Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: Should Know, and we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about Chinese art heists. So let's get started.
Speaker 1: Go that's right, big thanks to Olivia, she did a
Speaker 1: banger of an article.
Speaker 2: For us, But also thanks to you. Where'd you come
Speaker 2: up with this idea?
Speaker 1: Oh? Was this a recommendation? God, I'm so bad about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But we also have to thank reporter
Speaker 1: for GQ magazine named Alex W. Palmer, who in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen wrote a pretty a banger of an article as
Speaker 1: well about these art heists of cultural, very specific cultural
Speaker 1: and art artifacts from China that have been stolen from
Speaker 1: museums in the twenty tens and basically pose the question
Speaker 1: is the Chinese government behind this? Right?
Speaker 2: Are they commissioning people to rob art museums? And I
Speaker 2: mean not just like you know, some Tinkertown museum on
Speaker 2: the corner of a neighborhood that like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, not a good museum. So talking like world
Speaker 2: class museums like the Fountain Blue and outside Paris, Paris,
Speaker 2: France said it's not Texas. Yeah, so yeah, there's like
Speaker 2: a still to this day, people don't know exactly what
Speaker 2: the deal was, and it seems like despite what Palmer
Speaker 2: Alex Palmer was saying, Palmer basically was like, you know,
Speaker 2: didn't point the finger directly, but that was kind of
Speaker 2: the premise of the article that who knows who's behind this,
Speaker 2: and it's possible that the government of China has some
Speaker 2: hand in it, but also the Chinese art market, as
Speaker 2: we'll see, has blown up so much that it's also
Speaker 2: entirely possible that it's just like that makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense for thieves to steal Chinese art. The thing
Speaker 2: is is these the string of particular heists that Alex
Speaker 2: Palmer talks about that really kind of form this galaxy
Speaker 2: of particular heights. The thieves would go in and steal
Speaker 2: really specific stuff that were Chinese antiquities. A lot of
Speaker 2: times they've been looted, and they would walk right past
Speaker 2: other things that were really really valuable, and it almost
Speaker 2: seemed like they had a shopping list of items that
Speaker 2: were particularly Chinese that they wanted to steal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think almost seem like it. That seems
Speaker 1: like a certainty to me.
Speaker 2: It's true, it is. You could see that like you know,
Speaker 2: Imperial Seal, China dog or that the waving cat. That's fortunate,
Speaker 2: and then you know eggs, butter and apples.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Picasso.
Speaker 2: Nah, they just walk right past really expensive stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't because they didn't know what they were doing.
Speaker 2: It seems like some of the people who were caught
Speaker 2: with this were clearly professional thieves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some not so great. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: We should do a little backstory here to kind of
Speaker 1: set this all up, and we are going to go
Speaker 1: back to about one hundred and close to one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten year period known as the Century of Humiliation,
Speaker 1: and this is when China was kind of getting just
Speaker 1: beat up on all fronts. Back then, a lot of
Speaker 1: global powers at the time were kind of coming in
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, in China, you should just sort
Speaker 1: of listen to us and do what we say. Particularly
Speaker 1: during the Opium Wars from eighteen forty one to eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: a lot of European countries in the UK forced China to,
Speaker 1: you know, to accept treaties they didn't want to accept,
Speaker 1: force them to accept opium import Yeah. I think it
Speaker 1: was nineteen different countries, you know, opening these treaty ports
Speaker 1: for imports from those nineteen countries and accept them and
Speaker 1: basically said you have no choice in the matter. Add
Speaker 1: to this, later that century, in the eighteen nineties to
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, when China battled with Japan, which ended up
Speaker 1: losing parts of Manchuria, losing Taiwan had a lot of
Speaker 1: control over Korea at the time. That was, you know,
Speaker 1: they no longer had control over And this all sort
Speaker 1: of leads up to the Chinese Communist Party taking power
Speaker 1: and chairman Mao Zeidong saying in nineteen forty nine, We're
Speaker 1: not going to be subject to insult in humiliation any longer.
Speaker 1: That century of humiliation was a dark part of our
Speaker 1: past and we need to forget about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this idea, this concept of the century of
Speaker 2: humiliation was coined by Mao, and then the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: the Chinese Communist Party that Mao founded have kind of
Speaker 2: really kind of used that as a point of pride
Speaker 2: and as a point of unity among the country, which
Speaker 2: is really interesting because it's it. They view it as
Speaker 2: a really shameful period of their history, and yet they
Speaker 2: it does generate pride in them and brings them together,
Speaker 2: and I think a sense of like we're going to
Speaker 2: overcome that, We're never going to go back to that.
Speaker 2: But that's a change from how Chairman Mao approached it.
