Thinking this, Chu Chen secretly shook his head. The man was a typical example of an amateur who rushed into investing in and collecting antiques, only to end up battered and bruised. If you called such a person pitiful, the outcome was still of his own making. As the saying went, every pitiful person had something hateful about them—and there was certainly truth to it.
Chu Chen did not have time to keep wasting it on the man, so he reminded the still-dazed man that he was going to appraise another item.
The man scratched his forehead and opened his mouth as if to say something, but swallowed the words when they reached his lips. Then he smiled bitterly. "Teacher Chu, why don't you take a look at this calligraphy piece? It was written by Shi Tao."
"Shi Tao?"
At those words, Chu Chen immediately straightened up. Shi Tao had been a renowned monk of the late Ming and early Qing, equally accomplished in painting and calligraphy. Leaving everything else aside, his status in the history of calligraphy and painting was beyond question. Shi Tao's works had always been highly sought after by collectors at auctions, and their sale prices had repeatedly reached new highs.
Of course, at auctions, Shi Tao's paintings were the works that mainly commanded high prices. But that did not mean his calligraphy was not valuable. In 1996, for example, one of his fan-leaf works had sold for more than fifty thousand. That was not treatment an ordinary calligrapher could expect.
Seeing Chu Chen's solemn expression, the man became happy as well. But when he thought of his own item, he grew uneasy again. "It's just the fan leaf of a folding fan. I don't know how much it could be worth."
"A good fan leaf