Li Yuchen | In the Name of National Treasure

By Li Yuchen

In late May 2025, at the autumn auction preview of a top auction house in Beijing, a Ming Dynasty painting scroll, estimated at 88 million yuan, quietly appeared in the catalog for VIP clients. This scroll, titled “Spring in Jiangnan,” features meticulous brushwork and profound artistic conception, and is considered a genuine masterpiece by Qiu Ying, one of the “Four Masters of the Wu School.”

A few days later, Ms. Pang Shuling in Shanghai saw this catalog. This painting should have been quietly lying in the warehouse of the Nanjing Museum, 400 kilometers away. It was one of the 137 family treasures that her father, Pang Zenghe, personally handed over to the state 66 years ago.

Faced with the astonishment of the owner of the painting, the descendants of the collector Pang Laichen, and the urgent inquiries from the national cultural relics department, the auction was quickly withdrawn. However, the Nanjing Museum, which should have been the “victim” of the theft, gave a more shocking explanation:

This painting, along with four other treasures donated by the Pang family, had already been identified as forgeries by experts and “disposed of” according to regulations.

The other side of the story begins a century ago.

The name Pang Laichen is a gold-lettered signboard in the modern Chinese collecting world. This industrialist, who came from the Pang family, one of the “Four Elephants” of Nanxun, Zhejiang, was not only wealthy but also a great collector. He had a sharp eye and spent lavishly. The famous works of art he handled were later included in a book called “Xuzhai Famous Paintings.”

Those that could be included in this book were all rare treasures.

In 1949, Pang Laichen passed away. His descendants inherited this treasure, which was enough to buy half of Shanghai, and also inherited the patriotic spirit deeply rooted in the old gentleman’s heart. They knew that the ultimate destination of these national treasures should not be their own studios, but should belong to the hall of all the people.

In 1959, Pang Zenghe, the grandson of Pang Laichen, and his family made a solemn decision to donate 137 (sets) of “Xuzhai’s Old Collection” ancient calligraphy and paintings to the state free of charge.

The receiving unit was the Nanjing Museum, one of the three major museums in the country at that time.

Among these cultural relics was the “Spring in Jiangnan” scroll, which later stirred up a storm.

To commend this act of righteousness, in November 1962, the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Committee held a special awards ceremony in Suzhou. Mr. Zeng Zhaoyu, the then-president of the Nanjing Museum, the first female doctor of archaeology in China, and one of the famous “Nan Zeng Bei Xia,” personally wrote a certificate of merit for the Pang family.

Black words on white paper, with a red star as the seal, read:

Mr. Pang Zenghe donated 137 pieces of ancient calligraphy and paintings from his family collection to the state, and this certificate is given to commend him.

This trust should have been more valuable than gold.

The Pang family has always believed this. They believe that the museum is a safe deposit box of time. As another donating master, the painter Pan Tianshou, said when he donated his masterpiece “Ink Bamboo” in 1951:

To be stored in the public, can be passed down for thousands of years.

This is the most simple belief of that generation of intellectuals. They do not seek monetary rewards, but seek spiritual permanence. They believe that entrusting their private aesthetic memory to a permanent public institution is the best way to make it immortal.

However, the safe deposit box of time sometimes opens its own door.

And, in a way they never imagined.

1

The Pang family’s distrust of the Nanjing Museum did not begin with the 2015 lawsuit about making a living by selling paintings, but originated from an earlier, almost forgotten “borrowing painting” case.

Time goes back to 1963, only four years after the Pang family’s first large-scale donation.

That year, a staff member of the Nanjing Museum, Xu Yunqiu, visited Pang Zenghe under the pretext of organizing an art exhibition. He hoped to borrow from the Pang family’s collection that had not yet been donated:

Borrow two paintings for temporary exhibition.

These two paintings were the “Pine Spring Map” scroll by Wu Zhen, a master of the Yuan Dynasty, and the “Album of Landscape Paintings in the Style of the Ancients” by Wu Li, one of the “Four Wangs” of the early Qing Dynasty.

Xu Yunqiu promised at the time that the exhibition would only last for three months and would be returned immediately after the exhibition.

Pang Zenghe agreed. After all, the other party represented a national-level museum, and he still had some trust.

But this borrowing was:

A lifetime.

Three months later, the paintings were not returned. In December 1964, an unfortunate news came that Mr. Zeng Zhaoyu, the highly respected president of the Nanjing Museum, committed suicide.

The cultural superstar of an era fell, and the entire Nanjing Museum and even the Jiangsu cultural relics circles fell into turmoil and sorrow.

Although Pang Zenghe was anxious about the whereabouts of the two paintings, he also knew the ways of the world. He later told his family that it was really embarrassing to “ask for paintings” from a unit that had just lost its president at this juncture.

