While Sotheby’s Hong Kong sales rage, Colin Gleadell points out that Chinese buyers are not afraid to venture deep into the English countryside in search of their lost patrimony:

At Anderson and Garland in Newcastle, a Chinese blue-and-white, Ming-style vase, estimated at £20,000, sold for £84,000 after two people flew in from Beijing to attend the sale. Chinese porcelain was also the main story in Gloucestershire at Chorley’s antiques sale, where telephone and internet bidding from China on a Kang Xi-period (1661-1722) famille verte brush pot, estimated at £4,000, pushed a UK dealer to pay £75,000. A cracked yen yen vase from the same period estimated at £3,000, sold under similar circumstances for £100,000.

Market News (Telegraph)