Chapter 11 Bronze Furnace for Pills of Immortality

For a long time, this pattern had been a mystery, and there were no clues no matter how hard he looked. So, when Qiu Dekao heard this, he immediately became excited and ordered a pot of good tea. When it arrived, he respectfully poured the old scholar a cup and asked him to explain everything in detail.

The old scholar had nothing to do, and seeing how interested Qiu Dekao was, he immediately became intrigued and told Qiu Dekao what happened at that time.

It was thirty years ago, when the old man was a professor of Chinese studies at Peking University. He was a member of the Kuomintang, and his son-in-law was a brigade commander under Zhang Lingfu.⁽¹⁾ After the 74th Reorganized Division was defeated,⁽²⁾ the remnants of the Kuomintang army scattered, and his son-in-law fled to Qimeng Mountain with his remaining troops. They became bandits and lived in the mountains for three years, but then the People’s Liberation Army started wiping out the bandits. With nowhere left to run, his son-in-law contacted some Kuomintang agents and prepared to flee to the United States.

After paying many bribes to secure the way, his son-in-law took the old man and his family into the mountains to wait for news on the ship. The atmosphere was still tense and it was inconvenient to drag his family members around with him, so his son-in-law settled them in a Taoist temple, disguised as Taoist priests, and waited for the agent to contact him.

Although it was called a Taoist temple, it was really just a local temple. But unlike other temples in the mountains, this one was built on a land bridge between two cliffs that were less than fifty meters apart. The whole temple was like a giant staircase, with seven levels that rose up one right after another. It had been built very simply, with walls that were painted yellow and the top four levels consisting of wooden boards placed between the two cliffs. There weren’t even any railings. Several niches contained clay sculptures of The Three Pure Ones, Guanyin, and other local gods—a very characteristic Chinese feature.⁽³⁾

The whole Taoist temple was managed by two old Taoist priests, who turned out to be father and son. At that time, the country had been thrown into turmoil because of the war, so incense was scarce. His son-in-law gave them some money for incense so that they would cover for his family.

The old professor lived in the Taoist temple for two months. It was deep in the mountains and hard to climb up and down the slopes, so there was nothing to do. Feeling bored, he began to study the antiques in the temple. It was during that time that he found a strange thing. Many items in the temple were just shoddy handicrafts made by the locals, so they didn’t have much value. Occasionally, he would find a few antiques from the Ming Dynasty, but it was on the top floor of the Taoist temple where he found a bronze furnace for making pills of immortality. It was strangely shaped—almost like an upside-down lotus flower—and judging by the patina on it, it was much older than the other things here.

The old professor wasn’t a historian, but at that time, scholars had some knowledge about such things. He immediately became interested and asked the old Taoist priest where the furnace came from.

The old priest praised him for his sharp eye and said that this pill furnace was indeed unusual. Before liberation, they found it among a pile of rubble after an earthquake caused part of the mountain to collapse. At that time, there were also a bunch of skeletons with it. The villagers, afraid of divine retribution, carried it here to appease the gods. That happened more than sixty years ago when he was still young, so he couldn’t remember all the details.

After listening, the old professor became even more interested, but he couldn’t investigate any further—the country was full of turmoil at that time, and his identity put him in a precarious position. He continued to ponder over it during his stay in the temple, but nothing ever came of it. Despite this, it was still engraved deep in his mind due to the circumstances and environment at that time. He also remembered the shape of the pill furnace and the pattern on it very clearly, so that was why he was able to recognize it as soon Qiu Dekao showed him the pattern.

He told Qiu Dekao that the pattern was on the furnace lid, and it looked exactly the same as this pattern. He was absolutely certain. If Qiu Dekao wanted to know more, he would need to find a way to go to that Taoist temple and ask them about it. But so much time had passed that he didn’t know whether that place was still there or not. It all depended on luck.

After hearing this, Qiu Dekao was both excited and disappointed. Excited, because it was obvious that the story behind this pattern was much bigger than he originally thought; disappointed, because after listening to the old man’s story, he still knew nothing about this pattern.

He wanted to see the pill furnace with his own eyes, but at that time, it was practically impossible—not only was it difficult for any American to go to China, but it was especially so for an infamous cultural relic dealer like him.

But Qiu Dekao was very arrogant and stubborn. If he wanted to do something, no one could stop him. Eventually, he managed to find a way: he might not be able to go to China himself, but after spending so many years in the cultural relics business, he had a close network of contacts over there. He started trying to get in touch with his old contacts in China, hoping to find someone willing to go to Qimeng Mountain, visit the Taoist temple deep in the mountains, and gather some information for him. If the pill furnace was still there, it would be even better if they could steal it and ship it to the United States.

By that time, China had suffered through ten years of chaos, and everything was in a bad state. His old contacts were gone—the older generation of grave robbers having either died or fled during the post-liberation purges—and now a new generation had taken control of the smuggling business. Even after calling on his connections to the Kuomintang and nearly exhausting all channels, he still couldn’t find anyone he knew.

Completely desperate, he decided to take a risk and turn to a few smugglers he hadn’t been familiar with at that time, asking them to introduce him to some of the newer graver robbers in Changsha.

There were a lot of difficulties, but his hard work eventually paid off—he finally got in touch with a Chinese person who was willing to cooperate with him.

This person was Xie Lianhuan.

How Xie Lianhuan got into this business, Uncle Three couldn’t figure it out at the time—the general environment was so bad that even the head of the Xie family didn’t dare return to his old profession and lived off of what the family had already accumulated. Smuggling cultural relics was a serious crime, just like how drug trafficking was today. It was such a dangerous job that no one usually did it unless they were so desperate for money that they were willing to risk their life.

