HONG KONG: Xiaoshan Airport Customs House noticed a parcel with the declaration name of handicrafts. The items in the parcel were wrapped by materials made of wood. Generally speaking, items which have packaging like this might be those fragile valuables”, recalled Ni Chushen, the Customs control officer on duty that day. After X-ray scanning and manual inspection, Customs officers made a preliminary judgement that the 5 delicate wooden pieces they had found in the parcel were parts named “bracket” or “corbel”of ancient buildings.
These wooden pieces were confirmed by the Authentication Center of Cultural Heritage of Zhejiang Province as sparrow braces a unique part in China’s ancient buildings of Qing Dynasty.
According to the Customs Law of the People’s Republic of China and relevant laws and regulations, bringing out or mailing out antiques, if without declaring to the Customs, is considered as an smuggling activity, no matter concealment exits or not. Hnagzhou Customs District has detained the goods and passed them onto Customs anti-smuggling body for further investigation.
