Chapter 415

The others continued digging around the perimeter to see if they could find any other artifacts.

Bored, Fang Yang watched for a while before hopping into the excavator, propping his feet up in front, and leaning back to fall asleep.

He slept until 4:00 PM, when he was woken up by a sudden exclamation.

"Director, look quickly! The patterns on this, and the mark on the bottom!! This is Yuan blue-and-white porcelain!"

"Yuan blue-and-white? No way! So many?"

"I just counted—there are over thirty pieces! My God! We only have 200 in the entire country! This, this, this... over 30 pieces in one earthen cellar, I feel like I can't breathe!"

Listening to the archaeological team's chatter below, Director Lin could no longer hide the excitement on his face.

He happened to look up and saw that Fang Yang had also woken up.

He hurried over and said excitedly, "Fang Yang! We dug them up, it's Yuan blue-and-white! Yuan blue-and-white! You are too amazing! I... I don't even know how to describe you!"

Fang Yang was still a bit groggy and felt a bit bewildered by Director Lin's excitement.

He smiled and replied, "Then congratulations!"

After saying that, he jumped off the machine and walked over to the earthen cellar to take a look.

The system panel appeared accordingly.

【Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain】

【Yuan blue-and-white water pot...】

【Yuan blue-and-white large plate...】

【Blue-and-white porcelain was produced in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Yuan Dynasty. Mature blue-and-white porcelain appeared in Jingdezhen during the Yuan Dynasty; the greatest characteristic of its patterns is the full composition, with many layers that are not chaotic.】

【Yuan blue-and-white porcelain greatly changed the subtle and restrained style of traditional porcelain, giving people a simple pleasure with its vivid visual effects...】

【Reason for loss: During the Dade era of the second Yuan Emperor, there was a wealthy merchant family named the Wu family. One son in the family passed the imperial examination to become a Juren. After the Juren became an official, he was chosen to be an Imperial Son-in-Law due to his handsome appearance, leading to the family's rise to prosperity. However, due to the Emperor's tyranny during the Yuan Dynasty, farmers everywhere rose in rebellion, and smoke and fire spread everywhere. To avoid the chaos of war, the Wu family moved their entire household. For convenience, they left behind many items that were difficult to carry, including many exquisite and rare pieces of blue-and-white porcelain...】

It took Fang Yang a full five minutes to finish reading the introduction to the Yuan blue-and-white porcelain.

On one hand, the reason for its loss was quite sigh-inducing.

On the other hand, the fact that modern Yuan blue-and-white porcelain is relatively rare made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

In China, the most expensive among blue-and-white porcelains is undoubtedly the Yuan blue-and-white.

This is basically common knowledge.

The main reason is that scarcity makes things valuable.

Director Lin stood by, watching Fang Yang stare blankly for a long time, and couldn't help but ask, "Fang Yang? We haven't studied this batch of Yuan blue-and-white in detail yet, but from the current situation, they should undoubtedly be authentic!"

Fang Yang nodded, "They are indeed authentic!"

Director Lin's face was already full of smiles: "I really didn't expect that we could dig up so much Yuan blue-and-white in a place like this. At first, I thought the blue-and-white porcelain was exciting enough, but I didn't expect it to give me an even bigger surprise!"

"I'm a bit curious... why is it here?"

【Popularity】 +1+1+1+1...

—【Damn, Yuan blue-and-white? It's said that we only have 200 pieces in the whole country, and you could sell any one of them for tens of millions, unlike other blue-and-white porcelains, where the cheap ones aren't worth anything. Seeing so many at once today is definitely a world-shaking piece of news!】

—【As far as I know, the place with the most in their collection currently only has about 30 pieces. This one shovel-full directly makes them the place with the largest collection of Yuan blue-and-white in the world, it's scary! Comparing it like this, it's not much different from the bronze bell!】

—【It's different. Yuan blue-and-white is very rare, but its value is far from comparable to the bronze bell. Let's put it this way: these 30-plus pieces of Yuan blue-and-white, if sold, would certainly be very expensive, but they have a price. But if you took the Jingyun Bronze Bell to sell... I feel it would break at least 100 billion!】

—【That's absurd. Even if these things have cultural relic value, they shouldn't be that expensive, right? Maybe I'm just too poor to understand the mindset of the rich. Even if they buy them back, aren't they just putting them at home as decorations? Could they have other uses?】

Fang Yang listened to Director Lin's confusion and smiled: "I did guess one possibility, but you'll have to go back and check the data to see if it's accurate."

