Who was the leader in those years when I robbed the tomb?

In 20 15, Yao Yuzhong, the originator of grave robbery, was arrested and threatened: it's a pity that he didn't go to the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor.

West wind literature and history world

2022-08-23 14:34 PhD student in Henan.

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In June, 2065438, Liaoning Provincial High Court sentenced a grave robbery case.

Yao Yuzhong, the principal offender, was sentenced to a suspended death sentence, and Yao Yuzhong gangs committed more than 200 crimes crazily, involving cultural relics worth more than 500 million yuan, making it the biggest robbery since the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC).

Yao Yuzhong never used high-tech equipment to rob a tomb. He dug nearly 200 graves with his self-made tool "Zhazi", but he never missed. He is known as the "grandfather" of the grave robbery industry.

How did Yao Yuzhong embark on the road of crime? What's so great about him? Let's take a closer look.

Poor teenagers go astray.

It is widely rumored on the Internet that Yao Yuzhong was born in a family of grave robbers, and his ancestor was the famous "Captain Touching Gold". His parents are good at observing astronomical phenomena and geomantic omen. They can find dragons and acupoints with compasses. In fact, these are all rumors.

Yao Yuzhong's ancestors have been farming for generations. Besides farming, their ancestral skills are weaving baskets and mats. If Yao Anna's family is really as advertised on the Internet, the life of this family will not be so miserable.

God didn't give Yao Yuzhong a superior family, but he was given a clever mind.

In the eyes of the villagers in Fangxin Village, Yao Yuzhong is the cleverest of the seven brothers and sisters, and also stands out among the children in the same village.

He learned the skill of knitting bamboo baskets at an early age, and he knitted them quickly and well. After weaving, he hung them on the back of his bike and sold them along the village. Many people don't believe that such a beautiful bamboo basket is made by this child.

In addition, he also sold cashmere, pigskin and other items, and moved bricks in brick factories. Because of his flexible mind and hard work, he also earned some small money to subsidize his family.

Due to family poverty, Yao Yuzhong dropped out of primary school, but he developed a good habit of reading.

Once, he got a book about "Feng Shui" from nowhere, and became fascinated at once. Yao Yuzhong, still wanting more after reading, went to buy books like Zhouyi and Bagua to study at home.

Every day he works and reads, which can be said to have reached the point where he forgets to eat and sleep.

Books about the Book of Changes and Feng Shui are usually obscure, and college students may not be able to understand the ins and outs, but Yao Yuzhong, who only has primary school culture, has read them with relish, understood them thoroughly, and even reached the point of perfection.

Yao Yuzhong not only has theoretical knowledge, but also tries to explore his own skills in practice. Every time he goes out to work, he will stand on the mountain and watch by the river and understand the meaning of the book from different angles.

Slowly, Yao Yuzhong mastered some Feng Shui skills, and he could accurately identify the direction without using a compass. Many geomantic teachers know that the mountain range of "left green dragon and right white tiger, looking up and down" is a treasure trove of geomantic omen suitable for burial, but they try their best to find it, or find the general direction and can't locate it accurately, which leads to "a thousand miles away".

And Yao Yuzhong as long as a station to the top of the mountain, look around, will soon be able to find out.

When Yao Yuzhong went to the mountain to herd cattle, he asked other children to stamp their feet with different strength on the hillside more than ten meters away. He lay prone on the ground and put his ear close to the ground to listen to the sound. If there is a "thump" echo, it means there is a cemetery underground.

Two years later, Yao Yuzhong has been able to identify the size and depth of the cemetery, and even whether there are any metal funerary objects in it, which is beyond the reach of many archaeologists with detection instruments.

Thus, the reason why Yao Yuzhong can become a "granddaddy" in the grave robbery world is inseparable from his diligence and hard work besides his talent.

With Yao Yuzhong's level and ability, if he takes the right path, he will not become an archaeologist in the future, at least he will become an excellent Feng Shui master, and he may be able to support his family and even lead a well-off life.

Unfortunately, he took a completely opposite road and became a grave robber.

In Fangxin Village, where Yao Yuzhong is located, before every rainstorm, some stone tools and pottery fragments can be seen on the hillside, but the locals don't think so. If they see complete utensils, they will pick them up at most and put them at home.

