In the 1980s, villagers in Shanxi became rich mysteriously. The police suspected that the experts were disappointed when they saw charcoal: it was too late.

In houma city, Shanxi, there is such a jaw-dropping proverb that is circulated all the year round. Although this proverb is very dramatic now, it is a well-known fact in Shanxi in the 1980s and 1990s.

Houma city's predecessor was the capital of Jin State, one of the five tyrants in the Spring and Autumn Period. It has vast plains and basins. Fenhe River and Huihe River nourish that vast land all the year round, but do you know?

In this small town with a history of thousands of years, there are 13 tombs during the Warring States period, not to mention the tombs of powerful and rich women, and even the tombs of successive monarchs in the State of Jin.

In this way, the proverb of "robbing a tomb to get rich" that has been circulating in houma city all the year round is not groundless. It seems that there are rules to follow for those poor farmers to get rich overnight without knowing it. So how did they get rid of poverty, which aroused the high suspicion of the police?

So what incredible stories are involved in a series of investigation cases? The breakdown is as follows.

Hou Linshan is such a person. Under the historical opportunity, he transformed himself from a little-known rubber shoe factory worker into a famous "waiting for a million" by stealing national cultural relics.

What jaw-dropping activities did you do after you became rich that the police had to arrest him?

It was in the early 1980s that Hou Linshan dropped out of high school and went to work in a local rubber overshoes factory. He is stubborn by nature and never stops making trouble. In those years when he was a worker, he was often transferred to the police station for gambling and playing tricks, but Hou Linshan, who was used to "detaining" meals, did not stop being a demon because of repeated violations of laws and regulations.

It doesn't matter. If you can't do it well, you have to go to some little-known small enterprises. Hou Linshan often comes into contact with some outsiders in those activities that can't be on the table. Most of them stayed in hotels in houma city for a long time on the grounds of collecting copper coins.

Over time, under the influence of that group of people, Hou Linshan began to learn from them to "do business", but the more he understood them, the more he felt that their purpose was not just to collect copper coins, because in Houma City, ancient copper coins could be seen everywhere in ordinary people's homes. It is no exaggeration to say that even the cats and dogs at home and the lamps for eating may be pottery dug up in the ground, but those people actually collect copper coins under the guise of collecting. It turns out that they are a group of "grave robbers" who smuggle cultural relics.

Speaking of cultural relics, it is really a bit wrong for Hou Linshan, because Hou Linshan's mother comes from an antique family. Hou Linshan grew up under the influence of this culture, but he never had the opportunity to do it himself. At present, a group of people openly wooed him into the water, and promised to have rich rewards, which made Hou Linshan's restless heart gradually restless.

Arrived at 1983, Hou Linshan was selling cultural relics and easily earned tens of thousands of dollars in bills. While experiencing the thrill of profiteering, Hou Linshan also began to strategize and set out to build his own "combat" team.

At that time, workers in a rubber overshoes factory became ten thousand households overnight, which caused quite a stir in the village. In addition, the speed of people in the village is also relatively fast. Before Lin Shan took the initiative to pull people into the water, many people vowed to come to the door and wanted to "learn from the teacher".

Guo is one of Hou Linshan's many "disciples" who came to the door on their own initiative.

But this kind of people who get together for the benefit can really support each other and join hands? No, I haven't done it for two years Guo and Hou Linshan were separated because of the uneven distribution of stolen goods, and then left Hou Linshan with a group of people.

The dominant Hou Linshan did not recover because of the departure of collateral. On the contrary, in order to prevent Guo from robbing his "market", Hou Linshan began to "cut the mountain" drastically.

From 1989 to 1994, Hou Linshan gang successively went to Quwo, Xiaxian and other places, robbed 7 historical relics, blew up 5 ancient tombs with gunpowder, and sold 3 1 piece of rare cultural relics.

Even the tomb of the Warring States period in Zibo, which is protected by the state, was killed by Hou Linshan, which shows that this person is extremely rampant.

