摘要
As the auctioneer’s hammer sounded again and again,the two Chinese government representatives knew they had lost.Arriving at Christie’s auction house with merely 30,000 USD in cash-not even enough to afford the starting price for a single item-they were forced to watch as collectors from around the globe snapped up nearly 240,000 pieces of Qing dynasty(1616-1911)porcelains from a shipwreck in the South China Sea.
