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It was only about thirty years go that Red Guards smashed ancient relics throughout China in an attempt to destroy the country's classical heritage. That attempt failed.
Today mainland and overseas Chinese collectors are buying all the cultural relics they can find. In 1995 sales at Beijing's nine auction houses were $60 million, a sevenfold rise since they began operations the year before.
Chinese from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have been keen collectors of Chinese antiques all along, but until recently it was considered bourgeois and decadent for mainland Chinese to own them...