Xie Lianhuan at that time was a spoiled rich kid, a total hedonist. The head of the Xie family wanted to clean up their reputation and go legitimate, so he didn’t allow Xie Lianhuan to get involved in the business or learn any skills. Therefore, no matter how brave or clever he was, he lacked the experience needed to enter this line of work and should have no reason to be in contact with foreign smugglers.

To put it in even simpler terms, smuggling cultural relics required a certain set of skills, such as acquiring the products, appraising them, and assigning a value to them. Without twenty or thirty years’ worth of experience, you definitely wouldn’t be able to succeed. Moreover, without these skills, you wouldn’t be able to set foot in this business since any potential buyers would ignore you. The fact that Qiu Dekao was able to contact Xie Lianhuan through an intermediary meant that Xie Lianhuan must’ve had business dealings with these people and gained their trust. But with Xie Lianhuan’s skills, that should have been impossible.

This question bothered Uncle Three until he came back from his first trip to Xisha and began to investigate the matter. He finally got some answers after asking the head of the Xie family about it, but that has nothing to do with Qiu Dekao so I won’t mention it here.

After Qiu Dekao got in contact with Xie Lianhuan, he sent a detailed plan to the younger man, along with a sketch of the bronze pill furnace that the old man had drawn and the most advanced camera on the market. He first asked Xie Lianhuan to confirm whether the Taoist temple was still there (things such as historic sites and temples belonged to the Four Olds,⁽⁴⁾ so it may have been destroyed during that time). If it was, then he needed to go there to collect information on the pill furnace, take photos, and then send the photos back to the United States for confirmation. If everything matched, Xie Lianhuan would then need to look for a way to smuggle it out of the country.

Although Xie Lianhuan didn’t have much experience going out into the field, he could still go to the place to see if it was there and make some inquiries. After receiving the materials, he went to Shandong and searched for the temple using the information the old man provided to Qiu Dekao. Eventually, he managed to find the mountainous area where the ancient temple had been built.

Fortunately, the Taoist temple was in a very remote area so it hadn’t been disturbed too much and had miraculously survived those ten years of turmoil. But the old Taoist priest had died, leaving only his son, who was also dying. Xie Lianhuan took pictures of the Taoist temple and bronze pill furnace and sent them back to the United States. Qiu Dekao checked the decoded pattern against the pattern on the furnace and found that the old man had actually been right—the pattern on the furnace’s lid was exactly the same as the one from the silk book. But the pill furnace was so old that the Taoist priest could only give a rough idea of its origin, which seemed to match what the old scholar had told Qiu Dekao back in Chinatown.

He didn’t get any more clues, but Qiu Dekao was still ecstatic. He immediately ordered Xie Lianhuan to find a way to smuggle the furnace out secretly.

But as soon as Xie Lianhuan started making preparations, he found that it was actually an impossible task.

There were two things Qiu Dekao hadn’t taken into account: the furnace was much bigger than he expected, and times had changed. In China, it was impossible to ship such things through customs, but if he tried to use a smuggling ship, he had to get the furnace to Zhejiang or Guangdong first. This was too risky considering how chaotic things were along the southeastern coast at that time.⁽⁵⁾

They tried many methods, but none seemed to work and all they ended up doing was drawing the attention of the police. Feeling desperate, Qiu Dekao came up with a crazy idea: Xie Lianhuan should break the pill furnace into pieces. With no other options, Xie Lianhuan got a saw and cut the furnace into more than forty pieces. Each piece was then marked, hidden in bundles of silk that were exported at that time, and then shipped out of the country.

To the archaeological community, this kind of act was an unforgivable travesty, but Qiu Dekao didn’t care at all—the only value this thing held for him was the information contained in the pattern on its lid.

What happened next can also be considered a coincidence. When Xie Lianhuan was sawing the pill furnace into pieces, he discovered a very ingenious mechanism on the bottom of the furnace. It was thanks to this mechanism that the secret surrounding the mysterious pattern on the silk book of the Warring States period was finally revealed.

<Chapter 10><Table of Contents><Chapter 12>

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TN Notes:

(1) Zhang Lingfu (1903-1947) was a high-ranking general of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. He successfully fought against the Communists and the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1947, his unit was surrounded by Chinese communist forces and he was killed in action.

(2) The 74th Reorganized Division was one of the top five crack units of the nationalist forces. Once it was completely destroyed, it became a huge psychological blow to the nationalist morale and was good propaganda for the communists. More info here.

(3) Three Pure Ones are the three highest gods in the Taoist pantheon. Guanyin is a Bodhisattva associated with compassion (worshiped or at least revered by both Buddhists and Taoists but it’s more of a Buddhist thing). He says these different statues are a characteristic Chinese feature because Taoism generally denies the existence of local gods, but Chinese villagers tended to mix various beliefs together. That was why so many different statues were in the niches even though it’s supposed to be a Taoist temple.

(4) The Four Olds (or the Four Old Things) was a term used during the Cultural Revolution by the student-led Red Guards in the People’s Republic of China in reference to the pre-communist elements of Chinese culture they attempted to destroy. The Four Olds were: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits.

(5) Both of those places are close to Taiwan. Tensions were still high between the communists in China and the Kuomintang who fled to Taiwan, and there were a few armed conflicts over strategic islands in the Taiwan Strait throughout the 1950s.

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Man, our boy Qiu Dekao is a terrible person but you’ve gotta admit he’s tenacious and resourceful. I also thought the old scholar’s story was pretty interesting and helped clarify things. I know I keep saying it with every book we do, but it’s like we’re getting a whole new story with all the stuff they left out of the licensed version.