Farmer Zhang from the Gansu province of China was digging on his land and unearthed a clay vase 30 cm in height with a lid shaped like a human head. When he brought it home and showed it to his wife, she immediately sensed something ominous and scolded her husband for bringing the item into their home. She feared that the vase would bring bad luck.
All their neighbors soon heard about this discovery and also reacted very negatively. They believed that the elaborate vase could have been part of an ancient burial, and such things were better left untouched to avoid angering the spirits.
Zhang was disappointed, but instead of burying the vase where he found it, he decided to hide it in a secluded place. He found nothing better than to hide the vase in the hay in the pigpen.
Just a few days after this, several pigs that the farmer had been raising so diligently suddenly died for unknown reasons.
The veterinarian called to examine them said that the likely cause of death was swine flu. However, when Zhang’s wife learned that he had hidden the vase in the pigpen, she ordered him to smash the item.
Nevertheless, even then Zhang couldn’t bring himself to get rid of the vase. For a long time, he kept it in a secluded place, far from the animals, and then, when rumors about the “cursed” vase subsided, he brought it into the house and started using it to store salt.
In 1978, archaeologists came to this area for excavations, and someone told them about the ancient vase that Zhang had found in the ground. The archaeologists came to his house, examined the vase, and concluded that it was indeed very rare and valuable – the vase turned out to be more than 5,000 years old!
Upon learning this, Zhang agreed to give the vase to the archaeologists, and since then it has been kept in the museum of the Gansu province, recognized as a cultural heritage of the nation.
