Qiu Dekao

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## Qiu Dekao

### Also known as

Hendry Cox
Jude Kao
Qiude Kao

## Current Status

### Date of death

2004/2005

**Qiu Dekao** **(裘德考)** is the man who swindled Wu Laogou out of the silk book that was retrieved in the Dart Summit.

## Personality

Qiu Dekao was interested in Chinese relics but only in the economic sense. He viewed them as simple commodities that could be bought and sold.

## Relationships

### Wu Laogou

Qiu Dekao's initial way of doing business was appealing to Wu Laogou. However, Qiu Dekao never saw Wu Laogou as a friend or even an equal. He would call Wu Laogou a "bedbug" behind his back.

## History

### Early Life

When Qiu Dekao was around 16 years old, he travelled to China. Qiu Dekao was an American missionary at a school in Changsha while the Kuomintang was in power. At 19 years old, he started smuggling valuable Chinese relics. He kept his smuggling operation small and did it very carefully. He preferred high value goods and only occasionally sold the items.

### Deceiving Others

Wu Laogou and Qiu Dekao did business with each other. In 1952, the Christian church began to withdraw from China. The church sent Qiu Dekao a telegram telling him he should leave while it was still safe. Qiu Dekao made preparations to leave China and began wrapping up his business. Before he left, he and his accomplices began to buy grave goods on a large scale, including Wu Laogou's warring states silk book. He then gave the associates a small advanced payment.

After the goods were loaded on the ship, Qiu Dekao told police that these old associates were grave robbers. The situation became complicated because Qiu Dekao had close ties to former Kuomintang generals which involved many factors unique to that era, such as espionage and treason. One the day Qiu Dekao returned, most of the associates he ratted out were executed or imprisoned.

### Return to the United States

After Qiu Dekao returned to the United States, he auctioned off the relics he obtained and made a fortune. The Warring States silk book was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and became the most expensive relic sold at the time. Qiu Dekao became a millionaire and his story in China was turned into a book and widely circulated.

Qiu Dekao wanted to make social connections and around 1957, the Metropolitan Museum invited him to be a consultant for the Department of Far Eastern Art, providing advice on the research of the Warring States silk book. Qiu Dekao also donated a sum of money to the museum to be used for the acquisition of cultural relics from China. He continued to preside over several large projects at the museum.

### Uncovering the Mysteries of the Silk Book

During this time, Qiu Dekao tried to decipher the text in the Warring States silk book that he acquired from Wu Laogou. At first it was to raise the price of the silk book, but he later did it out of pure interest. In 1974, Qiu Dekao finally deciphered the cipher text of the Warring States Silk Book. But to his surprise, the silk book only showed an inexplicable pattern with six curved lines and an irregular circle.

In order to find the answer to the pattern, he scoured countless libraries and asked the advice of Chinese experts in the U.S. One man told him that he saw the pattern on a furnace lid that was for making immortality pills in a Taoist temple on Qimeng Mountain in Shandong. It was impossible for Qiu Dekao to go to China to look at the furnace himself, so he hired Xie Lianhuan to do it. Xie Lianhuan successfully found the furnace with the pattern, however, he had to break the furnace into pieces in order to smuggle it out of China.

Qiu Dekao managed to find that the furnace was connected to ancient Chinese astrology. However, this field was very complicated and he needed to find an expert. So, he asked Xie Lianhuan to look for one in China. The search went on for two years without any results. Qiu Dekao refocused on the Warring States silk book and started buying up all the silk books of the Lu Kingdom in China.

### Changsha Dart Summit

Qiu Dekao felt like there was more to the volume that Wu Laogou sold him. He told Xie Lianhuan to investigate and eventually the other got a drunk Wu Sanxing to talk. After he got this information, he wanted to explore the Changsha Dart Summit to see if there were any silk books left behind. Around the same time, U.S. and China's relations improved. He finally got an opportunity to create an archeological team and set off to China. Around 1982, Qiu Dekao explored the Changsha Dart Summit.

The team that went in had set off a trap and everyone but Qiu Dekao and Xie Lianhuan had perished. The incident truly shocked Qiu Dekao who became seriously ill and almost went insane.

## References

1. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 75 ("After returning from Banai, Qiu Dekao lived for another three months before finally passing away." Banai happened in an unknown month in 2004.
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 Volume 4, Chapter 10
3. ↑ Volume 4, Chapter 10 ("so in his third year in China, he occasionally smuggled some cultural relics out of the country. At that time, he was only nineteen years old.")
4. ↑ Deadly Desert Winds, Chapter 6 ("My father, your grandfather, liked that way of doing business too, so he and Jude Kao joined forces.").
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Volume 8, Chapter 82
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Volume 4, Chapter 11
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Volume 4, Chapter 12