Speaker 2: He was like, we're never turning backwards, and in fact,
Speaker 2: everything that reminds us of the past, we're just going
Speaker 2: to destroy. So go into museums, go into libraries, go
Speaker 2: into you know, anywhere that like landmarks, things that remind
Speaker 2: us of the past. They call them the four Olds
Speaker 2: that were just meant to be destroyed. And it was
Speaker 2: the cultural revolution, is what they called it. And that's
Speaker 2: how it was approached for the for about fifty years,
Speaker 2: and then finally it kind of turned and then that
Speaker 2: pride kind of extended to Chinese antiquities, and in particular
Speaker 2: today in China, there's a tremendous amount of there's a
Speaker 2: tremendous sense of loss over some particular items that came
Speaker 2: from a particular place called the yuan ming Yu. The
Speaker 2: Garden of perfect Brightness, I think is what it's called,
Speaker 2: but less formally it's called the Old Summer Palace. It's
Speaker 2: in Beijing, I believe, and it was magnificent from what
Speaker 2: I can tell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. And these aren't the only things. I mean,
Speaker 1: all Chinese artifacts and cultural relics were looked at this way.
Speaker 1: But this was just a pretty notable space at the
Speaker 1: time it was built in seventeen oh nine, and then
Speaker 1: for the next century and a half basically just got
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and it had temples, it had gardens
Speaker 1: and pools, and it had a lot of art, all
Speaker 1: kinds of art like you name it. They had it
Speaker 1: some of the most important art of you know, that
Speaker 1: period of China and preceding it. And during the Second
Speaker 1: Opium War in eighteen sixty, the Europeans you know, were
Speaker 1: again coming in and kind of doing their thing against China,
Speaker 1: and the government of China said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: have some people here on a negotiating mission. We're going
Speaker 1: to capture them, We're going to torture them. And so
Speaker 1: British I think about five thousand British and French forces
Speaker 1: took part in what has been kind of looked back
Speaker 1: on now as one of the greatest acts of cultural
Speaker 1: vandalism in modern history when they looted and either stole
Speaker 1: or just could just outright destroyed or vandalize everything at
Speaker 1: the Old Summer Palace essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were apparently already in the process of looting
Speaker 2: the palace when they heard about the torture deaths of
Speaker 2: that delegation that was trying to broker peace for the
Speaker 2: Second Opium War, and they're like, oh, okay, well, I
Speaker 2: guess we'll burn the place down too, And they did
Speaker 2: so over I think two days and nights, but the
Speaker 2: fire kept going for like three days, and rather than rebuild,
Speaker 2: China decided to preserve the place in ruins. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like Hiroshima, like they decided to preserve some of
Speaker 2: the bombed out areas. It's just a reminder, but rather
Speaker 2: than a reminder to never use nukes ever again, this
Speaker 2: was a reminder to China of like what outside powers
Speaker 2: did to China, Like this is what happened to China
Speaker 2: in the past, and it's something to use to kind
Speaker 2: of motivate you to become the best kind of China
Speaker 2: there is that could never let something like that happen again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of this stuff, as you would imagine,
Speaker 1: like a lot of you know, looted things during wartime
Speaker 1: ended up in control of royalty in other countries, private
Speaker 1: collection sometimes, but a lot of royal palaces in Europe
Speaker 1: ended up with this stuff. Queen Victoria even and this
Speaker 1: is a great little fine from Libya. Besides art, Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria apparently also got a Pekinese dog that she named
Speaker 1: Lootie as in loot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as in the dog itself was looted, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And I think it was the first Pekinese in all
Speaker 2: of England, I would believe it. I also read that
Speaker 2: at the time the press reported that the dog had
Speaker 2: to be taken to a different palace because it was
Speaker 2: being ostracized by the other dogs for its Eastern ways,
Speaker 2: whatever that means.
Speaker 1: Well. One of the most prized sort of things at
Speaker 1: this palace was this water clock, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: don't think of it as a normal clock, because it
Speaker 1: was what it really was was a big fountain and
Speaker 1: the twelve spouts were carved in the shape of the
Speaker 1: heads of the animals of the Chinese zodiac, and whenever
Speaker 1: one of the fountains squirted, that was what time it was.
Speaker 1: So that was it became a really big symbol of
Speaker 1: this whole looting. Basically it was in the European wing
Speaker 1: of the palace, but it went away and part of
Speaker 1: and again they were, you know, some of these some
Speaker 1: of the repatriation and these tests. As we'll see, it
Speaker 1: was all kinds of stuff, but it seems like that
Speaker 1: these fountain heads hold particular significance.
Speaker 2: They're the most symbolic. So again, this Summer Palace stuff,
Speaker 2: it was just such a big deal, like you said,
Speaker 2: one of the biggest acts of cultural vandalism ever. It's
Speaker 2: such a symbol in this country of China's shame, and
Speaker 2: these things are like the greatest symbol of that larger symbol,
Speaker 2: Like these zodiac heads mean everything to China, and to
Speaker 2: get them back is enormous. The Commist Party kind of
Speaker 2: took a shift, especially as China became more and more
Speaker 2: economically powerful, and it started to kind of look at
Speaker 2: getting some of these antiquities back rather than looking at
Speaker 2: them as reminders of some terrible backwards passed. They became
Speaker 2: part of China's heritage, and the Chinese government in particular
Speaker 2: started to want to get these back, and they started
Speaker 2: a kind of a trend I think culturally that was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: start having pride in these heritage antiques, and let's see
Speaker 2: if we can get them back into China. How who cares?