This “embarrassment” lasted for more than ten years.

It was not until 1979 that Pang Zenghe and his wife began to embark on the road of pursuing the paintings again. In the following nearly ten years, they went to the Nanjing Museum again and again, asking about the whereabouts of the two borrowed paintings.

The responses they received were always vague, or simply:

No results.

In 1988, Pang Zenghe, whose patience was exhausted, sued the Nanjing Museum in court. His request was simple: to confirm the ownership of the two paintings.

However, because there was no written loan agreement for the borrowing in the style of a gentleman’s agreement back then, the lawsuit was finally concluded in a way that was unacceptable to the Pang family.

The court ruled that the two paintings were not borrowed, but:

Purchased.

The ruling required the Nanjing Museum to pay Pang Zenghe 26,000 yuan for the paintings, plus 28,000 yuan in interest. With more than 50,000 yuan, a legal end was drawn to this case that had been hanging for more than twenty years.

This matter became a deep thorn in the hearts of the Pang family. It made them realize for the first time how fragile simple trust was in their dealings with public institutions.

But they still did not expect that this fragile trust would be torn open again in a more insulting way more than twenty years later.

2

In early 2015, the descendants of the Pang family sued the Nanjing Museum and the author for infringement of reputation because the Nanjing Museum used the statement “the descendants of Pang Laichen have fallen to selling paintings to make a living” in an exhibition promotional article.

In order to prove in court that the Pang family did indeed sell paintings, thereby proving that the statement in the article was not fabricated, the lawyer representing the Nanjing Museum submitted evidence to the court.

This evidence was the “Spring in Jiangnan” scroll by Qiu Ying, which should have been donated by the Pang family free of charge in 1959.

The Nanjing Museum stated:

This painting is no longer in the museum and is collected by an institution called Nanjing Yilan Zhai.

At that moment, Pang Shuling, who was sitting in the plaintiff’s seat, was completely stunned.

How could the national treasure donated by her family to the museum fall into the hands of a private institution? And how could it, in turn, become a weapon for the other party to attack her family for making a living by selling paintings in court?

This is even more magical than magical realism.

After the lawsuit, Pang Shuling felt that something was wrong. Starting in 2016, she continuously wrote letters to the Nanjing Museum, making a request that seemed reasonable to any donor:

To check the current status of all 137 donated items.

Faced with this request, the response from the Nanjing Museum was more direct and cold than the no results of more than ten years ago. They rejected Pang Shuling with a jaw-dropping reason:

You are not the donor himself.

The hammer of the law finally knocked open the long-sealed warehouse door of the Nanjing Museum.

After the court issued a civil mediation letter, the Nanjing Museum finally agreed to arrange for Pang Shuling to check the collection that had been donated for 66 years before June 30, 2025.

However, just one month before the inspection date, in late May 2025, an even more shocking news came.

Pang Shuling saw the scroll that she had been dreaming of in an electronic catalog sent by a friend. The green landscape on the picture was exactly the “Spring in Jiangnan” by Qiu Ying, which her grandfather had mentioned countless times.

It appeared in the spring auction catalog of a top auction house in Beijing and was隆重推出 as one of the most important auction items. The catalog wrote a lengthy article of textual research for it, calling it “the only Qiu Ying green landscape masterpiece on the market.”

Starting price:

88 million.

3

After Pang Shuling urgently reported to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, this upcoming auction drama was put on hold.

The auction house withdrew the item.

But the storm has just begun.

At the end of June 2025, Pang Shuling and her lawyer, Yin Zhijun, walked into the Nanjing Museum as agreed.

The results of the inventory were completely consistent with their premonitions.

Only 132 items remain of the 137 (sets) of collections donated that year. In addition to the “Spring in Jiangnan,” which had just taken a one-day trip to the auction, four other paintings also disappeared:

The “Double Horse Picture Scroll” by Zhao Guangfu of the Song Dynasty, the “Pine Wind Xiao Temple Picture Scroll” by Wang Fu of the Ming Dynasty, the “Landscape Scroll in the Style of Beiyuan” by Wang Shimin of the early Qing Dynasty, and the “Colored Landscape Scroll” by Tang Yifen of the Qing Dynasty.

A month later, the Nanjing Museum gave a belated written reply.

This reply completely ignited the anger of the Pang family. The Nanjing Museum stated that these 5 missing collections had been identified twice by the museum’s expert group in 1961 and 1964, and the conclusions were:

Forgeries.

Therefore, these forgeries were “removed” from the collection sequence and “allocated and adjusted” in the 1990s in accordance with the newly issued “Management Measures for Museum Collections.”

