A calligraphy scroll by former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) estimated to be worth millions of US dollars was cut in half after it was stolen last month in a high-profile burglary in Hong Kong, police said.
The scroll was found damaged when police late last month arrested a 49-year-old man on suspicion of handling stolen property.
The South China Morning Post, quoting an unidentified police source, reported that the scroll was cut in two by a buyer who had purchased it for HK$500 (US$65) and had believed the scroll to be counterfeit.
“According to our investigation, someone thought that the calligraphy was too long,” Tony Ho (何振東), a senior superintendent at the Hong Kong Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “It was difficult to show it, to display it, and that’s why it was cut in half.”
Police said the scroll was part of a multimillion-dollar theft by three burglars from collector Fu Chunxiao’s (符春曉) apartment last month.
Fu, who is well known for his collection of stamps and revolutionary art, was in mainland China at the time of the burglary and has not been in Hong Kong since January because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The burglars took 24,000 Chinese postage stamps, 10 coins and seven calligraphy scrolls from Fu’s apartment, where he stored his collections.
Fu estimated that the Mao calligraphy was worth about US$300 million and that the theft totaled about US$645 million.
No independent appraisals of the collections were available.
Police have arrested three men in relation to the burglary and on suspicion of providing assistance to criminals.
At least two people connected to the burglary are still at large, Ho said.
Although some of the stolen items have been found, the 24,000 stamps and six other calligraphy scrolls have not been recovered, police said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of