In the 1980s, Shanxi villagers mysteriously became rich, and the police were suspicious. Experts were disappointed when they saw charcoal: it was too late.

In Houma City, Shanxi Province, such a jaw-dropping proverb has been circulated all year round. Although this proverb seems very dramatic now, in the 1980s and 1990s in Shanxi, it was a fact that everyone knew. .

The predecessor of Houma City was the capital of the Jin Kingdom, one of the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period. It has a vast territory, with plains and basins. The Fen River and the Hui River nourish the vast land all year round, but you know ?

In this small town with a history of thousands of years, there are 13 tombs from the Warring States Period. Not to mention the tombs of dignitaries and wealthy daughters, even the Jin Dynasty There are many tombs of previous monarchs.

In this way, the proverb "robbing graves to get rich" that has been circulating in Houma City for many years is not groundless. There seems to be a pattern for those poor farmers to get rich overnight without knowing it. , so how did they escape poverty and arouse high suspicion from the police?

What kind of incredible stories were involved in a series of investigative cases? It breaks down as follows.

Hou Linshan is such a person. Under the opportunity of history, through stealing and selling national cultural relics, he transformed from an unknown rubber shoe factory worker to a well-known local "Hou Wanwan". ".

After becoming rich, what other shocking things did he do that forced the police to arrest him?

It was the early 1980s. Hou Linshan dropped out of high school and went to work in a local rubber shoe factory. He was naughty by nature and never stopped causing trouble. During the years when he was a worker, he often got into trouble because of The gambling and cock-crowing and dog-robbery incidents were transferred to the police station, but Hou Linshan, who was used to "detention" meals, did not stop "acting like a monster" because he repeatedly violated the law.

No, if you don’t do a good job, you have to go and engage in some unknown small businesses. In those activities that are not on the table, Hou Linshan often comes into contact with some outsiders, most of whom are paid. On the grounds of copper coins, he has been staying in the hotel in Houma City for a long time.

Over time, under the influence of that group of people, Hou Linshan began to learn how to "do business" with them. But the more he understood, the more Hou Linshan felt that their purpose was not as simple as collecting copper coins. Because in Houma City, ancient copper coins can be seen everywhere in the homes of ordinary people. It is no exaggeration to say that even the cats and dogs at home and the lamps used for eating may be pottery dug out of the ground, but that What kind of hidden deeds are these people doing under the guise of collecting copper coins? It turns out that they are a group of "grave robbers" who smuggle cultural relics.

Speaking of engaging in cultural relics, for Hou Linshan, it is really a bit of a mistake, because Hou Linshan’s mother is from a family of antiques, and Hou Linshan has also grown up under the influence of this culture since he was a child, but Before he had a chance to do it himself, a group of people openly lured him into the water and promised generous rewards. This made Hou Linshan's restless heart gradually begin to agitate.

In 1983, Hou Linshan "tested his skills" in the cultural relics industry and easily earned tens of thousands of dollars. While enjoying the pleasure of huge profits, Hou Linshan also began to strategize and start work. Get ready to create your own "combat" team.

At that time, a worker in a rubber shoe factory became a millionaire overnight, which caused quite a stir in the village. In addition, the rate of human-to-human transmission in the village was relatively fast. Before Lin Shan could take the initiative to lure people into the business, many people came to him with great determination and wanted to "become a disciple and join the industry."

Guo Binglin was the one among Hou Linshan’s many “disciples” who took the initiative to come to him.

But can people like this gathered together for profit really be able to support each other and make progress hand in hand? No, not even after working for two years, Guo Binglin and Hou Linshan had a rift due to uneven distribution of the spoils, and then left Hou Linshan with a team of people.

But the dominant Hou Linshan did not suffer because of the departure of its affiliates. On the contrary, in order to prevent Guo Binglin from grabbing his "market", Hou Linshan began to "open up mountains" in a drastic way. Open up the land."

From 1989 to 1994, Hou Linshan's gang went to Quwo, Xia County and other places, robbed 7 historical and cultural relics, blew up 5 ancient tombs with gunpowder, and sold rare artifacts. 31 cultural relics.

Even the ancient tombs of the Warring States Period in Zibo, which are protected by express national regulations, were brutally murdered by Hou Linshan, which shows how rampant this person is.

It is reported that Hou Linshan and others excavated 14 bronzes and 2 precious cultural relics from the ancient tombs of the Warring States Period, and made a profit of more than 700,000 yuan. From the 31 cultural relics resold in the horse market, Hou Linshan made a profit of one million yuan at one time, and thus got the title of "Hou Millionaire".

