The Economist.
In 1985, about a two-hour drive from where I grew up,
an ancient Buddhist statue disappeared from Young Village in Fujian.
Sealed inside was the mummified body of patriarch, a revered monk.
For 20 years, no one knew where it had gone.
Then, in 2015, it resurfaced.
Not in China, but at an exhibition in Budapest.
The villagers recognized it immediately.
They wanted to know how a sacred statue from rural China
had ended up on display in the middle of Europe.
That trail led to Hong Kong.
A Dutch collector, Oscar Van Oum, said he had bought the statue
from someone who had purchased it there in 1996.
But when the village committee sued to recover it, the trail went cold again.
Van Oum said he had since swapped the statue with another collector, and he wouldn't say who.
Despite years of legal battles in China and the Netherlands, the whereabouts of the statue remain unknown.
The story of the missing statue isn't a unique one.
Hong Kong has long been one of the biggest markets for Chinese antiques.
Many left legally.
Others most certainly did not.