Teams of tomb robbers used knowledge of traditional feng shui, high-tech probing devices and the help of archaeologists to steal tens of millions of dollars’ worth of antiquities, the Chinese authorities said.
The police arrested 175 people across six provinces for theft and trafficking of more than 1,000 objects worth an estimated 500 million renminbi (about $80 million) in what the Ministry of Public Security on Tuesday called the biggest antiquities trafficking case since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
The stolen objects spanned thousands of years, from the Neolithic period to the Qing Dynasty, which ended in 1911. One of the most precious was a jade “pig dragon,” an object associated with the Hongshan culture that existed about 5,000 years ago in what is now Inner Mongolia and the northeastern province of Liaoning.
The investigation was prompted by the discovery in June 2014 of unauthorized excavations in Liaoning.
“The signs of digging were all surrounding historic ruins, deep in the mountains, off the beaten track,” Wang Hongyan, the cultural relics protection bureau chief for the Chaoyang city Public Security Bureau, told The Beijing Times.
The police arrested three people who in turn led them to a wide-ranging criminal network. One of the main suspects, who was identified only by the surname Yao, was described as a master tomb raider, The Beijing Times said. He was able to look at a site and determine the best place to dig for loot by applying feng shui, traditional principles of geomancy, the newspaper reported. Others employed more modern techniques, including the use of mineral prospecting devices to help find objects underground.
Suspects included people tasked with digging up the objects and trading them through illicit antiquities markets. A few archaeologists were also arrested.
One, a Liaoning archaeologist surnamed Deng, told The Beijing Times that he had always done his best to protect cultural treasures. But when he came across the jade pig dragon during a dig, he said, he saw it as a way
to help solve his personal financial problems. He sold the object to a collector for 3.2 million renminbi (about $520,000). After paying a third of the sum to a middleman, he used the remainder to buy a house for
himself and another for his parents.
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