As the saying goes: "You can't live in a big house if you are rich, and you can't travel long distances if you are poor." But Hou Wanwan doesn't seem to agree with this way of life that hides his edge.

Not only did he use his growing "status in the world" to recruit soldiers, but he also nakedly developed the tomb robbing organization into an out-and-out armed separatist force. At the same time, he also lived a life of luxury and luxury. So what are the specific extravagant manifestations of Hou Wanwan?

First of all, after getting a large amount of cash, Hou Wanwan bought himself a large, well-decorated villa, and then bought himself three Santana cars with official license plates. In addition, there are four real economic industries, ranging from entertainment to education. Hou Wanwan has been involved in almost all projects that can make money.

According to statistics, from reselling cultural relics, to profiting from the real economy, to illegal gains, Hou Wanwan’s assets have accumulated to 1.83 million yuan.

You must know that this was China in the early 1990s. The salary of ordinary workers was only a hundred yuan at most, and Hou Wanwan had already become a local emperor in the "business empire" he built with his own hands. .

In Hou Wanwan's own words: "As long as I wave to a beautiful girl on the street, she will take the initiative to come to my door."

Although this kind of statement sounds very harsh, in Houma City at that time, it was an indisputable fact.

In addition, he also has a bottomless smuggling dark network, which can assist many experts in smuggling cultural relics and extend the claws of selling cultural relics to Hong Kong and even Singapore.

But at this point, some people will definitely wonder why those shady tomb-robbing organizations can openly assemble into groups and form armed forces to run rampant in every village in Shanxi? There are three reasons.

First, the act of tomb robbing is cumbersome and complicated. It is difficult for a person acting alone to survive in the tomb robbing circle.

Merely surveying the terrain, locking the target, and then accurately excavation are not something that one person can complete alone. Frankly speaking, no organization with more than three or five people can be called "Tomb robbing".

Coupled with the lack of sophisticated equipment and professional protection knowledge, I am afraid that during the digging process, I will either fall down from exhaustion or overdose on harmful gases and die of poisoning.

Second, tomb robbing requires skilled professionals to open up the darknet economy.

Among professional tomb robbing organizations, there are those who are proficient in business rules, those who are familiar with Feng Shui, those who are proficient in the history of tombs, and those who are powerful. They can either pinpoint the location of the tomb, or they can Stolen cultural relics can open up purchase channels at home and abroad, or it can remove all obstacles in the process of private transactions of cultural relics.

The reason why they have to gather together in an organized and disciplined manner is entirely because in the business of tomb robbing, you cannot arbitrarily discover success or generate profits without any link.

Third, tomb robbing and challenging national laws.

Shady activities naturally require the formation of a sense of "self-protection", but a group alone is not enough. An organization without an arm is like a fragile egg. Once encountered, An organization that is tougher than itself may face the risk of being disintegrated at any time.

So they must find ways to arm themselves. But where did they get their weapons and equipment?

In fact, most of them are obtained through smuggling, because our country’s arms factories are state-owned enterprises, and ordinary people cannot obtain arms supplies domestically, so they set their sights on the dark web. The level of darkness in the trading channel is staggering, and the items they smuggle are beyond the scope of ordinary people's knowledge.

"Money can make the world go round", in that era when the public security environment was relatively backward and the information network was relatively closed. Some powerful local organizations can rely on their strong relationship networks to acquire advanced tomb robbing equipment and guns.

It is no exaggeration to say that in Houma City in the 1990s, the power of the "Houguo" family alone was enough to compete head-on with the local police station.

While Hou Wanwan was roaming the streets of Houma City in an arrogant manner, little did he know that an arrest operation that had been brewing for a long time was quietly ambushing around him.

It was September 6, 1994. After Linfen Public Security Bureau figured out Hou Wanwan's itinerary in advance, they lurked at the intersection he must pass when returning to the city, preparing to "catch a turtle in a urn."

But for some reason, the policemen stayed on guard until almost noon and did not even see Hou Wanwan’s soul.

Is the battle plan exposed? Or was Hou Wanwan being cautious and sending out false travel signals? The latter is very likely, because Hou Wanwan did not choose to return to Taiyuan from Dayun Road, but took a detour back to Houma City. After receiving the news, Chen Zhanshan, a police officer in Houma City, quickly made a plan to lure the snake out of the hole. This move attracted Hou Linshan to Luxi Detention Center.

