Genuine fake antiques smashed on TV show, find govt appraisers

Beijing cultural heritage authorities Wednesday confirmed that all the pieces smashed in a controversial antiques TV program are fake, despite some experts' reluctance to accept the ruling.

The Beijing Administrative of Cultural Heritage announced Tuesday that all the items destroyed in a Beijing Television (BTV) program called World Collection, were indeed fakes, after the program was accused of destroying valuable treasures.

The conceit of the popular program is that members of the public bring along items, real or fake, to be appraised by a panel of experts. If the object is considered to be a forgery, then it is smashed by the show's host on camera.

However, Yao Zheng, a member of the China Association of Collectors, publicly claimed that many of the fake items destroyed on the show are actually genuine, some of which are highly valuable.

"I don't accept the assessment [of whether the items were fake] done by the government, since the assessment can't convince most people," Yao told the Global Times Wednesday.

He pointed out that at least three out of the four experts sent by the culture administration to determine whether the pieces were real or not had appeared on the show as judges themselves.

"Why not avoid arousing suspicion by choosing some other experts? And they never revealed any details of the evaluation process, so how can they convince others, including us?" he noted.

Yao made his conclusions about the "fake" antiques after he and some other experts visited an exhibition hosted by the program and the Capital Museum in Beijing in May, where pieces of the smashed "antiques" and genuine pieces were displayed for people to find the differences.

After Yao's remarks were first published by the Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, the story spread widely, due to the popularity of the program.

Another relics evaluation expert, Ning Yuxin, told the Global Times that almost all "fake" items displayed in the museum were actually genuine and 30 percent of them are treasures with a high value.

During the assessment of those "fakes" when he visited the museum, Ning said he found some disappeared techniques which people could not copy now. Those antiques accord with the features of the culture in that period they were produced.

"I can take legal responsibility for what I said. The Beijing heritage department should stop misleading the public and the program should stop destroying porcelain pieces," Ning said.

Program producers denied all the accusations to the Global Times in a previous interview, claiming the show aims to provide professional knowledge to collectors through discussion and evaluation. They also said that items are appraised prior to the program so as to be sure.

Forty percent of the articles on the show are judged to be fake and destroyed, producer Han Yong told the Global Times on Tuesday.

But Li Yanjun, head of the relics department at Beijing Oriental University, and a former evaluation expert on the show, claimed that all items smashed in the program are fakes from Panjiayuan cultural relics market in Chaoyang district.

The host will never wrongly smash an antique, since the relics brought on stage are fake and the program is designed for entertainment, he told the Beijing Times on Tuesday.

"Even if they weren't genuine, they have some value to some extent and may be real cultural relics in the future," said LüLixin, President of Beijing Imperial City Artwork Exchange Center on Wednesday.

He believes that it is not proper to make the serious work of cultural relics evaluation into an entertainment program.

"Evaluation work needs experts to think calmly and make judgments, which should be a process with a scientific nature, so I don't think experts could make the best evaluation in the environment the show has," he said.

Experts may have different opinion about an antique during the evaluation, so the common policy is to get consensus among experienced experts, Lünoted.