Speaker 2: Just go get them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one good way to do that is I
Speaker 1: have a ton of money. So a lot of billionaires
Speaker 1: from China obviously stepped forward and showed a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in growing their collections or probably even starting and
Speaker 1: then growing in their collections of Chinese art from history,
Speaker 1: and some of them even open private museums to showcase
Speaker 1: this stuff. They were working with the auction houses very closely,
Speaker 1: and like you mentioned earlier, the Chinese art market, it
Speaker 1: went from really not much of anything in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand to about a billion dollars a year in
Speaker 1: value by twenty eighteen, especially this stuff that was looted
Speaker 1: by the UK and by Europe and the United States.
Speaker 1: And like I said, it's everything you can think of.
Speaker 1: It's you know, statues, paintings, carvings, in any kind of
Speaker 1: art you can imagine. According to UNESCO, close to one
Speaker 1: point seven million Chinese objects are currently held in forty
Speaker 1: seven countries other than China in two hundred different museums.
Speaker 2: And those are just museums in just forty seven countries.
Speaker 2: I saw that the Chinese government itself estimates as there's
Speaker 2: about ten million antiquities spread throughout the world outside of China,
Speaker 2: and China considers basically all of these stolen. Even if
Speaker 2: a Westerner came in and paid for them back in
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, the Chinese government basically considers whoever sold it
Speaker 2: to have been taken advantage of by that westerner. So
Speaker 2: if you have a piece of Chinese art and antique
Speaker 2: that's Chinese.
Speaker 1: Hang on to it.
Speaker 2: You may want to hide it actually, because there's a
Speaker 2: good chance that China considers that stolen and that that's
Speaker 2: not rightfully yours. Maybe there's some law in your country
Speaker 2: that says it's yours. China doesn't really recognize that because
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases they weren't They weren't sold legitimately,
Speaker 2: they were stolen. They were part of war loot, like
Speaker 2: with the Old Summer Palace. And they have a great point.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff out there, not just from China,
Speaker 2: but from other countries that colonial powers went to and
Speaker 2: said we really like this, We're going to literally steal it,
Speaker 2: and we're going to display in our museums in one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years from now, you're going to ask
Speaker 2: for it back and we're going to say no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're going to ask for our stuff back
Speaker 1: and get.
Speaker 2: Most of it right after World War two, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which we'll you know, we'll talk more about that,
Speaker 1: I guess in a little bit. But as far as
Speaker 1: the government's involvement officially, there was one group called the
Speaker 1: China poly Group. It's a state owned industrial company and
Speaker 1: it was original part of the Chinese military and they
Speaker 1: traded arms. But in two thousand they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's diversify and let's start a wing of this company
Speaker 1: called poly Culture, and let's make it one of our
Speaker 1: missions to go and get some of these artifacts. They
Speaker 1: had their own museum to put some of these in
Speaker 1: in Beijing. So that was one of the big sort
Speaker 1: of groups trying to head up this effort along with
Speaker 1: the Chinese billionaires. And then in two thousand, Sotheby's and
Speaker 1: Christie's auction houses in Hong Kong auctioned off three of
Speaker 1: those heads, three of those zodiac fountain heads, and this
Speaker 1: was a big deal. The Chinese Bureau of Cultural Relics
Speaker 1: was like, you can't sell this stuff like this stuff's
Speaker 1: really important to us. It was stolen, it was looted.
Speaker 1: They had no luck. I think they were trying to
Speaker 1: get it back for free, and they eventually said all right,
Speaker 1: well we'll just bid on it and get it the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way, which they.
Speaker 2: Did, right. Okay, So in two thousand China, China, as
Speaker 2: far as like it's searched for repatriating its art and antiquities,
Speaker 2: was so powerless that Christie's and Sotheby's felt comfortable telling
Speaker 2: the government of China, sorry, now, we're not going to
Speaker 2: give these back to you. Less than ten years later,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, when the estate of East
Speaker 2: Aves Saint Laurent went up for auction, China contacted Christie's
Speaker 2: and said, hey, you're about to auction off two more
Speaker 2: of those zodiac heads. If you do it, it's going
Speaker 2: to be really bad for you. And China had become
Speaker 2: such a player in the global art market that Christie's
Speaker 2: would they handed them over. They gave them to them,
Speaker 2: and in exchange, I think Christie's was the first auction
Speaker 2: house to have an independent or license to independently operate
Speaker 2: in China. Within the next year or something like that,
Speaker 2: so that's how powerful they became. And then also as
Speaker 2: kind of a nod to how valuable Chinese antiquities became
Speaker 2: when China started to become interested in them, there was
Speaker 2: an auction in twenty fifteen, less than two decades after
Speaker 2: China became interested in its own heritage. The presale of
Speaker 2: this the sixteen inch vase, sorry, this is twenty ten,
Speaker 2: a sixteen inch vase. Presale value was eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: A half hour after it went under the gavel, it
Speaker 2: sold for almost seventy million dollars to a Chinese billionaire.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of dough, it is.