However, Yao Yuzhong learned from the book that there are a large number of ancient tombs in his hometown, which are all antique cultural relics.

There are countless precious treasures buried in the deep mountains and forests. Afraid of poverty, Yao Yuzhong decided to "rely on mountains to eat mountains", dig ancient tombs and steal cultural relics to make a fortune.

After a short period of thinking, Yao Yuzhong went astray and went to the point of no return.

Stunt shows, crazy crimes.

Neolithic culture plays an important role in China archaeology. With the deepening of archaeological research, Hongshan Culture has attracted much attention in recent decades.

Some scholars believe that Hongshan Culture is probably an extension of Hemudu culture, and its position can be juxtaposed with Yangshao culture.

Yao Yuzhong's hometown Chifeng belongs to the core area of Hongshan Culture.

Yao Yuzhong soon put the idea of excavating the ancient tomb into action, and he began preparations.

Yao Yuzhong put on a brand-new Chinese tunic suit, gold-rimmed glasses and a bachelor's uniform, and came to Chifeng Museum to learn about the distribution and objects of Hongshan cultural relics, and humbly asked the museum experts about cultural relics identification knowledge.

Yao Yuzhong's eyes lit up when he saw the treasure of the town hall "Hongshan Jade Pig Dragon". This cultural relic is the earliest dragon image in China, and it is called "China's Yilong". All other tourists are attracted by China's long and splendid civilization, but what Yao Yuzhong sees is its great economic value.

Back in the village, Yao Yuzhong changed into sportswear to "climb the mountain", which is called "acupuncture" in the grave robbery industry.

He almost climbed all the local mountains, big and small. With the increase of "mountain climbing", Yao Yuzhong can accurately find out the location of ancient tombs according to the astrology and terrain.

The hobby of "climbing mountains" has been accompanied by his grave robbery career. It is said that Yao Yuzhong was still "climbing the mountain" the day before his arrest.

There is countless sweat behind every success. It is because of hard study that Yao Yuzhong has developed a superb skill. This is also an important reason why he stole more than 200 ancient tombs and never missed!

After preliminary preparation, self-taught Yao Yuzhong began to put it into practice.

When he first entered the tomb, he felt uneasy in the face of the weathered skeleton and the sultry air in the tomb. Fortunately, he is very lucky. He found a jade article among the bones.

Yao Yuzhong was ecstatic and ran home sweating. A few days later, he sold the jade to a cultural relic dealer and got 2000 yuan.

This was a huge sum of money in the 1980s. Before Yao Yuzhong took this step, he knew it was illegal and criminal. Besides, digging graves is a kind of retribution in folklore, but greed triumphs over conscience and reason, and Yao Yuzhong goes further and further on the evil road of obtaining ill-gotten gains.

Most of the ancient tombs in Hongshan are built on the ridge, which has been weathered for years. Many tombs are shallow, and some tombs are only more than one meter deep, so the excavation is not difficult.

The difficulties are: 1. How to quickly judge whether there is a grave underground? Secondly, are there any valuable jade articles in the tomb? If you dig for a long time and only get some pottery fragments and stones, you won't be able to sell them at this price, so you will lose more than you gain.

None of this is a problem for Yao Yuzhong.

He can find a treasure-rich ancient tomb quickly and accurately. There are often several cemeteries from deep to shallow on a piece of geomantic treasure land. Yao Yuzhong first digs holes vertically, and then digs them in parallel from different depths. In one trip, he can dig several ancient tombs at the same time, with high efficiency and more natural shipments.

Yao Yuzhong has never used high-tech detection instruments to rob tombs, even Luoyang shovel, a common tool in field archaeology.

He spliced several steel bars into a special grave-robbing tool called "the spear". After assembling in the field, he inserted it into the loess. After pulling it out, he observed the color of the soil, so that Yao Yuzhong could judge the underground tombs.

After entering the tomb, he only brought a strong flashlight. With these simple tools, Yao Yuzhong successfully looted several ancient tombs.

