It’s late February 2009 inside the Grand Palais in Paris, and the Christie’s auction of the estate of designer Yves Saint Laurent is in full swing. The room is packed. A bank of telephones stands to one side, as bidders call in or raise their paddles. A hush comes over the crowd as a digital projector displays the bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit.

Bidding surged beyond the estimate. This pair of bronze animal heads were two of the twelve that decorated the Zodiac Fountain at the imperial Old Summer Palace in Beijing until they were looted by British and French troops in 1860. They sell for £15 million each.

Normally, that would mark the end of an auction story. But in this case, it was only the beginning. Because the buyer, a wealthy Chinese businessman and adviser to China’s National Treasures Fund, Cai Mingchoa, never intended to pay. He bid and won in protest because he felt that China should not have to buy back their cultural heritage from the west.

In this episode of China’s Stolen Treasures, Noah Charney explores the market in Chinese antiquities, from auction houses to collectors, trailing the famous Zodiac heads that once decorated a great water clock and fountain in the Chinese emperor’s Old Summer Palace.

With artist Ai Weiwei, art dealer William Chak, Christie’s specialist Kate Hunt, collector Christopher Bruckner, art investigators Dick Ellis and Arthur Brand and police superintendent Kenneth Didriksen.

Writer and Presenter - Dr Noah Charney
Producer - Caroline Finnigan
Executive Producer - Rosie Collyer
Researcher - Nadia Mehdi
China Producer - Coco Zhao
Sound Designers - David Smith and Tom Berry for Wardour Studios
Music Composer - Nicholas Alexander
Voice Over Artists - Bernard O'Sullivan and Oliver Zheng

A Novel production for BBC Radio 4 Show less