But Hou Linshan is so cautious, why is he willing to risk going to the detention center? Because his former bodyguard Sun Yalin was imprisoned there, the person he had always wanted to get rid of in his dreams. Now that Sun Yalin had been thrown into prison by every means, Hou Linshan naturally wanted to come forward in person and seek a "death penalty" for Sun Yalin.

From the moment Hou Linshan stepped into the detention center, his rampant era came to an end. But before that, he had never thought that the ruthless guy who was always good at sending others to jail would now send himself to the police station with his own hands.

There is a saying: "The way of heaven is reincarnation, no one will be spared by heaven." What's more, we are all eating from the same bowl. If you overturn other people's tables, you will end up with nothing to eat.

According to Hou Linshan’s account, he robbed nearly 14 ancient tombs of various sizes in Houma City, including the tomb of the Marquis of the Jin Dynasty, although Hou Linshan has forgotten which pit those cultural relics came from. , and it is impossible to determine whether the cultural relics sold are from the Jin Dynasty, but it is certain that most of the ancient tombs he robbed were raided several times by small-scale tomb-robber groups.

Although the police were skeptical about the possibility of salvaging the tomb of the Marquis of Jin, when they passed the news to archaeologists, it still caused quite a stir, because the Marquis of Jin The existence of the tomb is a treasure that every archaeologist dreams of confirming.

Professor Zou, who was conducting rescue excavations in Houma City at the time, after hearing about the incident, immediately followed the police’s instructions to search for the tomb of the Marquis of Jin. Finally, he found the tomb at No. 8 marked by them. In the pit, the tomb of Jinhou Su, the eighth generation monarch of the Jin Dynasty, was found. Archaeologists were extremely surprised. They looked forward to one day being able to trace the history of the Jin Dynasty again by excavating the ancient tombs of the Jin Dynasty.

But when they saw the charcoal scattered in the soil at the entrance of the tomb, their hearts suddenly went cold. At this point, they could only lament sadly: "It's still too late."

Yes, it was definitely too late, because this ancient tomb was cleared out by Hou Linshan and Guo Binglin’s gang as early as August 1992. Now, two years after the incident, there are still Many villagers and children dug into the grave pit with hoes. Not to mention rewriting the history of the Jin Dynasty, even the tomb chamber may no longer exist.

Just as the archaeologists were cleaning the dilapidated tomb of Jin Housu with disgust, they found two small bronze chimes in an inconspicuous mound. This clock is complete and exquisite, and there are some inscriptions of different shades engraved on the surface. Different from the rubbing inscriptions in the previous pictures, the inscriptions on this pair of clocks appear to be extremely random, as if they were carved casually. .

But the reason why "chimes" are chimes is because they mostly appear in sets. In addition to different timbres, they are not even uniform in size. Now there are only two inconspicuous ones left. bell, it is not difficult to guess that those sets of large chime bells may have fallen into the hands of others, or been blown to pieces, or have flowed overseas.

But just when the archaeologists were feeling lonely for the lost bronze bells, Hong Kong archaeologist Professor Zhang Guangyu suddenly sent an exciting news to Mr. Ma Chengyuan, the curator of the Shanghai Museum. Shocking news.

"There is a batch of bronzes for sale in Hong Kong recently, including fourteen bronze chimes." After hearing this, Mr. Ma Chengyuan began to search for information and tried to find similar ones among all the chimes unearthed in China. remnants.

Originally, Mr. Ma Chengyuan did not have much expectations for these 14 bronze chimes, because there are few complete chimes in circulation on the market, and most of them are fakes, but when he saw the photos from Hong Kong At that time, I suddenly fell into deep thought, because this set of bronze chimes is different from the 16 chimes unearthed in Hubei in the past.

It does not have a rigid pouring process or a uniform casting material. Even the rough inscriptions on the appearance seem to have been carved with a knife. Therefore, when this set of chimes was lost in Hong Kong, , no buyer has dared to buy it, and even some antique experts said bluntly: "There is no more fake than this set of chimes."

But Mr. Ma Chengyuan disagreed. In order to find out the actual condition of this set of chimes, he quietly went to Hong Kong and found the seller who had the set of chimes.

When he gently rubbed the patina on the chimes with his hands, he suddenly felt mixed emotions in his heart, because he had already determined in his heart that this was a genuine set of chimes from the Jin Dynasty. According to the current craftsmanship, Judging from the inscriptions, he even existed earlier than the Jin Kingdom.