Speaker 2: It also just shows how bad they want this stuff back,
Speaker 2: because there's one other thing, Chuck, you mentioned the billionaire's
Speaker 2: gating involved. It's not just one way to show off
Speaker 2: how much money they have. It's also to show everybody
Speaker 2: how patriotic they are, because they're buying these things at
Speaker 2: astronomical prices to bring back to China for China.
Speaker 1: For sure. So let's take a break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about what China was going to do
Speaker 1: about this officially right after this, all right, so we're
Speaker 1: back and wondering what China was going to officially do
Speaker 1: about this. In two thousand and nine, the government said,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're all bets are off. Now, We're
Speaker 1: officially gonna get a treasure hunting team together, and we're
Speaker 1: going to go send them around the world and investigate
Speaker 1: all this art that's in the United States, that's in Europe,
Speaker 1: that's in the UK. One of these guys, one of
Speaker 1: the chief detectives, whose name was Lou Yang, and he
Speaker 1: went all over the place and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this was in the Summer Palace. This was in the
Speaker 1: Summer Palace. You guys have our stuff, And they noticed
Speaker 1: kind of not too long after that, a lot of
Speaker 1: these museums on their website started sort of quietly moving
Speaker 1: mentions and web pages about these Chinese artifacts on their websites.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lou Yang had quite a reputation. I read in
Speaker 2: that Alex Palmer GQ article that he wrote a comprehensive
Speaker 2: book on all the looted antiquities, at least from the
Speaker 2: old Summer Palace, and could show you printouts of websites
Speaker 2: from museums around the world where that thing was being held.
Speaker 2: So I guess there was also a really tense meeting
Speaker 2: at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when
Speaker 2: he showed up too, because he would just walk around
Speaker 2: and be like, that's China's, that's China's that was stolen,
Speaker 2: that was looted, and very strangely, that was what'd you
Speaker 2: say two thousand and nine. Yeah, the very next year
Speaker 2: the string of museum heists of Chinese antiquities began.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I did want to point out though,
Speaker 1: when I was making the previous point that they took
Speaker 1: down these websites, but not everybody, because the fontaine Bleue
Speaker 1: and Ants was one of those that were like, no,
Speaker 1: you can see right here on our website and we'll
Speaker 1: tell you like what this is and when and where
Speaker 1: it was looted, like what palace was sacked at the time,
Speaker 1: So they kind of, you know, held firm in their
Speaker 1: belief that it was theirs. I guess. But yeah, these
Speaker 1: robberies started in twenty ten, and we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how many of these have happened. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about quite a few of these, but they were detailed
Speaker 1: in the GQ article, and then since twenty eighteen, there's
Speaker 1: also been more and it seems like it there may
Speaker 1: have been a concerted effort and then other people just started,
Speaker 1: you know, because they became really valuable and there was
Speaker 1: a market for it, people kind of piggybacked on stealing
Speaker 1: this Chinese art and that the entire thing may not
Speaker 1: be some you know, complete masterminded by one group or
Speaker 1: government kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my interpretation too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So apparently the whole thing started in Stockholm, Sweden, at
Speaker 2: the Drottningholm Palace, which is well a Swedish royal palace,
Speaker 2: and they have a Chinese pavilion there and there's a
Speaker 2: state owned collection of Chinese antiquities. And on August six,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, they it was quite a surprise because there
Speaker 2: was a group of cars that were set fire to
Speaker 2: elsewhere in Stockholm, and as the police ran over there,
Speaker 2: and we're very much distracted by these sudden car fires
Speaker 2: because usually that means riot, so I can imagine that
Speaker 2: put the police on edge. The thieves ran over to
Speaker 2: the palace in their China pavilion, Chinese pavilion, and started
Speaker 2: ransacking some specific items. I think they smashed three display
Speaker 2: cases and I'm not sure how many items they stole,
Speaker 2: but I believe it seemed pretty specific and they were
Speaker 2: out of there in six minutes, so they were clearly pros.
Speaker 1: Do you think the Swedish police were like, guys, we
Speaker 1: might have our first riot in the country's history.
Speaker 2: I've been waiting for this since I was a boy.
Speaker 1: I've been told a car fire means a riot. They
Speaker 1: were like, what is a riot? And it's well, Spin,
Speaker 1: we'll explain it to you.
Speaker 2: Spin's been out of the country before.
Speaker 1: So yeah, smash and grab, six minutes in and out.