The reply did not specify who they were allocated to or where they were adjusted to.

This explanation is full of loopholes and arrogance.

Pang Shuling’s rebuttal was straightforward. First of all, my great-grandfather Pang Laichen was a recognized collector in the industry with a sharp eye. His collection may be controversial, but it is absolutely impossible for him to donate a pile of fakes to the state as treasures.

Secondly, even if you identify them as forgeries:

Why don’t you inform us and return them to us?

This is the most simple human nature.

Also, even if you don’t return them, where did these 5 collections that you think are fake go?

Faced with this question, the Nanjing Museum said that they didn’t know.

When the Pang family’s lawyer asked the Nanjing Museum to produce the identification materials from that year, what they took out was more like a joke.

It was a photocopy of a document from 1964, titled “Opinion Records of Comrades Wang Dunhua, Xu Yunqiu, and Xu Shennong.” But the core content of the document was almost completely covered with thick mosaics, which were dense and unreadable.

In the gaps of the pixel grids, there is only a scribbled handwritten word, which can be vaguely seen:

Fake.

What’s even more incredible is that the appraisers of this key document were not the cultural relics experts that the outside world imagined. According to Pang Shuling, they were just ordinary staff members of the Nanjing Museum, and one of them was not even a professional in calligraphy and painting appraisal.

An ordinary employee who is not a professional, with a “fake” word on a document full of mosaics, pronounced the death sentence of a painting with a future estimated value of 88 million.

This sounds like a fairy tale.

And the most fatal doubt of the whole incident lies here. As the cultural scholar Ma Weidu questioned:

If it is really a fake, why can it get an astronomical valuation of 88 million in today’s most rigorous commercial auction market? Are the auction houses and those top buyers who are ready to spend real money fools?

Moreover, according to the material evidence later found by Xinhua News Agency reporters, when this painting was “disposed of” in 2001, the price was only:

6,800 yuan.

From 6,800 yuan for a “fake” to 88 million for a “treasure,” the difference is more than 12,000 times.

Who is playing the “hand of God” in this huge value gap?

Just as the Pang family’s descendants and the Nanjing Museum’s “forgery” dispute fell into a stalemate, a voice from within the museum, like a sharp scalpel, cut open the deepest abscess of the incident.

4

On December 21, 2023, a retired Nanjing Museum custodian named Guo Lidian appeared in a real-name reporting video, holding his retirement certificate and work permit.

What he reported was his former leader—Xu Huping, the legendary president who started as a printing worker with a high school education and eventually presided over the Nanjing Museum for more than twenty years.

Xu Huping’s resume is a legend in itself.

徐湖平的履历，本身就是一部传奇。

The introduction to the person in the video shows that this future cultural relic giant only has a high school education. He served in the military and entered a printing factory as a worker in 1969 after retiring. It wasn’t until 1973 that he was transferred to the Nanjing Museum, despite having no experience in cultural relics.

12 years later, 40-year-old Xu Huping was appointed as:

Deputy Director of the Nanjing Museum, holding a position equivalent to a department head.

Guo Lidian’s accusations are no longer focused on the authenticity of a particular painting, but rather on a systematic, large-scale embezzlement.

In his description, a clear chain of interests emerges:

First, using the director’s authority, he instructed experts to identify the precious cultural relics in the museum’s collection—especially those from the Forbidden City that no one dared to touch—as “fakes”.

Second, these “fakes” were “allocated” at extremely low prices to:

Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Store,

where he also served as the legal representative.

Third, his son, who opened an auction house in Shanghai, then resold these cultural relics at high prices to wealthy merchants and dealers both domestically and internationally, thereby profiting greatly.

Guo Lidian stated in the video that the national treasures that were handled in this way numbered:

Thousands of pieces.

If the “famous painting scandal” of the Nanjing Museum was still shrouded in a mist of “authenticity disputes”, then Guo Lidian’s report brought to mind another even more shocking case.

Xiao Yuan, the former librarian of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, an expert who authored “History of Calligraphy Aesthetics”. Between 2002 and 2010, he systematically replaced 143 genuine works by famous artists in the museum’s collection, including Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, and Bada Shanren, with fakes he had copied.

He took 143 genuine works from the collection.

And meticulously put back 143 fakes.

125 of the genuine works were sent to auction, generating profits of over 34 million yuan. The total amount involved in the case reached 110 million yuan.

When the guardians become the most efficient thieves, and when professional knowledge becomes the sharpest tool for crime, the entire system’s firewall becomes ineffective. This may be exactly what Mr. Lu Xun foresaw. In his article “On the So-Called ‘Imperial Archives'” written nearly a hundred years ago, he predicted:

“It is really not easy to preserve public things in China. If the authorities are outsiders, they will ruin the things; if they are insiders, they will steal the things.”

