hubei province got the news of its appearance and offered 400 silver dollars to buy it from the peasant who found it. Before the businessman arrived, the son of the peasant brought the lid to the school nearby to ask the master to identify this piece of the vessel. The schoolmaster paid 800 hundred silver dollars to keep the lid, thus the businessman just took the body.

The schoolmaster sold the lid to a military officer named Zhou, who handed it in to the Hunan government in 1952. Then, the lid was kept by the Hunan Provincial Museum, where it remains even today.

In 1924, the body of the bronze vessel was sold to the city of Shanghai, and then auctioned to foreign collectors. It had later been auctioned in a series of countries such as the United States, the UK, France and Japan; only its lid had been kept in China.

The Hunan Provincial Museum learned in 1994 that Japanese collector Tochi Nitta was in possession of the bronze vessel. The museum's head visited the Japanese collector to close a deal to bring the bronze artifact back to China.

Xiong Chuanxin is the head of the Hunan Provincial Museum that went to meet the Japanese collector in '94. He recalls the negotiation with Nitta:

"Imagine that this cup is the Minfanglei, and the lid is the one we keep in our museum. The cup is in Nitta's hand right now. He said the body of the bronze was the main part, and the lid was a miniscule piece, so he hoped we would give the lid to him. But we hoped that he would give us the bronze body."

After the Japanese collector rejected Xiong's offer, the body of the bronze artifact was auctioned off again in 2001 by New York-based art auction house, Christie's. At that time, the Shanghai Museum and Poly Art Museum attended the auction to bid on the bronze artifact. However, a French collector made the winning bid at just over nine-million U.S. dollars--40 percent higher than the Chinese offer. It was the highest-ever recorded price of Asian art work being auctioned in an international market at that time.

The French collector passed away earlier this year, over a decade after he took home the artifact from the auction. Christie's planned to organize a second auction of the bronze piece on March 20th. Learning that, Taiwan collector Robert Tsao called on many collectors in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and overseas Chinese to refrain from participating in the auction, in an attempt to make it easier for the Hunan Provincial Museum to submit the winning bid.

Robert Tsao says:"When the auction began, I wanted the bronze artifact to be reunited with its lid, so I texted everybody and called for united action."

The Hunan Provincial Museum also sent a letter signed by collectors both in China and from abroad to Christie's on March 15th, expressing the museum's intention to purchase the bronze vessel. With their efforts, Christie's announced on March 19, one day earlier than the auction date, that an agreement between the auction house and the Chinese side had been reached, and the artifact will be sold to an association of Chinese collectors without going through auction.

Robert added:"Putting the bronze artifact and its lid together; there is an unbelievable beauty in giving people a new perspective on the magnificence of ancient Chinese artifacts and culture."

The bronze is now undergoing custom declaration procedures in China and will be shown to the public, together with its lid, on June 28. Its keeper, the Hunan Provincial Museum, expresses that it will preserve the bronze permanently and never let it be traded again.