Speaker 1: They hopped on some mopeds, they drove those over to
Speaker 1: a lake and they got on a boat and they
Speaker 1: got out of there. And this was a very sort
Speaker 1: of you know, clearly professional job. Knew exactly what they
Speaker 1: were going for, and you'll see, you know, in a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases it's pretty similar, like they knew
Speaker 1: where this stuff was, they knew exactly what they wanted
Speaker 1: on their little grocery list, like you mentioned. The next
Speaker 1: one was a few months after that at the Code
Speaker 1: Museum in Norway. They busted a glass ceiling and not
Speaker 1: in a good way and repelled down just like a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like Charles Groden and Miss Picky, that's right.
Speaker 1: And took fifty six things from the China collection. There.
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff was from a Norwegian army
Speaker 1: officer named Johannville Norman Munt, who was a big art guy.
Speaker 1: Eventually fought on China's side in the Sino Japanese Wars
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four and eighteen ninety five, but he
Speaker 1: was big into art, had a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: including stuff from the Summer Palace, and that stuff was
Speaker 1: taken in the first of the Code Museum's burglaries.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, there was another one, what three years later,
Speaker 2: And this is a big deal, and a museum gets
Speaker 2: struck like it's not good, especially if word gets out, because,
Speaker 2: as Livia was pointing out, museums a lot of times
Speaker 2: don't announce the fact that they've been robbed. Number One,
Speaker 2: it's very humiliating because they're entrusted with protecting these things
Speaker 2: that are part of humanity's cultural heritage. And then secondly,
Speaker 2: it also practically means that they need to beef up
Speaker 2: security because now thieves are on alert, like, oh, the
Speaker 2: Code Museum is really easy to break into, and they'll
Speaker 2: become a much bigger target. So for two different break
Speaker 2: ins to become public knowledge, it's just not really a
Speaker 2: good thing, but it was also very curious that they
Speaker 2: were both they both seemed to be Chinese art heists.
Speaker 2: Right after that, they suddenly became very interested in negotiating
Speaker 2: with China to give back some of the antiquities that
Speaker 2: they held, and in particular Chinese billionaire named Huang Nubo.
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say his
Speaker 2: last name, because I said it like I'm from Mississippi
Speaker 2: or something. He came to Stockholm or no Bergen and said,
Speaker 2: what do you got. I can give you a donation
Speaker 2: if you want, and they showed him some columns from
Speaker 2: the old Summer Pals and I read that he wept
Speaker 2: when he saw them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was a case where they used the
Speaker 1: car fire thing again, which is really surprising to use
Speaker 1: sort of the same method.
Speaker 2: Hey, it works, it works in Scandinavia, I guess so.
Speaker 1: But it just seems like that would be a tip
Speaker 1: off maybe, like watch the museum, because you know, Sweden
Speaker 1: and Norway aren't big Riot countries as far as I.
Speaker 2: Know, I would hope it would be now, you know, after.
Speaker 1: Two yeah, yeah, I would think after one. But anyway,
Speaker 1: they use the same method they ended up the Museum
Speaker 1: at Code closed the China Collection for renovation when that
Speaker 1: was in twenty thirteen, and it's still closed for renovation.
Speaker 1: So if that tells you anything, I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that thing's opening again anytime soon. No.
Speaker 2: I think by renovation they mean the head curators in
Speaker 2: the basement clutching the remaining objects to their chest exactly,
Speaker 2: get back, get away. So the Swedish burglars and both
Speaker 2: Code burglars were not caught, but kind of an indicator
Speaker 2: that really does point a bit of a finger at China.
Speaker 2: Someone in China. They got a tip, the Code museum
Speaker 2: did from the publicity the second robbery brought. They got
Speaker 2: a tip about one of the objects that was stolen
Speaker 2: in the first robbery that it was in a Shanghai
Speaker 2: airport on display. So that does kind of show you
Speaker 2: that China is very much like where'd you get this?
Speaker 2: Who cares? They probably didn't even ask that unless they
Speaker 2: were congratulating. And so when Norway found this out, they
Speaker 2: decided not to do anything about it because they had
Speaker 2: just recently ticked China off by giving the twenty ten
Speaker 2: Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident lou Jabo Chobo, who
Speaker 2: was imprisoned at the time in China. So China wasn't
Speaker 2: happy with Norway. Sonari I was like, you just keep
Speaker 2: your airport antiquity. We're gonna just not say anything about
Speaker 2: it exactly.
Speaker 1: So that was Scandinavia. In England around the same time,
Speaker 1: this is April of twenty twelve. Meanwhile, in England, the
Speaker 1: Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge was robbed. There were eighteen items
Speaker 1: taken from here, again very specific Chinese artifacts. These were
Speaker 1: valued between eight and twenty three million bucks. The same
Speaker 1: month in England, the Malcolm McDonald gallery at Durham University's
Speaker 1: Oriental Museum was hit and they took two items this time,
Speaker 1: but they were super valuable. They were three million dollars
Speaker 1: between the two of them. But these guys were caught.
