Upon hearing this, the boss immediately perked up.
These items were all inherited from his adoptive father, and if he couldn't sell them, he was prepared to find a middleman to dispose of them.
Now that a wealthy person has taken a liking to these things, they'll definitely sell everything they can. They'd rather just leave them to gather dust than exchange them for cash to make their lives more comfortable.
However, he clearly lacked the talent of a shrewd businessman and directly quoted Zhang Long what he considered a relatively high price: 3,000 euros per jar.
As a result, Zhang Long ended up cutting off the supply chain again, and in the end, he bought them all for 1,200 euros each. In the end, the total cost of this trip to this store reached 1.6 million euros.
After buying the bronze head, the price wasn't actually that expensive; the rest were just extras.
But the main thing now is figuring out how to move all this stuff. I was just thinking about that when my phone rang.
I checked my phone, and here it is.
It was the bank that called, probably asking him if he was the one who made the purchase.
After the call was connected, Zhang Long took advantage of his super VIP status and demanded that the Bank of China send a car to store his belongings in the bank's vault.
The person who answered the phone was completely baffled, so the call was transferred to the head of the Bank of China's Paris branch.
The other party was initially very resistant, but after hearing that the items included the twelve bronze heads from the Yuanmingyuan, which were intended to be donated to the country, the bank manager fell silent.
After thinking for a moment, he asked Zhang Long to give him the address so the escort vehicle could depart immediately.
They will arrive in about three hours. Zhang Long is to wait in the town.
After hanging up the phone, he took advantage of the time difference and began a shopping spree in this small town on the outskirts of Nantes, France.
To be honest, even though it's been 16 years now, he still feels that this remote town is like a paradise without internet access.
Yeah, they're really easy to fool, cough cough, they're really naive!
Anyway, the items are all very cheap, which is much easier than going to the countryside to collect antiques.
The only requirement was that you had to understand French, especially French with an accent, and Zhang Long happened to have this advantage.
When the escort truck arrived, the bank manager personally led the team, and after seeing Zhang Long's goods, he was completely taken aback.
Who ever uses burlap sacks to carry antiques? But now he'd seen it for himself: four burlap sacks full of copper coins, jingling and clanging incessantly.
Even though taking it back might lower the price, he just likes it!
In addition, there were three small boxes of silver ingots, which he received from a handsome old Frenchman for less than 2,000 euros.
The bottles and jars were a bit of a hassle, but luckily Zhang Long had the money to dress them all up, and finally the two bronze heads.
He gained a lot from this trip. There are quite a few procedures required to transport the cultural relics back here, and Zhang Long entrusted these matters to the professionals at the Bank of China to handle.
As expected, professional matters should be handled by professionals. In less than a week, he boarded a chartered plane from the Bank of China and returned to China.
This was partly to give Zhang Long, a top VIP, face, and partly because the twelve zodiac animal heads that Zhang Long was going to donate came in handy.
Before the plane had even landed, Zhang Long's phone was practically exploding with calls. But when he looked at the screen, not a single call came out; they were all from Director Zhang of the Shanghai Museum.
Director Zhang helped Zhang Long resolve the import channels for cultural relics in China, all so that the two bronze heads could be located in Shanghai.
After a flight of more than ten hours, he finally returned to Shanghai on August 3, 2016.
Today is also his birthday according to the Gregorian calendar, and the donation ceremony is being held today, which can be considered a special commemoration!
As soon as he got off the plane, he saw his girlfriend Xin Xin standing there to greet him with two middle-aged men with thinning hair. He knew without a doubt that they were people from the museum.
As soon as Zhang Long came out, before he could even say a few words to his girlfriend, one of the two middle-aged men grabbed his hand tightly.
"Hello, Mr. Zhang!"
"I am Zhang Xiaotian, the curator of the Shanghai Museum. Thank you for your donation to our museum."
"Your contributions to our museum are truly beyond words!"
"I'm so grateful!"
Seeing the middle-aged man in front of him rambling incoherently and on the verge of tears, Zhang Long couldn't bear it.
So he changed the subject, saying, "Director Zhang, this is also something I should do as a Chinese person. If I didn't know, I would have just let it go, but if I did know, I certainly couldn't stand by and watch our national treasures being lost overseas."
“It’s not just me; if other Chinese people knew this, they would definitely feel the same way I do.”
"This isn't the place to talk. Let's go somewhere else to chat."
Seeing passengers from other planes looking in their direction, Zhang Long quickly said.
Only then did he notice that cargo was being unloaded on the other side of the plane, and the people loading it onto the truck were employees of his own Bailong Company.
Don't ask how I knew they were employees of Bailong Company; the answer is that their work uniforms are different.
Seeing his company's vehicles and employees put his mind at ease. He then took the snake head and the dragon head (whose authenticity was unknown) into the museum's van.
After getting on the bus, he learned that the other person was the deputy curator of the museum, named Zhang Xi, who was from the same clan as him.
The two kept urging the driver to go faster, as if they had nails stuck to their butts.
However, Zhang Long also showed understanding towards them, after all, these are the twelve bronze animal heads from the Yuanmingyuan, which are designated as national first-class cultural relics.
If it weren't for their advantageous location, the Shanghai Museum wouldn't have had a chance to get the job. They were aware of this, so they took the initiative to help Zhang Long solve a small problem.
The sheep's head was also brought over by Hu Xinxin and placed at her feet in a black box, ready to be donated together.
Perhaps sensing the two museum owners' eagerness, there was no traffic jam along the way, and we arrived at the museum very smoothly.
The car drove in smoothly until it reached the museum's office building, where everyone got out.
As soon as we got off the bus, we experienced what it meant to be the center of attention. A dozen or twenty experts, all of whom were quite old, stood excitedly on both sides of the bus, hoping to see the two animal heads as soon as possible!
An hour had passed by the time the entire donation process was completed.
Zhang Long refused extensive media coverage, and even the group photo was only taken after Director Zhang repeatedly assured him that it would not be leaked, so that it could be recorded in the museum's annals as a piece of history.
Although this incident was not reported, Zhang Long's actions were noticed by high-level leaders, given the significant impact of the matter.
I'm still revising the chapters, so the next two chapters might be a little slower, since it's really too cold right now!
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