Actually, it wasn't only Zhao Xueyi. Uncle Wu and the others also felt somewhat awkward. They had just said that Zhao Xueyi had gotten a bargain, never expecting the result to turn out this way. The reason they had thought so was much the same as Zhao Xueyi's: they all felt that these were merely rubbings, and surely no one would forge them.
In the past, no one had paid attention to rubbings because they were relatively obscure and dry, with few collectors and little profit, so naturally there had not been many forgeries. Now that more people were paying attention and there was money to be made, those people's eyes had turned toward them.
Besides the wall-mud method Chu Chen had mentioned, there were also woodblock prints, original stone engravings, and re-engraved prints on the market. It should be noted that all four methods of producing rubbings had been used throughout the dynasties. They had originally been intended to pass down this culture and could not be lumped together with counterfeiting. It was only that, nowadays, profit-crazed people had turned them into tools for making huge gains.
Apart from believing that rubbings were unlikely to be forged, the main reason they had thought these six rubbings were genuine was that the inscriptions and seals on them looked far too much like Jin Nong's calligraphy. Since the calligraphy was authentic, the rubbings could not possibly be forgeries. Thus, none of them had examined them carefully, and the result had greatly exceeded their expectations.
Chu Chen had an explanation for this as well. He said, "Actually, although these brushstrokes have reached the point where the false can be mistaken for the real, they differ from the genuine works in the way the brush was used."
"In our country, calligraphy throughout the