The Chinese antique art collector who placed the winning bids on two highly controversial statues at a Christie’s auction in Paris last week is now refusing to pay out of protest.
The pieces in question are the bronze head sculptures of a rat and a rabbit – two out of twelve that were looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace in 1860 by Anglo-French forces during the Second Opium War.
Beijing’s Silk Street Market, known for its vast selection of knock-off designer products, is facing increased pressure from domestic lawyers to stop selling counterfeit goods. The market managers have shut down 29 stalls over the last month provoking angry protests from the aggressive vendors.
The recent shut downs are a result of pressure put on the market managers by the Beijing law firm IntellecPro, which specializes in intellectual property rights. The firm represents a collective of Burberry, Gucci, Prada, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton who first filed a trademark violation lawsuit four years ago.
The lawyer representing the vendors claims that his clients are too ignorant to distinguish brand names or real goods from fake. “We don’t read English. We don’t know what the letters mean. We just think it is pretty,” claimed one vender.
The market is an extremely popular tourist attraction in Beijing, reportedly attracting more than 15 million annual visitors – two-thirds of them foreigners.
China’s first lunar probe, Chang’e-1, impacted with the moon yesterday – effectively concluding the satellite’s 16 month mission. This occasion marks a significant step forward in China’s mission to join countries like the U.S. and Russia as a leader in space technology.
Launched on Oct. 24, 2007, Chang’e-1 successfully sent a complete map of the moon back to China one month later. The lunar probe also conducted various other tests before it crashed into the moon’s surface at 1.50 degrees south latitude and 52.36 degrees east longitude.
The Chang’e-1 satellite was the primary step in China’s three phase lunar mission which will result in the launching and landing of an unmanned rover vehicle on the moon’s surface by 2012.