Due to the protection of cultural relics, Ma Chengyuan did not disclose his identity, nor did he reveal any facts about the chimes to the store. After simply exploring the price, he met Zhang, a professor of the Department of Archeology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Mr. Guangyu discussed secretly buying these chimes and taking them back to the Shanghai Museum for careful study.

When colleagues in the industry learned that Mr. Ma Chengyuan was behaving so crazily, they all thought he was insane. After all, buying fourteen imitations for a unit price of 60,000 yuan really earned him the title of "Bronze Master". So while everyone was in disbelief, they quietly moved up the "small bench" and sat back to watch. Mr. Ma’s joke.

After these bells were transported to the Shanghai Museum, Mr. Ma Chengyuan and a group of archaeologists carefully peeled off the patina on the bells and clearly printed the inscriptions on them. I couldn't stop looking at it, but I didn't expect that this inscription with poor handwriting actually described the whole story of how Su, the Marquis of Jin, got this chime.

But when the archaeologists reached the last inscription, they found that the inscription was unbiased and lacked an ending. Is there something missing from this set of chimes?

For this reason, Mr. Ma Chengyuan immediately contacted the Shanxi Museum and retrieved all the cultural relics about Jinhou Su. However, this investigation did not matter, it was directly confirmed that these fourteen chimes coincided with the 8 The two bells unearthed from tomb No. 1 are from the same series.

It turns out that there are 16 chimes in this batch, and each one has a hand-carved inscription. Although the materials of these chimes seem to be mixed, the sound when arranged together is almost perfect.

Now the bronze chime bell bought by Mr. Ma Chengyuan has become the treasure of the Shanghai Museum, and the two "little brothers" of the chime bell have also become the treasure of the Shanxi Museum.

In terms of status, these bronze bells have been listed as key protected cultural relics. In terms of value, they have already exceeded the range that ordinary people can estimate.

Those who had ridiculed Mr. Ma Chengyuan and waited to see the joke not only failed to do so, but also learned to reflect on themselves.

With the continuous development of science and technology, although tomb robbery gangs no longer have the swaggering image of bandits they used to have, their crime methods and efficiency have been greatly improved. First of all, it is reflected in the "intelligence" of tomb robbers. They are not only equipped with infrared night vision devices, metal detectors, high-energy telescopes, and three-dimensional imaging, but also have specialized technical instructors.

The second is the "groupization" of tomb robbers. Most of them involve elites from all walks of life, from the supply of capital chains, to the purchase of high-end equipment, to the hiring of tomb robbers, to the final sales and To share the spoils, a systematic industrial "one-stop" service has been formed.

Unbelievable? But this is indeed the overall level of crime committed by modern tomb robbing groups. However, what is even more ironic is that the increasing technological level can only provide more convenient tomb robbing technology for the increasingly hidden tomb robbing groups, but it cannot protect the unearthed cultural relics. Provide better technical support.

Although this comparison seems extremely cruel, it is an indisputable fact.

Just like the more than 600 robes unearthed from Dingling. They were soft in texture and rich in color when they were unearthed. However, due to the lack of better protection technology, these clothes were oxidized one after another after they were unearthed, and even a piece of them appeared. There are black spots on the ground, and in order to clean these black spots, professionals can only use established materials under limited conditions, which leads to irreversible cracking of the cultural relics, even to the point of disappearing.

How to avoid this tragedy? If there is no excavation, there will be no damage. But if archaeologists do not excavation, there will be tomb robber groups who commit crimes privately. Except for commercial development and necessary urban construction, which will passively touch some ancient tombs, most of the ancient tombs in our country are It was rescued and excavated due to the destruction of tomb robbers.

In the past 20 years, at least 200,000 ancient tombs in our country have been stolen by criminals, and those treasures carrying our country’s history and culture have become a means of getting rich in the hands of those tomb robbers. .

The so-called cultural relics are witnesses of the development of human society and the founders of the history and culture of countries and nations. They have no life and have no ability to choose their own destiny, but they are precious and non-renewable. cultural resources.

How can a conscientious Chinese son or daughter, in order to get rich overnight, imitate the "Eight-Power Allied Forces" and wreak havoc and covertly destroy people on their own country's territory? How could he not hesitate to rob the ancient tombs of his ancestors just for the sake of greed?

There is a saying: "Never forget your relatives' words of fate day and night, and recommend the incense of your ancestors morning and evening." As a human being, we must not forget the lessons of our ancestors, and we must not do evil in the land where our ancestors have fought. Otherwise, those who will do evil will Those who dig into other people's graves will one day "dig their own graves."