A museum in China’s Hebei Province faces widespread ridicule on the Internet for its large collection of “ancient relics” that are apparently nothing but clumsy imitations.
Popular author Ma Boyong posted over a hundred photos of the museum’s displays on his blog and included his commentary on how fake the pieces were.
Ma pointed out modern cartoon characters depicted on a vase that claimed to date back to the Qing Dynasty, the South China Morning Post reported. He commented on chinaware with scenes from a famous novel with characters that aren’t from that novel, and another piece of china that shows scenes from a novel that hadn’t been written yet when the piece was made.
Ma said the forgery was “beyond belief,” according to the Post.
The four-story museum opened in 2010 and displays thousands of pieces of art that were created with modern techniques but that are passed off as treasures from the Tang, Han, and other dynasties.
Ma wrote in his blog that he didn’t think the building had very good security for a museum that claimed to house ancient relics worth millions of yuan, the Post reported.
Ma edited out the name of the museum in his blog, but netizens realized that it could only be the Ji Bao Zhai Museum in the city of Hengshui, Hebei Province. The story of the clumsily forged “treasures” spread all over the Internet.
The museum curator, Wang Zongquan, claimed to have collected the pieces from all over China without spending much money on them, the Post reported, citing local media. When questioned about the authenticity of the relics, he reportedly said, “Everything’s fake if experts have not seen it before?”
“I wouldn’t be able to afford [these relics] if I bid for them in auctions,” Wang added.
