This is the story of a child who has been away from home for 160 years when I visited the National Museum:

I was born 3,000 years ago, you must think I'm very old, right? No, you can tell by the tone of my voice: I'm still a baby. Hee-hee, compared to my mother, I'm really a baby. My mother is in the middle of the flower family, and as far as I know, she is over 5,000 years old.

My mother is very great, she has given birth to countless beautiful and noble children, and being born as her child is the glory of my life, and I will never regret it.

My mother doted on me, which was inseparable from my qualifications, and I had a beautiful and unique posture, with rare tiger-shaped ornaments - an extravagant figure, square lips, a short neck, wide folded shoulders, a tucked abdomen, a round bottom, and three hooves. One side of my shoulder has a tubular flow, the shape is like a tiger, the other side has a dragon's head, the cover folds edge, the upper side of the round carved tiger, my shoulder carved curly pattern, the abdomen carved oblique cloud pattern, the abdomen is decorated with tile patterns, and the foot root is gluttonous pattern. The crown on the head, the crown is cast with an inscription that says: "Self-made for the ring". Wow, my amazing charm!

Oh, by the way, I have a ring button on the lid and the pin, and there used to be a chain, but now there is no more, I don't remember when I lost it, when Evans snatched me, when I was played by the Evans family, or when I was in the museum? There is no trace of impression.

Tiger Ying, that's the name my mother gave me because of the crouching tiger shape on my flow tube. The flow is the iconic key part of my friends in the era of my birth, and my mother named them based on the ornamentation on this position. Huying, what a nice name, but I haven't heard anyone call me that in years.

At the beginning, I stood on the altar with a tulip in my hand and was admired by thousands of people. Later, the eldest of the family changed, the era changed, and I lived in the Old Summer Palace.

In 1860, a group of foreigners broke into my house, and they snatched the baby when they saw it.

They're not mom's guests! It's a robber!

"Your mother is no longer capable of protecting you, so I will protect you in the future." A foreigner looked at me with his blue eyes.

He was the one who took me away from the Zhonghua family and separated me from my mother—Harry Evans, a British officer.

He took me and took me to the place where he had invaded the house of Zhonghua. In the evening, he asked me to sit at his desk and watch him write to his mother:

"Dear Mother,

I managed to get a couple of bronze babies and enamel babies.

The French took a lot of valuable clocks, furs, silk babies, etc., and the general sent all the wagons he could find, taking as many treasures as he could. All these treasures were auctioned off as bonuses for the troops. Most of them were sold for a staggering price, and I also got a 5-40 pound cut. ”

"Evans, do you miss your mom?" I asked him.

"Of course." He stopped his pen and stroked me carefully.

"I also have a mother, and I will miss her too, but you forced us to separate."

"You're going to be better taken care of in my house, you're going to love being there." He shrugged his shoulders indifferently and continued:

"The Nakahua Palace is different from the Europa Palace, with beautiful hills nestled among magnificent gardens, and there are large and small buildings scattered at the foot of the hills, and there are temples. There are a lot of beautiful bronzes and enamel babies in these temples, but most of them are very large and difficult for us to carry.

I ended up with a few baby bronze and enamel vases, as well as some very beautiful royal cups and plates (they were dressed in yellow and green dragon clothes), but they were so fragile that I couldn't bring them back home as they were, and I was desperate. ”

The car was moving, and my body was about to leave the Zhonghua house, Evans pulled me hard, my mother pulled me, and I grabbed my mother's hand hard. But when did my mother's strength become so small, and why did my mother, who is known as the "Heavenly Empire", have so little strength? Even a small British officer could bully her.

That day, I saw many friends being dragged out of my mother's arms, foreigners smiling, and we cried bitterly. Finally, my mother's hand let go of my grip and I heard a desperate scream. This is the first time I have tasted hate, hating foreigners, and hating my mother even more.

When I arrived in the island of Great Britain, I was placed in the most beautifully furnished room of the Evans family, and many people gathered around me to see me.

"I'm not your child!"

No one paid any attention to me.

"I want to go home!"

No one paid any attention to me, they couldn't hear my cries, they couldn't understand when they heard them.

When I came here to meet their children, I realized that these people couldn't give birth to a beautiful baby like me, so they robbed my mother.