Speaker 1: They finally nabbed somebody. The judge said and sentencing that
Speaker 1: they displayed crass ineptitude because they stashed the stuff in
Speaker 1: a sort of a swamp, a parcel of land that
Speaker 1: was super swampy. Went back to get it, couldn't find
Speaker 1: where they put it, and a witness saw somebody like
Speaker 1: searching the area and was really agitated on their cell phone,
Speaker 1: seemed suspicious, phoned it in and authorities searched the area
Speaker 1: and not only found the objects, but eventually arrested dudes.
Speaker 2: They did. They got some people. From what I was
Speaker 2: reading up about it, they were like in their early twenties,
Speaker 2: not very pro I think they were up and coming criminals,
Speaker 2: is the impresson.
Speaker 1: That I have, But I think crass ineptitudes it really does.
Speaker 2: They Also, this is another giveaway, the police found a
Speaker 2: cell phone in one of their underpants while they were
Speaker 2: being arrested, and they used that cell phone to kind
Speaker 2: of build a case that connected that heist to I
Speaker 2: think the Cambridge heist and a bunch of other ones actually,
Speaker 2: and they ended up tracing it back to a group
Speaker 2: of travelers like Brad Pitt and Snatched. Snatch. Now snatched,
Speaker 2: is that the Amy what's her name?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, Amy Schumer?
Speaker 2: Schumer, Yes, thank you. That was a stupid sidetrack. But
Speaker 2: so these were real life travelers and they had a
Speaker 2: gang called the Rathkeel Rovers and they were responsible for
Speaker 2: a bunch of different burglaries and robberies and things like that.
Speaker 2: But they seem to be behind all of the Chinese
Speaker 2: art heists in the country. What's significant about it is
Speaker 2: that there was a member of this gang named he
Speaker 2: Chong Donald Wong. He was from South London and he
Speaker 2: seems to be their Chinese connection because he kept traveling
Speaker 2: in and out of the country, going to China and
Speaker 2: smuggling their loot over there. And I don't think they
Speaker 2: recovered a single thing from those heists, did they.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah. I mean they'd figured this
Speaker 1: stuff was just successfully smuggled and eventually sold in private
Speaker 1: collectors have them. But this was I I was sort
Speaker 1: of just surprised for some reason that these were, you know,
Speaker 1: Irish travelers, and I just figured they would all be
Speaker 1: Chinese people. But yeah, they were just hired robbers basically.
Speaker 1: So yes, oh okay, once I wrapped my head around
Speaker 1: that they were just doing a job for money exactly.
Speaker 2: So the question remains though, because the police are like,
Speaker 2: we never caught the highest person at the top of this,
Speaker 2: the head cheese, the ultima ombre, that kind of person,
Speaker 2: and they think that even if they had found that person,
Speaker 2: that person was probably commissioned by Chinese mafia, Chinese billionaires,
Speaker 2: maybe the Poly group who knows, but that seems to
Speaker 2: be the case for all of the robberies where they
Speaker 2: found the people who carried out the robbery, they were
Speaker 2: just hired criminals. They were not doing this because, you know,
Speaker 2: they loved China or something like that. They were either
Speaker 2: commissioned to or they knew that the Chinese art market
Speaker 2: was so hot that it would just make sense to
Speaker 2: steal Chinese objects because they were going to fetch a
Speaker 2: pretty high price.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll talk about more heist right
Speaker 1: after this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So we're back, and you promised talk of
Speaker 2: more heists. And I'm going to take this to France,
Speaker 2: won't you come with me?
Speaker 1: I love France.
Speaker 2: How about France in twenty fifteen. Wasn't that a particularly
Speaker 2: pretty summer? I think? Or spring?
Speaker 1: I think it was.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go find out. Because March first, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: at the Chateau de Fantbleau outside Paris, which is a
Speaker 2: I think, beginning back in medieval times, one of the
Speaker 2: homes of the French monarchs, there was a collection assembled
Speaker 2: by Empress Eugenie, who was the wife of Napoleon the
Speaker 2: third She was the last Empress of France, and she
Speaker 2: put together a collection of at least eight hundred objects
Speaker 2: that those were just the ones on display. Three hundred
Speaker 2: of them these were Chinese objects antiquities. Three hundred of
Speaker 2: them were from the Old Summer Palace alone, mostly taken
Speaker 2: by French soldiers who were there to sack the Old
Speaker 2: Summer Palace in eighteen sixty. Right, yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think thieves when they broke into the Fountain Blue in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, they made off with like fifteen different things,
Speaker 2: one of which sticks out to me. It was a
Speaker 2: replica of the King of Siam's crown. Siam is now Thailand,
Speaker 2: and that really has very little to do with China.
