Chirac and Ma Chengyuan s Bronze Margin

[Bronze Margin between Chirac and Ma Chengyuan] On September 26, 2019, former French President Jacques Chirac died at the age of 86. He should be one of the French leaders who loved Chinese bronze most.
In 1997, Chirac visited the Shanghai Museum during his visit to China. Ma Chengyuan, then curator, presented Chirac with the first fourteen copies of his book Complete Works of Chinese Bronzes. Seeing a picture in the book, Chirac blurted out, "Is this the bronze of Erlitou Culture Phase III?" Ma Chengyuan was amazed by such professional questions. They talked so much that the plane had to postpone taking off. With regret, Chirac clasped Ma Chengyuan’s hand and said, "Mr. Ma, if you come to Paris, I will meet you at any time." This is not a sham. According to Mr. Wu Jianmin, former ambassador to France, Chirac respects Mr. Ma very much. When a minister of our country goes to France, he may not meet him, but when Ma grows old, he will certainly meet him. The next autumn, Ma Chengyuan was invited by Chirac to bring a bronze exhibition to Paris. In return, the Nuqish Museum in Paris sent the best collection of Chinese bronze "Tiger" to the Shanghai Museum for exhibition, and the enthusiastic Chirac volunteered to write commentaries for the exhibition himself. Not to mention that Chirac’s explanation is not only very literary, but also quite professional.
It is a great honor that France has been able to show the Shanghai people a rare and precious "tiger" with the hospitality of the Chengchinuqi Museum. In the Year of the Tiger, I am even more heartfelt glad to have done so.
Since then, Ma Chengyuan has been treated by Chirac’s distinguished guests every time he visits France. Ma Chengyuan has a famous saying: "Museums should make collectors their best friends." In fact, Ma Chengyuan does have many such good friends, but a Chinese bronze expert can make friends with a president and get such a courtesy in an ancient European country like France, which is beyond his expectation.
What he did not expect was that, in view of Ma Chengyuan’s outstanding contribution in the field of bronze culture, France decided to award him a knight-level honor, which is a high honor in France. France has 10 ranks of honor, and knight rank is the third rank. It is a high rank conferred on foreigners. The honored person, when attending an important occasion, wears the honor mark on the right side of the collar – a short red card. A daughter or granddaughter of a decorated person can be trained free of charge by the French government from elementary school to high school. The procedure of conferring honors is usually put forward by the President with intentional opinions and submitted to a special committee for study. Six French experts comprehensively review their works, contributions and evaluations, and then write an official report recommending it to the President.
When President Chirac personally awarded Ma Chengyuan the Medal of Honor and Certificate of the French Republic, the two old friends hugged closely. Although Ma Chengyuan was awarded the Rockefeller III Prize from 1996 to 1997 by the American Council for Asian Culture for his outstanding wisdom and leadership in building a world-class Museum in Shanghai and his outstanding achievements in the study of ancient Chinese bronzes, he still held back at this time. I can’t stop being happy.
At the banquet after Chirac honoured Ma Lao in 1998, Chirac quietly said to Ma Lao, "Mr. Ma, we will meet again." There were too many people at the banquet. Although Ma Lao was a little confused, he could not ask anything. Sure enough, one day in 1999, Ma Lao suddenly received a telephone call from the State Council, saying that the leaders wanted to visit France. Chirac asked the members of our government delegation to have Ma Lao. That was why Ma Lao gave a lecture on "China’s Bronze Age" on "99 Paris China Culture Week". On the eve of the opening of the Chinese Culture Week, Chirac commissioned officials of the Presidential Palace to dinner Ma Chengyuan in his name. During the dinner, Ma Chengyuan was lamenting that the president had no time to attend the dinner, so he lost a chance to have a meeting. Instead, he saw Chirac pull out of his busy business like a magic trick and talked with Ma for 20 minutes. Chirac has repeatedly expressed his regret to Ma Chengyuan that he will not be able to attend Mr. Ma’s lecture during the Cultural Week because he has to go to Canada to attend the Francophone Summit on a pre-scheduled schedule. It seems that Mr. President is also a "man in the river and lake, can not help himself". However, he expressed the hope that he could read Mr. Ma’s speech and invite his old friends to visit France again before the end of the year. Ma Chengyuan presented the last two volumes of the Complete Collection of Chinese Bronzes, which he chaired, to President Chirac.
Chirac attended the NATO summit in July 2002. Probably because of the dull content of his speech, he simply took out a book from his briefcase and read it. In the press room upstairs in the conference hall, a French journalist found the President on a "desert" trip. He took this picture with a long lens and published it in French newspapers: "The President is busy idling and studying Chinese bronzes."
On October 9, 2004, just before the opening ceremony of the French Cultural Year, nearly 1,000 people from all walks of life in Shanghai saw off Mr. Ma Chengyuan, former curator of the Shanghai Museum, at the Hualong Funeral House. French President Chirac, who is visiting China, sent a wreath to Mr. Ma.