"Oh? You know this too?"

Director Lin was stunned.

This was too outrageous.

Digging up so much Yuan blue-and-white in the wild was one thing.

He could actually even explain the reason.

Fang Yang nodded and briefly recounted the reason for the loss as stated by the system.

Everyone present sighed upon hearing it.

"To not even take the Yuan blue-and-white with them, the owner's conditions at the time must have been very good!"

"Yes, according to records, even in the Yuan Dynasty, Yuan blue-and-white was very precious and not something ordinary people could afford to use."

Tiger stood by and listened for a long time.

You could say he was the biggest layman here.

Even the cameraman knew more than him from being around it.

"Fang Yang, I know blue-and-white porcelain, but what is Yuan blue-and-white? Why are you all so excited!"

Fang Yang smiled: "Because scarcity makes things valuable!"

"Do you know, Yuan blue-and-white is a product of our China, but in modern times, the place in the world with the largest collection of Yuan blue-and-white is not China!"

Tiger was stunned upon hearing this: "Why?"

"Let me put it this way: China is not only not first, but it doesn't even count as second."

"According to current global statistics and surveys, the number of Yuan blue-and-white pieces in museum collections does not exceed 400."

"Let me tell you first, the existing Yuan blue-and-white is composed of three parts: first, museum collections; second, private collections; and third, the constant excavations in China over the past few decades."

"We don't know about the private collections, so let's just talk about the museum collections."

"The country with the most museum collections currently is Turkey, the Topkapi Palace Museum, which houses 40 pieces!"

"The Tehran Museum in Iran has 32 pieces, occupying second place."

"However... as far as I know, the largest private collection should be in the United Kingdom."

"You must be very curious why this is the case."

"The place of origin is clearly China, yet the place with the most collections is not China!"

"To understand this answer, first we have to talk about how Yuan blue-and-white was actually produced!"

249. The reason why Yuan blue-and-white is precious and rare!

"Actually, a long time ago, we Chinese had a major cognitive bias regarding blue-and-white porcelain."

"Which caused us to suffer a very, very big loss."

"Around the 1950s, people in our country didn't believe that Yuan Dynasty people could make blue-and-white porcelain."

"After all, they were a nomadic people, and they were far behind the Central Plains in terms of porcelain."

"Logically speaking, they couldn't make this kind of thing at all."

"At the time, people unanimously believed that only the blue-and-white from the early Ming Dynasty, Yongle and Xuande, was real."

"But at that time, there were many blue-and-white porcelains on the market with the Yuan Dynasty reign marks written on them."

"So everyone thought they were fakes."

"People in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China era all thought so."

"Later, Sir Percival David, the founder of the Percival David Foundation in the UK, came to the Liulichang in Beijing to hunt for things in modern times."

"He took one look at a large bottle, a large blue-and-white porcelain bottle, like the kind we see on TV specifically for holding calligraphy and paintings."

"Then Sir David thought the bottle looked very good no matter how he looked at it, and it didn't look like a fake."

"However, the antique dealers thought it was a fake because this large bottle had the Yuan Dynasty reign mark on it."

"So, the porcelain sold to foreigners at that time..."

"As long as it was blue-and-white porcelain with a Yuan Dynasty reign mark on it, we in China sold it as a fake."

"This wasn't just one or two; it was a generally held belief. You could say everyone had this perception."

"For example, if we bought a microwave plate and it had 'Made in the Qianlong era of the Great Qing' written on it, everyone would think it was fake."

"So people at the time had this fixed mindset: as long as it had a Yuan Dynasty reign mark, it must be a fake."

"They used these to fool foreigners, but they never expected that these were actually real."

"In fact, blue-and-white porcelain existed as early as the Tang Dynasty, but it only became truly popular during the Yuan Dynasty."

"So the antique dealers at that time sold them in large quantities to foreigners at low prices, treating them as fakes."

"In their view, they were fooling foreigners, but looking back now, it's really quite ironic."