Over the years, my mood changed from resentment to fear, and from fear to numbness. How many years exactly? I don't remember, my memory seems to be having a problem. From the moment I left the Zhonghua family, I only stayed in the humiliated and helpless eyes of my mother when Evans snatched me.

Finally, Evans asked me, "Aren't you happy?" Am I bad for you? "He looked at me with his blue eyes, and I remembered my mother's black eyes.

"You ······ me"

To be honest, he wasn't bad for me, and even, because of how rare I was here, I was valued like never before. After all, in the Zhonghua family, there are too many mother's children, and I am not the best one. But Evans, do you know: any time you take me away from the Zhonghua family without my mother's permission, even the Heavenly Palace will be humiliating to me.

"Whether I'm happy or not never depends on whether you treat me well or not, just because you're not my mother."

Later, Evans died, and he didn't feel that he was wrong in the end, and I didn't like him, I didn't like the island of Great Britain.

I reappeared in a bungalow in a seaside town in Kent, and then I ended up at the Britannia Museum.

Then, I heard that I was going to be auctioned off by a guy called Canterbury. In addition to me, there are two other friends who will also be auctioned.

Mom, did you know your babies are going to be sold? One hundred and sixty years, you may have forgotten me, you have so many children, so many children have been snatched, do I count one in a thousand or one in 10,000? Far more than that, I'm one in ten million!

I heard the dealer who was going to sell me said: There are only 7 babies like her in the world, 5 of which are in our museum, and the baby that was auctioned this time is a water-holding utensil, and the body shape is relatively special, because the three legs are different from the common cone legs, but cylinders. And the "tiger" decoration is also rare.

All walk away mellowly! What is the matter with robbing other people's children and selling them, looking triumphant?!

"For £410,000, it sold for nearly four times the lowest estimate!"

The trafficker smiled happily.

I cried sadly.

Really, it's not like I've been away from my mother for a while, I thought my heart was numb, why can't I control these tears? Hmph, I wiped my tears, don't cry, I will be embarrassed to my mother if I cry again.

Are you going to change places again? Where will I be and who will be watching this time? Actually, none of this matters to me, it's not my home anyway······ Without a mother, it's the same everywhere and whoever you meet.

"Condemn and call on collectors around the world to boycott this auction."

This is ······ Is this familiar language family? This unique and beautiful language, my mother finally sent someone, didn't she?

"Please stop the auction of the flower children! Give us back the tiger! ”

It's family! My family! Only my family can recognize me at a glance and call out my name in the vast sea of people.

"The National Administration of Cultural Heritage strongly opposes and condemns the Canterbury auction house's insistence on auctioning off the suspected illegal loss of Zhonghua children in spite of our solemn protests, and conducting commercial speculation in the name of war plundering children!"

Family, I'm here, come and pick me up and go home to see my mother!

I fell into the darkness and saw the light again······

"Is Tiger Ying back?"

Mom's voice is as gentle and mellow as ever, but there are many more vicissitudes of life than before. For so many years, my mother must have suffered a lot, how much effort did my mother put into it for me to go home? I'm still ignorant, and I always blame my mother for not coming to pick me up earlier. If it weren't a last resort, who would want to be separated?

"Mom, it's me. Mom! ”

"Huh?"

"Will we ever be apart again?"

"Never."

In March 2018, it was supposed to be auctioned in the UK, and the National Heritage Board immediately launched a multi-faceted effort to get overseas buyers to donate the artefacts to the National Heritage Board. In September, the delegation of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, witnessed by Ambassador Liu Xiaoming, successfully held a donation ceremony for the bronze "Tiger Ring" at the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom. On November 23, the bronze "Tiger Ring" arrived safely in Beijing. On December 11, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage allocated the bronze "Tiger Ring" to the National Museum of China to hold a ceremony at the National Museum of China. On January 29, 2019, the "Tiger Ring" was unveiled in the South 12 Exhibition Hall of the National Museum of China and was exhibited to the public. This exhibition is a rare theme exhibition planned with the theme of a single cultural relic, and it shows the characteristics and history of the "Tiger Ring" itself in a panoramic way.

"Mom, Esperia's friends are all home, whether it's picking them up or sending them back or something, when will the other friends reunite with us?"