Do you know Weng Tonggong in the late Qing Dynasty? Weng Tonggong was the teacher of the Tongzhi Emperor and the Guangxu Emperor, and it can be said that his status is extremely prominent. Moreover, Weng Tonggong himself is also a very remarkable calligraphy artist, and his greatest hobby in life is to engage in collecting, and he has collected the Southern Song Dynasty "Song Gui Tang Ti", the Song edition of the orphan book "Collection rhymes", "Huichang Yipin Poetry Collection" and so on.
After the death of Weng Tonggong, so many of his family's collections were passed on to his descendants, Weng Wange is the fifth grandson of Weng Tonggong, who is a Chinese-American and a very famous Chinese social activist.
In 1948, Onwango packed all the antiques handed down by his ancestors and shipped them to the United States, of course, this practice was to avoid being damaged by war, we know that there were many domestic wars at that time, so Onwango's approach was easy to understand.
During those years in the United States, Onwango has been committed to promoting our Chinese culture to the West, and has made a number of educational films and documentaries, including "Chinese Buddhism" and won a gold medal at the Atlanta International Film Festival.
And Weng Wange this person is still a very keen collector, the antiques these things are also very like, in 2000, Weng Wange is ready to take out the collection of 542 copies of the Song Yuan Ming and Qing rare ancient books in the collection of the home to sell, when this news was known by domestic experts, for this reason is naturally very excited, and then domestic experts immediately flew to the United States to find Weng Wange to negotiate the donation, but did not expect that Weng Wange did not agree to donate cultural relics, but proposed to sell, for which experts are also willing to spend money to buy.
However, what he did not expect was that Weng Wange entrusted these 542 rare and rare ancient books of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties to China Guardian International Auction Co., Ltd., which attracted the attention of many collectors at that time, and the bidding was indeed very fierce, and finally after fierce competition, the Shanghai Museum finally auctioned it at a high price of 4.5 million US dollars.
In fact, at that time, this matter still caused a lot of controversy, after all, the cultural relics experts flew to the United States to negotiate, even if Weng Wange did not agree to donate, there was no need to take it to the auction market to sell it.
Unexpectedly, after another 18 years, about to appear in everyone's sight again on the 100th birthday of Wengwango, this time Wengwango announced a more amazing news, that is, to prepare to select 183 cultural relics from his home to donate to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the United States, plus 21 cultural relics donated free of charge before, Wengwango donated a total of 204 cultural relics to the United States.
These 183 cultural relics cover ancient paintings, calligraphy, rubbings, weaving and embroidery, etc., Weng Wange's approach has indeed caused controversy again, but some netizens pointed out that this is someone else's thing, who he wants to donate to his own business, there is no need to let others talk about it, what do you think?