Beijing opens auction season for relics

Beijing launched its third annual autumn auction season for cultural relics on Wednesday.

The event running through November, will witness 19 live auctions of fine art hosted by 17 auction houses and lectures will be delivered by experts to raise public awareness on cultural preservation and related laws.

Only 5 percent of such items auctioned on the Chinese mainland are sold at more than 500,000 yuan ($78,500), with the average price being about 36,000 yuan, according to Ou Shuying, deputy secretary-general of China Association of Auctioneers, an industry body.

"An auction of cultural relics isn't usually of interest to ordinary people," Ou said on Wednesday at a media event in Beijing. "But we expect more young people to become buyers."

Most of the listed pieces this time are valued between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan.

According to Yu Ping, deputy head of the city's municipal administration for cultural heritage, Beijing is a major center for such auctions going by data. In 2013, it made more than 25.6 billion yuan from the auction of cultural relics, accounting for 73 percent of the Chinese mainland's total collection of 35 billion yuan that year.

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