"No, no, no... I can't show you this. This is my private diary. It records the trivial matters of my family... This has nothing to do with archeology..."
Seeing Samuel holding the huge cowhide notebook like a protector, he didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell him directly. I spied on you last night and the night before. You were in the diary. There are many sketches of cultural relics recorded in it!
Yes, there is a stone sculpture of the Zoroastrian God of Victory among them!
You can't say this under any circumstances. To put it bluntly, wouldn't you admit that you are a peeping villain?
The aggrieved Zuo Zuo angrily complained to King Shangtai several times. After all, King Shangtai was born as a king and he was not as stingy as the owner of the glaze manufacturer.
"Don't be angry, I have some secrets, just don't give them to me... Mr. Samuel has also shared a lot of clues about cultural relics during this period, I should thank you!"
"Thank him? Oh, my good prince! You are too talkative. He is obviously taking advantage of us... We shouldn't take him with us to Dunhuang this time!"
Unable to get support from King Shangtai, Zuo turned around and complained angrily to the rear... It turned out that just this month, the Qing Telegraph Bureau in Fuqing finally, after all the hardships, sent a telegram from Xi'an to Lanzhou. The line has been repaired, and now the telegraph line is going all out to be repaired along the ancient Silk Road.
Not to mention whether the Qing government was corrupt or not, incompetent or not... In fact, as long as any government is willing to spend money and issue the strictest military orders, the efficiency of doing things will not be that low.
Repairing telegraph lines is not a complicated high-tech industry in the first place. Why don’t ordinary people know how to dig holes and dig wooden piles? What's so difficult about carrying a roll of wire on a pole?
If you want to be fast, then let the army and the people join the battle! Of course Zuo Zongtang knew the benefits of telegraph lines, so when the army marched along the ancient post road to Guazhou, he had already ordered the troops to dig holes and lower poles first, and half of the work was already done.
This means that due to transportation conditions, hundreds of tons of imported wires stored in Xi'an have to be transported westward using the most backward transportation methods.
Otherwise, as long as the wires are supplied quickly, Zuo Zongtang's troops can even wrap up the wires!
At present, the Western Expedition Army and the Qing Telegraph Bureau have formed a very efficient cooperation. The army marched forward and set up telegraph poles, and the wood was obtained locally.
The people from the telegraph office brought wires and laid them all the way up. Each town put down an old employee who could send and receive telegraphs. His task was to manage the telegraph offices in various places, and he had to train several apprentices within a year.
Zuo Zongtang and Fu Qing are the real officials, not the princes and ministers who are just waiting to die. Under their management, the transmission of military information in the northwest has gradually begun to be telegraphed.
After asking around, I found out that by the end of December, the telegraph line would be able to reach Gulang River, three months later it would reach Jiayuguan, and four months it would reach Guazhou.
In this way, the information transmission between him and the rear area will be much easier, especially since the left side is currently responsible for a large part of the construction of the Heads of State Museum.
He is registered with the CIA, and even vaguely on the left has become a peripheral collaborator of the CIA. He has the right to send telegrams to various departments of the CIA.
If he wants to complain to Xiao Letian, he can seek help from any CIA branch, and someone will naturally forward the telegram to the head of state on his behalf.
On the left, on the eve of the expedition's departure, the intelligence of Samuel Baker, a British man who jumped in half way, was written on a thin piece of silk, and was released to Lanzhou using a CIA carrier pigeon.
"My subordinates suspect that this Samuel Baker is a cultural relic thief. His purpose of coming to China is to steal the most valuable cultural relics..."
"The situation is urgent. I hope the head of state will give instructions and we must protect China's own treasures!"
After all, the left side did not realize the danger of Samuel. The great minister of Liulichang regarded the British explorer as an antique thief from the beginning.
It’s no wonder that the left side is suspicious. In fact, whether it’s the left side or King Shang Tai, they are essentially cultural relic thieves. They have also collected a lot of European works of art from the left side in Europe.
In Egypt, King Shangtai drove directly through the emperor's tomb, and the treasures he unearthed were pulled out in carts!
The enlightenment period of human history and archeology was so barbaric. Those scholars were all robbers and thieves, and no country in the world had an antiquities law.
This treasure from thousands of years ago belongs to whomever finds it!
After complaining, the Guazhou expedition finally set off. Before leaving, Zuo Zongtang advised them to recuperate for a few more months and wait for spring to bloom before setting off.
But these people couldn't wait any longer, especially when they heard from the guide that many caves in the Mogao Grottoes had been buried by yellow sand, and the sandstorms were eroding the murals every day. They couldn't wait any longer.
At the end of December 1871, an expedition of more than 100 people set out from Guazhou and headed south to Dunhuang!
Dunhuang belongs to Gugua Prefecture. Before the Han Dynasty, it had always been the habitat of nomadic people. The water of the Dang River irrigated it and formed a large oasis with rich water and grass.
After the Silk Road was formed, this was the main route for caravans to enter and leave the ancient country of Loulan, and it was once extremely prosperous!
At the end of the Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos. Li Hao, a descendant of Li Guang, established the Xiliang Kingdom in Dunhuang. Dunhuang became the capital of the Xiliang Kingdom.
During the Sixteen Kingdoms period after the Five Husties, the people in the Central Plains were in chaos and had a hard time living. At that time, a large part of the Han people in the north moved south, and the Han civilization was preserved in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
However, a small number of Han people from the Central Plains chose to flee westward and entered the Western Regions along the Silk Road. A large part of them settled in Xiliang.
It was these intellectuals and craftsmen and farmers from the Central Plains who brought culture and new technologies, which suddenly made Dunhuang's economy and culture develop like a blowout.
Many of these intellectuals from the Central Plains worshiped Buddhism, and Dunhuang was the only way for Buddhism to be introduced into the Central Plains. There were also many eminent monks and virtuous men resident there.
With the popularization of culture and the high-tech architectural carving skills of Central Plains craftsmen... the most important thing is that these talents allowed Dunhuang's economy to develop at that time.
We have money, technology and broad public support!
Under the initiative of Monk Lezun, the first cave was finally excavated in the Mogao Grottoes, and this project continued from the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Yuan Dynasty!
No matter how the dynasties changed, the repair and excavation activities of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang have never stopped. It is nothing more than more construction in the prosperous times and more maintenance in the troubled times. In order to stabilize people's hearts, the rulers of each dynasty also supported or did not interfere with the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. Construction works.
It was not until the Ming Dynasty that the fate of Mogao Grottoes reversed!
