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Stolen shine missing for nearly two decades returns to Shanxi Province
This story begins 19 years ago. One night in 1998, a ranger in charge of the Dengyu stone shrine in Yushe county, North China’s Shanxi Province, was patrolling around as usual when he was suddenly knocked out by a group of men. When he regained consciousness, he discovered that the bandits had stolen the heavy stone shrine dating from the Tang Dynasty ( 618- 907) from its base using a crane.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.
After disappearing for nearly two decades, the body of the missing shrine, which had been discovered in the Chung Tai Chan Monastery in Taiwan, was returned to its home province during a ceremony held at the Shanxi Museum on Sunday.
Long Mingbiao, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, and Guan Qiang, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage ( SACH), attended the ceremony to unveil the returned relic, according to a press release sent to the Global Times by the SACH, also one of the organizers of Sunday’s ceremony.
At the ceremony, Guan called the return of the shrine a monumental event in the history of cross- Straits cultural exchange and a great example of mainland and Taiwan organizations working together to protect Chinese cultural heritage.
Featuring exquisite carvings of a Buddhist god on each of its four sides, the 3.2- meter- high square- shaped stone shrine is a rare piece of Buddhist art. According to an inscription on the shrine itself, it was built during the Tang Dynasty in the year 720.
Originally located in Dengyu village, the shrine consists of a base, a main body, and a decorative top section known as a tacha in Chinese. While the main body of the shrine has been returned, the
tacha section remains missing. As such, the tacha on display at Sunday’s ceremony is a replica based on historical records.
For the time being, the shrine will remain on display at the museum, while authorities work to return the shrine to its original base in Dengyu village.
According to the SACH press release, the main part of the shrine was transported to Taiwan at some point after the robbery. In 2015, it was donated by a Buddhist practitioner to the Chung Tai Chan Monastery in Nantou county, Taiwan.
Later that year, while temple staff were sorting the monastery’s relics in preparation for the planned opening of the Chung Tai World Museum in 2016, they came across the shrine. Suspecting that the shrine could be the very one that had been stolen in 1998, Grand Master Wei Chueh ( 1928- 2016), founder of the monastery, expressed his wishes that the relic be returned to its hometown.
During a SACH meeting in February 2016, Master Jian Zun, the vice abbot of the Chung Tai Chan Monastery, informed SACH about the possibly stolen shrine, saying that the monastery was considering returning it to the SACH at the opening ceremony of the Chung Tai World Museum. Attaching great importance to the recovery of the shrine, SACH sent experts from the Shanxi Culture Relics Bureau to the monastery to see if the shrine was a match for their records. After several trips, experts confirmed that the shrine was the one stolen from Dengyu village.
On August 13, 2016, an official agreement was signed between Shi Jinming, curator of the Shanxi Museum, and Master Jian Zun to return the shrine.
Master Jian Deng, the monastery’s new abbot, also attended Sunday’s ceremony.