Yao Yuzhong likes to commit crimes in summer and autumn. Every time after stealing the tomb, he would backfill the hole and then sprinkle grass seeds on the new soil. Soon, the cemetery will be covered with grass, covering up the traces of theft.

Yao Yuzhong was arrested for robbing a tomb for more than 30 years, which is inseparable from his cautious style.

The sects of grave robbery industry have their own characteristics, some are good at geomantic omen, some are good at compasses, and of course, there are also have?no?martial?ethics, such as Sun Dianying, who violently robbed the Qing tombs, while Yao Yuzhong is a school of its own. He pays more attention to practical interests and ignores the so-called rules and stresses.

In addition, he also has a fast and accurate tomb-robbing technique, which quickly became famous among local peers and was called "the first master outside the customs".

Before Yao Yuzhong, the phenomenon of local cultural relics poaching was rare, and the sale of cultural relics did not form a scale. Since Yao Yuzhong successfully excavated treasures and gained wealth, the local grave robbery culture began to rise gradually, and formed a chain of related crimes such as acquisition, trafficking and smuggling.

Yao Yuzhong is the initiator of this chain. Because of his early start and high technology, thieves from all walks of life came to defect. Some people made a special trip to learn from the teacher, and some gangs invited him to "step on the spot" and asked him to help identify the stolen goods. In short, Yao Yuzhong has become the core figure of the local grave robbery gang.

Yao Yuzhong is worried that he will be alone and get rich too slowly. Naturally, he is always open to these collaborators.

Slowly, several grave robbery gangs have formed around him, and their momentum is growing. All these people regard Yao Yuzhong as their "ancestor".

According to the statistics of the public security organs after the incident, at least two-thirds of the 12 robbery gangs uncovered were related to Yao Yuzhong, which shows its great influence.

Of course, Yao Yuzhong kept his unique secret strictly confidential and never told anyone. Even his brother Yao revealed only a little.

Every time before committing a crime, Yao Yuzhong would "step on the spot" on the mountain alone. After the tunnel was dug, Yao Yuzhong sent someone to guard it and went down to steal cultural relics himself. How many cultural relics did he dig? how much was it sold for？ Only Yao Yuzhong knows.

Of course, he will also distribute some benefits to members according to the size of his contribution.

If you do more injustice, you can't escape the punishment of the law.

With the growth of the team, Yao Yuzhong led the gang members to dig the Hongshan ancient tomb crazily, and the scope of the excavation continued to expand, and the focus shifted to Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province.

Since 20 13, Yao Yuzhong has committed more than 200 crimes in one year.

In the summer of 20 12, Yao Yuzhong sold a pair of jade bracelets for 60,000 yuan. In May of 20 13, he sold three stolen horseshoe-shaped jade hoops and made a profit of 1.3 million yuan. In February 20 14, Yao Yuzhong sold eight more jade articles, with a transaction price of 300,000 yuan ... most of them were national first-class unearthed cultural relics.

Even so, Yao Yuzhong still thinks that money comes too slowly. On one occasion, he learned that Jiefeng, the leader of the grave robbery gang in lingyuan city, had a batch of high-quality Hongshan jade articles, so he called Wang Jingshan and other thugs to kidnap Jiefeng, searched out the key of the antique shop from Jiefeng, and swept away the 1 1 jade articles that Jiefeng had put in the safe.

Yao Yuzhong took the money for himself after stealing. Since then, his colleagues have given Yao Yuzhong more "malicious and toxic" comments. Because of his fear of cruelty, his younger brother Yao finally left him to go it alone.

It can be said that Yao Yuzhong has robbed tombs for more than 30 years and never missed them. He has accumulated at least 1 100 million yuan in wealth. Surprisingly, when Yao Yuzhong was later arrested, the total cash in all bank accounts was only tens of thousands of yuan.

Most of Yao Yuzhong's ill-gotten wealth has flowed into casinos. Yao Yuzhong's hobby all his life is gambling. Besides robbing tombs, he is addicted to gambling. As long as he doesn't go up the mountain to rob the tomb at night, he gambles all night in the casino.

Contrary to his superb grave robbery skills, Yao Yuzhong's gambling skills are poor, because he has much money and weak skills, and he is often the target of swindlers. It is common to lose millions in one night. At most, he lost more than 10 million.

