2017 article about real life tomb robbers in China

[mekare]

Tomb Robbing, Perilous but Alluring, Makes Comeback in China by Amy Qin (New York Times)

BAOLING VILLAGE, China — One day last November, Yang Mingzhen received a tip: Construction workers digging on his family’s land had discovered an ancient tomb.

That night, Mr. Yang and his father and uncle sneaked down to the tomb, in a barren dirt field just outside the entrance of Baoling Village, on a dusty hilltop in Shaanxi Province.

Early the next morning, a worker found the bodies of Mr. Yang and the two other men. Sometime in the night the centuries-old tomb had collapsed, and they had been buried alive.

Village residents were shocked. “He wouldn’t have even dared to steal his neighbor’s carrots,” said Yang Yuansheng, 62, the village accountant, referring to Mr. Yang. “Who would have thought he would risk his reputation to go rob a tomb?”
Such are the extreme allures — and perils — of grave robbing, an ancient practice that has made a roaring comeback as the global demand for Chinese antiquities has surged. With prices for some Chinese antiquities reaching into the tens of millions of dollars, a flood of amateur and professional thieves looking to get rich quick has hit China’s countryside.[…]

But there is little romance to the grave-looting life. In China, most grave robbers are migrant workers and farmers. Some are like Yang Mingzhen — amateur thieves equipped with only basic tools. Others, however, are part of professional trafficking networks that make use of everything from high-tech probing devices to traditional feng shui masters.
The task is dirty and dangerous, requiring workers to crawl into small tunnels, handle explosives and inhale stale air — all while evading detection. When raids are successful, the objects are often passed through a shadowy, cross-border network of middlemen, smugglers and dealers before reaching the display cases of wealthy collectors and museums in China and abroad.

Even so, tomb robbing has become a pop culture phenomenon. The online fiction series “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles” by Nanpai Sanshu, about a young man’s tomb-robbing adventures, became a sensation after it first appeared in 2006. Since then, numerous television shows and movies have also been made about tomb robbing, including Wuershan’s “Mojin: The Lost Legend” and Lu Chuan’s “Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe.”