IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here. The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.
The statue of the Buddha with the mummified remains of a monk inside exhibited at the Mummy World Exhibition in Budapest. The statue has since been returned to its buyer in the Netherlands. Photo: Xinhua
A province in China is seeking the return of a 1,000-year-old mummified monk that experts say was stolen two decades ago and resurfaced at an exhibition in Hungary.
A Buddha statue containing a monk’s remains has been on display at the Mummy World Exhibition at Budapest’s Hungarian Natural History Museum, which brings together 28 preserved corpses from different cultures around the world.
A spokesman for the Fujian Cultural Relic Bureau told the state-run Xinhua news agency that the statue is believed to have been stolen from a temple in Yangchun village.
A mummy statue worshipped since the 12th century went missing from the temple in 1995, it said.
“When I saw the photo on the TV news, it immediately reminded me of our lost statue,” farmer Lin Yongtuan told the China Daily newspaper on Monday.
A message on the Budapest museum’s website on Monday said that the statue “had been removed and sent back to the Netherlands due to the request of the loaning partner, the Drents Museum”.
Xinhua quoted a Drents Museum spokesman as saying the statue belonged to “a Dutch private collector who bought it legally in 1996”.
The incident is the latest case of allegedly stolen Chinese artefacts resurfacing abroad.
Beijing has made the return of such relics a priority as it flexes its growing international clout and seeks to build public support at home.
French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault two years ago returned two bronze fountainheads from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, whose auction in 2009 outraged China.
The monument was pillaged by British and French troops in 1860 during the second Opium War, an event seen in China as a national humiliation at the hands of Western armies.
Beijing estimates that at least 1.5 million items were looted at the time.
Re: ‘Stolen’ 1,000-year-old mummified remains of Chinese monk turn up in Hungarian mu
Mummified Buddha statue in Hungary stolen from China
Xinhua, March 23, 2015
Chinese relic experts have determined a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue containing a mummified monk, which is now in possession of a Dutch private collector, is a relic stolen from an east China village in 1995.
Two experts examine a Buddha statue containing the preserved remains (inset) of a 1,000-year-old monk in the Hungarian Natural History Museum. The museum pulled it from an exhibition on Friday. Chinese experts have said that the statue was stolen from a Chinese village in 1995. — Xinhua
The Cultural Relic Bureau in east China's Fujian Province said on Sunday that judging from research and media reports, experts have confirmed that the statue on show in Hungarian Natural History Museum was a relic stolen from Yangchun Village in Fujian in 1995.
The bureau will continue the relic investigation in the village and search for more information while reporting to the national cultural authorities in order to identify and trace the stolen relic in compliance with normal procedures, said a bureau spokesman.
The statue was on a "Mummy World" exhibition at the Hungarian Natural History Museum that opened in October last year and was originally scheduled to be on display until May 17, but was pulled from the exhibition on Friday as the museum said "the Dutch owner withdrew the statue without giving any reason."
Villagers in Yangchun burst into tears while other lit fireworks after seeing the statue via Chinese TV news earlier this month.
The bureau immediately dispatched experts to the village to investigate the issue. Through the research, experts found a large amount of photos, relics and historical records including a pedigree suggesting the mummy was a former ancestor (or Zushi in Chinese) of the local clan.
The statue, formerly housed in the village temple, was stolen in 1995. It wore a hat and clothes when sitting in the temple, and was worshiped as an ancestor.
According to Yangchun archives, the Buddha, named Zhanggong Zushi, was a local man who became a monk in his 20s and won fame for helping people treat disease and spread Buddhist belief. When he died at the age of 37, his body was mummified and local people made a statue with the mummy inside at around the time in China's Song Dynasty (960-1279). The statue has been worshipped in the village temple ever since.
In the temple, local people still preserve the statue's hat and clothes and other affiliated relics.