As a result, Yao Yuzhong ran out of money quickly, and sometimes he couldn't pay off his gambling debts, so he repaid his stolen cultural relics at half price, and Yao Yuzhong was nicknamed "the old black sheep".

Yao Yuzhong doesn't care about losing money because it is too easy to come by. He bought a high-grade villa in Chifeng City, where he usually spends money like water and lives a life of drunkenness.

Burials in Hongshan Culture district have been wantonly excavated, and the situation is getting worse, resulting in the loss of a large number of precious cultural relics. At the same time, criminals wantonly destroyed ancient tomb sites, which had a great impact on Neolithic cultural research and caused immeasurable losses.

Archaeologists have written to stop this kind of theft and excavation.

The public security department attaches great importance to it. 20 14 the Ministry of public security quickly set up a "1 126" task force to crack down on the increasingly rampant crime of stealing and excavating cultural relics.

The police and officers and men of the Armed Police jointly conducted a dragnet search and clean-up in Hongshan Culture District. The grave robbers on the mountain fled everywhere, only hating their parents for losing their legs.

Yao Yuzhong was "stepping on the spot" on the mountain at that time. He knows the serious consequences of being caught. When he saw the policeman coming, he ran behind the rock, closed his eyes and jumped down from the mountain.

Although Yao Yuzhong escaped temporarily, he sprained his waist. In order to avoid being questioned by the police, he went to the casino to find fault and had a fight, claiming that he was injured in the waist.

However, no matter how cunning the fox is, it can't compete with a good hunter after all. With the arrest of grave robbers including Fan and Jie Feng, the criminal gangs hidden behind them were destroyed by the police, and the mysterious "leading brother" gradually surfaced.

The police suspected that Yao Yuzhong was the legendary grave robber "Lao Yao".

With the implementation of the evidence, the police arrested Yao Yuzhong at the Tianyi Hotel in the town. The police found a large number of cultural relics in the villa and his son's home in Chifeng City, Yao Yuzhong, and four Liao Dynasty cultural relics in the abandoned dry well in his hometown.

Ironically, Yao Yuzhong's son majored in cultural relics identification in university, but his son failed to follow in his father's footsteps. Is it regret or luck?

In May 2005, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the case had been successfully detected. A total of 12 gangs were destroyed, 2,063 cultural relics were recovered, involving more than 500 million yuan, and 225 suspects were arrested.

The number of people involved and the number of cultural relics shocked the archaeological community and became the biggest theft of cultural relics since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Due to the long history and the concealment of Yao Yuzhong, many evidences were lost. Yao Yuzhong, the principal offender, was only found by the court to have robbed the ancient tomb 16 times and sold two first-class cultural relics. However, this is enough for Yao Yuzhong to be severely punished by law.

After Yao Yuzhong was arrested, he tried to commit suicide by stoning while identifying the scene. Later, during the court trial, he boasted: "I was reincarnated as a grave digger 6,000 years ago, and I brought Hongshan Culture back to earth!"

He also proudly said to the archaeologists present: "None of your experts 100 are as good as me. My biggest regret is that I didn't go to the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang! "

No matter how Yao Yuzhong denied and quibbled, he finally bowed his head in front of the evidence.

The Higher People's Court of Liaoning Province finally found Yao Yuzhong guilty of robbery, excavating ancient tombs in ancient cultural sites and reselling cultural relics, and sentenced him to death with a two-year suspension. His younger brother Yao was also sentenced to life imprisonment.

Yao Yuzhong, 55, was sentenced to life imprisonment for good behavior after serving his sentence. If there are no accidents, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

As an archaeologist said, Yao Yuzhong did have some skills. If he can sum up his experience in exploring landscapes and treasures, it will be beneficial to China's archaeological cause.

Brother Yao Yuzhong is a jade, but I didn't expect him to be attached to jade all his life. He has a high IQ and a talent for treasure hunting, and he is qualified to succeed in life. His life experience is also legendary.

Helpless, he went astray because of greed, committed many evils, violated the law and committed crimes, and finally went to prison, which was shameful to the world.