Speaker 2: It was certainly not a Chinese heritage object. From what
Speaker 2: I can tell. That one seems a little hinky to me.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that was a commissioned robbery or not,
Speaker 2: but regardless, I don't Oh, they did find at least
Speaker 2: some of the people who were behind it, and again
Speaker 2: these were just hired guns basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was, you know, sort of the same
Speaker 1: pattern as before as far as getting in and out
Speaker 1: of the air. In this time it was you know,
Speaker 1: they were pretty good at what they were doing. Even though,
Speaker 1: like you said, they got six of them. They questioned them,
Speaker 1: didn't they They still couldn't get the big fish, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess they're maybe not good at questioning, but they couldn't.
Speaker 1: They couldn't land the whale. Unfortunately, Paul Harris is an
Speaker 1: art dealer from Britain who he thought it was French
Speaker 1: professional criminals who did this. Again, I just hired people,
Speaker 1: in one case Irish travelers, in this case French you
Speaker 1: know art art deeds. I guess, yeah, pretty good specialty.
Speaker 2: This apparently was the origin of the phrase no Sherlock.
Speaker 1: So if you look at you know, research on this,
Speaker 1: a lot of the research will say like, hey, all
Speaker 1: of these events are sort of part of this larger
Speaker 1: operation like we've been talking about since that article. Though
Speaker 1: I mentioned there have been other other you know, art heist,
Speaker 1: other crimes. There was one in June of twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: at the Museum of Our Eastern Art in Switzerland. The
Speaker 1: time in Geneva took some couple of things from the
Speaker 1: Ming dynasty in less than a minute. This time they
Speaker 1: had DNA evidence in this case and they did catch
Speaker 1: the people. These were British dudes. They said they were
Speaker 1: just trying to make money to pay off a debt.
Speaker 1: So again it looks like another either hired people to
Speaker 1: return these or just people being hired out because this
Speaker 1: stuff's valuable, or just guys doing it because they know
Speaker 1: it's valuable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just too It's just.
Speaker 1: You can't you don't know for sure, you know.
Speaker 2: No, Again, that hot Chinese art market kind of dilutes
Speaker 2: the possibility that yet Chinese government there was one. There
Speaker 2: was a second robbery on the Fountain Blue or in
Speaker 2: an attempt, the police broke it up before it could happen,
Speaker 2: in Operation Bamboo. The I guess Spanish and French police
Speaker 2: got together and they said, let's get these guys, and
Speaker 2: they did before they could rob the place. And those
Speaker 2: guys said that they were hired by the Chinese mafia
Speaker 2: and that they had been going after three specific pieces
Speaker 2: of art, Chinese art. And I don't think that that
Speaker 2: led anywhere either. I think also though, even if you
Speaker 2: could trace it back to say the Poly group or
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister, it wouldn't matter. China would basically just
Speaker 2: say so, or they would deny it or whatever, and
Speaker 2: everybody needs to be essentially an at least good economic
Speaker 2: terms with China right now that it's just the issue
Speaker 2: is not going to get pressed, so it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: It's more just an academic kind of interesting thing to
Speaker 2: try to track it back to who's behind it. It's
Speaker 2: not actually going to result in any kind of geopolitical differences.
Speaker 1: No, of course, not as far as the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: You know, this whole time, they've maintained like, hey, this
Speaker 1: isn't us that's doing this. The Polyculture group, I believe
Speaker 1: the general manager even talk to the Global Times about
Speaker 1: it instead of was a nonsense story, the GQ story.
Speaker 1: We may sue. I don't think anything ever became of that.
Speaker 2: My dad's gonna see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do with that, which you will. But you know,
Speaker 1: their official position as a government is like all of
Speaker 1: that stuff is illegitimate, Like everything you own, you own illegally.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like if you have one like they had
Speaker 1: one in the airport, like you mentioned, if you have
Speaker 1: something like this in your private collection. The Chinese government
Speaker 1: doesn't dissuade any of that. I don't know that they
Speaker 1: officially encourage it, but they they definitely don't say like, hey,
Speaker 1: you have the stolen thing in your private collection.
Speaker 2: No, and there's no apparently there's no legal repercussions for
Speaker 2: it either. Even if somebody from Norway or Sweden came
Speaker 2: over and said this is ours, like this was stolen
Speaker 2: from our museum, China would just be like, well, there's
Speaker 2: no laws here that could punish whoever did this, so
Speaker 2: go home and you. They officially apparently do discourage theft.