It is reported that Hou Linshan and others excavated four bronzes 14 and two precious cultural relics from the ancient tombs during the Warring States period, from which they made a profit of more than 700,000 yuan. Together with 3/kloc-0 pieces of cultural relics sold by houma city, Hou Linshan earned millions of yuan at one time, and was named "Hou Million".

As the saying goes, "You can't live in a big house with money, and you can't travel far without money", but Hou Million doesn't seem to agree with this lifestyle.

He not only used his growing "Jianghu status" to recruit soldiers, but also developed the grave robbery organization into an out-and-out armed separatist force. At the same time, he also lives with all kinds of drunkenness. So what extravagant performances does Hou Million have?

First of all, after receiving a large amount of cash, Hou Million bought himself a finely decorated villa, and then bought himself three Santana cars with official licenses. There are also four real economy industries, from entertainment to education. Almost all the projects that can make money have been set foot on by Hou Million.

According to statistics, Hou Million's assets have accumulated to 6.5438+0.83 million yuan, from selling cultural relics to making profits in the real economy to illegal income.

You know, it was China in the early 1990s, and the average worker's salary was only a few hundred dollars at most, and Hou Million had already become a local tyrant in his own "business empire".

In Hou Million's own words: "I just wave to a beautiful girl in the street, and she will take the initiative to deliver it to her door."

Although it sounded harsh, it was an indisputable fact in houma city at that time.

In addition, he has an endless smuggling network in Zhang Shen, which can help many experts smuggle cultural relics and extend the claws of selling cultural relics to Hong Kong and even Singapore.

But at this time, some people will wonder why those shady grave-robbing organizations can openly assemble into groups, form armed forces, and run rampant in villages in Shanxi. There are three reasons.

First, tomb raiding is complicated, and it is difficult for people who act alone to survive in the tomb raiding circle.

It is impossible for a person to survey the terrain, lock the target and dig accurately. Frankly speaking, it can't be called "grave robbery" without an organization with more than three or five people.

Coupled with the lack of sophisticated equipment and professional protection knowledge, I am afraid that in the process of excavation, I am either exhausted or poisoned by excessive intake of harmful gases.

Second, robbing a tomb requires all-round professionals to get through the dark net economy.

In professional grave robbing organizations, some are proficient in guild regulations, some are proficient in geomantic omen, some are proficient in tomb history, and some are powerful. They may be able to accurately locate tombs, or open up roads at home and abroad for stolen cultural relics, or remove all obstacles for cultural relics in the process of private transactions.

The reason why they want to get together in an organized and disciplined way is just because the business of robbing tombs, without any link, can't explore success or generate benefits at will.

Third, grave robbery challenges national laws.

It is natural to form a sense of "self-protection" in shady activities, but it is not enough to have groups alone. An unarmed organization is like a fragile egg. Once you meet an organization that is tougher than yourself, you may face the risk of disintegration at any time.

So they must find a way to arm themselves. But where did they get the weapons and equipment?

In fact, most of them come from smuggling, because the military factories in our country are state-owned enterprises, and ordinary people can't get arms supply at home, so they focus on the dark trading channels, where the darkness is staggering and the smuggled goods are beyond the cognitive range of ordinary people.

"Money makes the mare go", in that era when the public security environment was relatively backward and the information network was relatively closed. Some powerful local organizations, relying on their strong connections, can win advanced tomb-robbing equipment and guns.

It is no exaggeration to say that in houma city in the 1990s, the power of "Hou Guo" alone was enough to fight head-on with the local police station.

When Hou Million was riding roughshod over the streets of Houma City, I didn't know that a long-simmering arrest was lurking around him.

That was on September 6th, 1994. Linfen Public Security Bureau, after finding out Hou Million's itinerary in advance, lurks in the only way back to the city, ready to "catch turtles in a jar".

But somehow, the policemen have been crouching until almost noon, and even the soul of Hou million has not been seen.

Is the battle plan exposed? Or did Hou Million be cautious and release the wrong travel signal? The latter is very likely, because Hou Million didn't choose to return to Taiyuan from Universiade Road at all, but made a detour to return to houma city. Chen Zhanshan, a policeman from houma city, made a quick suggestion and lured Hou Linshan to Luxi Detention Center by luring the snake out of the hole.