Facing overwhelming doubts and the real-name report from his former subordinates, the 80-year-old Xu Huping accepted an interview at home.

He sat on an antique Taishi chair, looking calm, and gave his “four no’s” response: not understanding, not participating, not handling, and not being professional.

In fact, in a previous public speech, Xu Huping had established an image of unparalleled integrity for himself.

In the video, he spoke eloquently to the audience:

“I have been the director for 27 years, and I have never bought anything from the public. You understand, this is the secret of being an official. If I bought something, now is the time for reporting, they say that this 5 million yuan thing, is not worth 50,000 yuan, he has a private relationship with those two, sold for 1 million, he took a kickback of 500,000, I can’t clear it up, I can only jump off the building and commit suicide.”

Now it seems that he is not afraid of being reported, but rather well-versed in this way.

At the end of the video, he handed everything over to the organization:

Waiting for the investigation results from the higher authorities.

However, the investigation by Xinhua News Agency reporters quickly revealed cracks in this seemingly impeccable response.

Documents found by the reporters showed that in the crucial allocation report of 1997:

He had a clear signature.

And the Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics General Store, which received that batch of “disposals”, he was also the:

Legal representative.

Not to mention, the mysterious “customer” Lu Ting, who bought “Spring in the South” for 6,800 yuan, was precisely the consultant of the Jiangsu Provincial Collectors Association, of which he was the chairman:

The chairman signed the allocation, the legal representative received it, and the association consultant purchased it.

A perfect process.

This closed loop is not only used for monetization but also for “gold plating”.

Just before and after “Spring in the South” was “disposed of” at a low price, a woman named Xu Ying began to emerge. Video materials show that she has always presented herself to the public as the “great-granddaughter” of the collector Pang Laichen.

But her true profession is:

Plant virology.

In the whistleblower’s description, a chain of academic corruption surrounding “identity fabrication” is also clear:

First step: Recognize a fake ancestor. Under Xu Huping’s operation, Xu Ying, who had no blood relationship, was inserted into the Pang family’s genealogy.

Second step: Academic whitewashing. Relying on the fake household registration of “Pang’s descendants”, Xu Ying, who studies plant viruses, was forced to shift her research direction to “Pang’s collection”, and used this as the topic:

Obtained a doctoral degree in art history from the China Academy of Art.

Third step: Authority endorsement. In 2014, at an important exhibition at the Nanjing Museum, Xu Huping, who was the director at the time, personally took the stage and announced to the audience that Xu Ying was a descendant of the Pang family, using his power to endorse her false identity.

5

Although as early as 2016, the court had ruled that Xu Ying’s identity was fabricated, this “doctoral channel” tailored for her had already been laid out.

Now, a joint investigation team from the National Cultural Heritage Administration and Jiangsu Province has entered Nanjing.

Two days after the investigation team entered, according to some circulating videos, on the evening of December 22, 2025, at 10 p.m., multiple official vehicles were suspected of surrounding Xu Huping’s villa located on the back half of Nanjing’s mountain—a Republican-era building listed as a cultural heritage site.

The action lasted until 12:30 p.m. on the 23rd.

That villa, which rarely had its lights on and was jokingly called “like a ghost light”, was brightly lit the night before. Some videos claimed that Xu Huping and his wife, as well as the nanny, were taken away together.

Currently, this Republican-era villa located at the end of a quiet path has quickly become the latest internet celebrity check-in spot for Nanjing citizens. People are scrambling to come and take photos and live stream in front of the tightly closed door, as if they were watching the absurd end of a huge era.

In 1959, when Mr. Pang Zenghe presented the family’s treasures to the country, what he entrusted was a kind of trust that could allow the cultural bloodline to “be passed down for thousands of years”.

66 years later, the guardian of this trust was taken away in his own villa, which is also a “cultural relic”. The safe of time finally closed, but what was the cost?

This trust is the indifference of Zhang Boju when he refused the 200,000 yuan reward when he donated “Pingfu Tie”; it is the selflessness of Xu Beihong’s wife, Liao Jingwen, who donated all 1,200 of her husband’s works.

This is the most simple and noble quality of Chinese donors. They do not seek monetary rewards, but seek spiritual permanence.

But when family heirlooms become cold numbers on auction catalogs, what is it that we are hurting, other than the hearts of Pang’s descendants?

The level of civilization of a society depends to a large extent on how it treats those selfless contributors. When the safe of time itself begins to embezzle, when the promise of being passed down for thousands of years becomes a business of low-price disposal, to whom should we entrust the memory of the nation?

Li Yuchen’s article is written in the dust

Written on December 26, 2025