Speaker 2: But because the item could become damaged in the robbery, right,
Speaker 2: that's why, Not because it violates any laws or treaties
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Because again, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: soreness from the idea that these things were stolen and
Speaker 2: there's I mean, it's not even like they make a
Speaker 2: good case that's exactly what happened historically. And so I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out, like, okay, if there's museums
Speaker 2: around the country that you know, there's this growing movement
Speaker 2: for repatriation here in America. We have like the Indigenous
Speaker 2: Graves Act, which is like, if you have Native American
Speaker 2: remains in your museum collection, you should give them back
Speaker 2: to the to the group who from which they came,
Speaker 2: so that they can you know, bury the remains or
Speaker 2: do whatever custom they do rather than keeping them in
Speaker 2: a museum collection. That's a good example of this, this
Speaker 2: kind of growing awareness of responsibility museums have for giving
Speaker 2: stuff back that was stolen from a country. But museums
Speaker 2: just aren't really going with it. And I was looking
Speaker 2: at it and I sent you I think some parts
Speaker 2: of a I think an artsy article that talks about this,
Speaker 2: like China, Greece, Nigeria, They're all like, you, guys have
Speaker 2: some really important cultural treasures of ours, so give them back,
Speaker 2: and museums are basically saying like, no, you won't be
Speaker 2: able to take good care of them. We can take
Speaker 2: better care of them. And then I think the British
Speaker 2: Museum was just discovered to have suffered an extensive robbery
Speaker 2: from inside that really kind of undermines that argument that
Speaker 2: you know, they can protect these things better than the
Speaker 2: countries can, because this curator at the British Museum stole
Speaker 2: something like two thousand pieces from the museum's collection was
Speaker 2: selling them on eBay. So it's not like China and
Speaker 2: other countries don't have a legitimate claim to this. It's
Speaker 2: just more like Western museums are just basically they're just
Speaker 2: digging in and saying like, no, we're not going to
Speaker 2: give these back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think if every piece of ill gotten art,
Speaker 1: whether it was through looting or stealing or even you know,
Speaker 1: started out that way and then we're purchased and repurchased
Speaker 1: like that, there'd be a lot of half empty museums
Speaker 1: if only like super legitimate, legitimately acquired art was on display.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe even more than half. And that's got to
Speaker 2: be ultimately the reason why they don't want.
Speaker 1: To do it. Yeah, they're like, what are we going
Speaker 1: to put in the Chinese art wing right of the.
Speaker 2: Mets, Yeah, exactly. I think also in the UK in particular,
Speaker 2: they have a law that says museums aren't allowed to
Speaker 2: repatriate cultural artifacts to other countries, and they're like, yep,
Speaker 2: that's the law, and I think the Chinese government is like,
Speaker 2: that's your law. You can change that law. Stop hiding
Speaker 2: behind that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean there were a couple of instances where
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, this makes sense to not give it back,
Speaker 2: like if there's a lot of instability and turmoil in
Speaker 2: that country. Another one that really kind of stuck out
Speaker 2: to me is if the cultural heritage is now divided
Speaker 2: among multiple countries. So let's say it was a Yugo
Speaker 2: slobban item and now, yeah, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, they're both
Speaker 2: saying like, that's ours, that's a tickler spot. But for
Speaker 2: the most part, if it's you know, a stable country,
Speaker 2: is like, that's ours. Give it back, especially if it
Speaker 2: was looted, there really shouldn't be any discussion about that.
Speaker 1: I'm with you.
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you can look out for a movie by
Speaker 2: Crazy Rich Asians director John M. Chew coming out sometime soon.
Speaker 2: Netflix is gonna have something based on Grace D. Lee's
Speaker 2: novel Portrait of a Thief. And there's a twenty twelve
Speaker 2: Jackie Chan movie called CZ twelve about this very kind
Speaker 2: of stuff.
Speaker 1: Jackie Chan.
Speaker 2: Well, since you said Jackie Champ, he unlocked with Sermail.
Speaker 1: All right. This is on swamp coolers. Hey, guys, you
Speaker 1: talked about swamp coolers in the History of Refrigeration episode.
Speaker 1: We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at seven thousand
Speaker 1: feet elevation, where it's historically hasn't gotten hot enough to
Speaker 1: need air conditioning. Although summers are getting hotter here, with
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks in the high to mid nineties
Speaker 1: every year. Now it's pretty hot. Our house was a
Speaker 1: custom built house in two thousand and five and it
Speaker 1: does not have AC. So we bought a portable swamp
Speaker 1: cooler last summer to help just on those handfuls of
Speaker 1: really hot days when it's too hot to sleep, and
Speaker 1: it's really effective, I have to say. In the dry
Speaker 1: desert air, some people have whole house swamp coolers on
Speaker 1: the roof with thermostats inside. They use a lot less
Speaker 1: energy than AC, so there are good option in places
Speaker 1: where it's dry and not too hot. They only lower
Speaker 1: the temperature ten to fifteen degrees. That's not bad at all,
Speaker 1: So anything ninety five we get for a short time
Speaker 1: wouldn't really work. I disagree. Eighty to ninety five is
Speaker 1: pretty substantial, Yeah for sure, But that is from Chandra.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Chandra, whole house swamp cooler. Can you
Speaker 2: just see like the tops like open and it says
Speaker 2: igloo and giant letters on the side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like a record name too, like an
Speaker 1: album title.
Speaker 2: Whole house swamp cooler.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the chick us all mudpuppies or.
Speaker 2: Something very nice, Chuck, very nice. Well, if you want
Speaker 2: to be like Chandra and write in and tell us
Speaker 2: about something that we talked about, that's whole house size.
Speaker 2: We love hearing that kind of stuff. You can shoot
Speaker 2: us an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.