But Hou Linshan is so cautious, why is he willing to risk going to the detention center? Because his former bodyguard Sun Yalin was held there, he dreamed of getting rid of him. Now that Sun Yalin has been thrown into prison by him, Hou Linshan naturally wants to personally fight for the "death penalty" for Sun Yalin.

From the moment Hou Linshan stepped into the detention center, his rampant era was over. Before that, he never imagined that Horn, who had always been good at sending others to prison, had now sent himself to the police station.

There is a good saying: "Heaven has a good cycle, and Heaven forgives people", not to mention people who share a bowl of rice. You pick up someone else's table, and in the end you can't eat anything.

According to Hou Linshan's account, he excavated 14 ancient tombs in houma city, including the tomb of the Duke of Jin. Although Hou Linshan has forgotten which pit those cultural relics came from, and he is not sure whether the cultural relics he sold originated from the Jin Dynasty, it is certain that most of the ancient tombs he excavated were raided many times by some small-scale grave robbery groups.

Although the police were skeptical about the possibility of rescuing the waiting tomb in the state of Jin, when they passed the news to archaeologists, it caused quite a stir, because the existence of the waiting tomb in the state of Jin was a treasure that every archaeologist dreamed of confirming.

Professor Zou, who was carrying out a rescue excavation in houma city at that time, immediately looked for the tomb of the Duke of Jinxiang according to the tips of the police. Finally, in the No.8 pit marked by them, he found the tomb of the eighth monarch of Duke Xiang of Jin, and archaeologists were extremely surprised. They are looking forward to one day being able to trace the history of the State of Jin by excavating the ancient tombs of the State of Jin.

But when they saw the charcoal scattered in the soil at the mouth of the tomb, their hearts suddenly became cold. Here, they can only sigh painfully: "It's still too late."

Yes, it's really late, because this ancient tomb was swept away by Hou Linshan and Guo as early as August 1992. After two years, many villagers and children are still digging graves with hoes, not to mention rewriting the history of Jin State, and even graves no longer exist.

Just as the archaeologist was cleaning up the dilapidated tomb of Jin Housu, he found two small bronze bells in an unremarkable mound. The two chimes are complete and exquisite, and some inscriptions with different shades are engraved on the surface. Unlike the rubbings of previous drawings, the inscription on my clock is very casual, as if it were carved casually.

However, the reason why "chimes" are chimes is because most of them appear in sets, even with different sizes, except for different timbres. Now there are only two small bells left. It is not difficult to guess that those sets of big bells may have already fallen into the hands of others, or have been blown to pieces, or have already flowed overseas.

However, just as archaeologists were lonely for those lost bronze clocks, Professor Zhang Guangyu, a Hong Kong archaeologist, suddenly brought a shocking news to Mr. Ma Chengyuan, the curator of Shanghai Museum.

"Recently, there are a batch of bronzes to be traded in Hong Kong, including fourteen bronze chimes." After listening to this, Mr. Ma Chengyuan began to look for information, trying to find similar remnants in all chimes unearthed in China.

Originally, the old man Ma Chengyuan didn't expect much from the 14 bronze chime, because there were few complete chimes circulating in the market, and most of them were fakes. But when he saw the photos from Hong Kong, he suddenly lost in thought, because this set of bronze chimes is different from the 16 chimes unearthed in Hubei.

There is no rigid casting process and uniform casting materials. Even the rough inscription looks like it was carved with a knife. Therefore, this set of chimes arrived in Hong Kong, and no buyers dared to start. Some antique experts even bluntly said: "There is nothing more fake than this set of chimes."

But Mr. Ma Chengyuan doesn't think so. In order to find out the actual situation of this set of chimes, he quietly went to Hong Kong and found an anecdotal seller who had this set of chimes.

When he gently rubbed the bronze rust on the chime with his hand, his heart was suddenly mixed, because his heart had already decided that it was a real set of chimes in the State of Jin, and judging from the current technology and inscriptions, he was even ahead of the time when the State of Jin existed.

For the protection of cultural relics, Ma Chengyuan did not disclose his identity, nor did he disclose any facts about chimes to the store. After a simple price search, he discussed with Mr. Zhang Guangyu, a professor of archaeology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and quietly bought these chimes and took them back to the Shanghai Museum for careful study.

Colleagues learned that Mr. Ma Chengyuan's behavior was so crazy that they all thought he was crazy. After all, buying a copy of 14 at a unit price of 60,000 yuan really hurt the heart of Ma Lao, a "bronze master", so everyone quietly moved up a "small bench" and waited to see Mr. Ma Lao's joke.

After these bells were transported to Shanghai Museum, Ma Chengyuan and a group of archaeologists carefully peeled off the bronze rust on the bells and clearly printed the inscriptions carved on them. They can't stop without looking at it. I didn't expect this poor handwriting inscription to describe the ins and outs of this chime.

But when archaeologists rubbished the last inscription, they found that it was fair, but it lacked an ending. Is there anything missing from this set of chimes?

So, Mr. Ma Chengyuan immediately contacted the Shanxi Museum and pulled out all the cultural relics about the Jin, Hou and Su Dynasties, but this investigation did not matter, which directly confirmed that these fourteen chimes belonged to the same department as the two bells unearthed in Tomb No.8.

Originally, there were 16 bells, each with a hand-carved inscription. Although the materials of these chimes look different, the timbre arranged together is almost perfect.

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

In terms of status, these bronze chimes have been listed as key protected cultural relics, and their value has already exceeded the range that ordinary people can measure.

Those who mocked Mr. Ma Chengyuan for waiting for jokes not only failed to do so, but also learned to reflect on themselves.

With the continuous development of science and technology, robbery gangs have lost the image of bandits who used to run rampant in cities, but their means and efficiency have been greatly improved. First of all, it is reflected in the "intelligence" of grave robbery. They are not only equipped with infrared night vision devices, metal detectors, high-energy telescopes, three-dimensional imaging, but also specialized technical instructors.

Secondly, the "collectivization" of grave robbery mostly involves elites from all walks of life, from the supply of capital chain, to the procurement of advanced equipment, to the employment of grave robbers, and finally to the sales and distribution of stolen goods, forming a systematic industrial "one-stop" service.

I can't believe it. But this is indeed the overall crime level of modern grave robbery groups. More ironically, however, the increasing level of science and technology can only provide more convenient tomb raiding technology for the increasingly hidden tomb raiding group, but it cannot provide better technical support for the protection of unearthed cultural relics.

Although this contrast is extremely cruel, it is an indisputable fact.

Just like more than 600 robes unearthed in Dingling, they are soft and colorful when unearthed. However, due to the lack of better protection technology, these clothes have been oxidized one after another, and even black spots have appeared. In order to clean up these black spots, professionals can only use the established materials under limited conditions, which leads to the direct and irreversible cracking of cultural relics and even disappears to the point of exhaustion.

How to avoid this tragedy? Without excavation, there will be no damage, but archaeologists will not dig, and grave robbers will commit crimes in private. In addition to commercial development and necessary urban construction, some ancient tombs will be passively touched, and most ancient tombs in China are salvaged under the destruction of grave robbers.

In the past 20 years, at least 200,000 ancient tombs in China have been destroyed by black hands, but those treasures bearing China's history and culture have become a means of getting rich in the hands of grave robbers.

The so-called cultural relics are the witness of the development of human society and the founder of the history and culture of the country and the nation. They have no life and no ability to choose their own destination, but they are precious and non-renewable cultural resources.

As a conscientious Chinese son and daughter, how can you follow the example of "Eight-Nation Alliance" and wantonly destroy and conceal the truth in your own country's territory in order to get rich overnight? How can you rob the ancient tomb of your ancestors for a moment of greed?

There is a saying: "Don't forget to kiss your life sooner or later, and recommend your ancestors in the next year." "Don't forget the lessons of our ancestors, and don't do evil in the land where our ancestors struggled, otherwise those who put their black hands into other people's graves will one day dig their own graves.