The Grandmother in the Siheyuan

Chapter 561 Rinpoche

Coincidentally, one of Liu Hua's neighbors was a Rinpoche. Liu Hua, I remember a joke circulating online from a past life...
Starting in the 90s, a group of celebrities began to openly embrace Tibetan Buddhism, which inspired the entire entertainment industry and the middle class to actively follow suit.

In Liu Hua's view, these people neither want to uphold the precepts and practice spiritual disciplines, but also want to obtain spiritual protection, and Tibetan Buddhism perfectly meets their needs.

Some people categorize these Rinpoches into three levels: the formal, the informal, and the more unconventional.
Liu Hua's neighbor belonged to the second type. He brought back bracelets from abroad. He once gave Liu Hua a string of Bodhi seeds, which was indeed very beautiful.

As for his wife, she started a yoga class, where she usually leads middle-class wives in practicing yoga, listening to Buddhist music, and sharing inspirational quotes. She makes quite a bit of money every year.

Liu Hua and this Rinpoche weren't exactly close, but they would often run into each other during their evening walks. The two would sit by the green belt and smoke a couple of cigarettes.

Since the head of the U.S. intelligence agency had given the order to monitor whether Liu Hua had close ties with theologians, this Rinpoche naturally came into the sights of the intelligence personnel.

One day, Liu Hua returned home and saw several police cars parked in front of his house, so he got out of his car to join the commotion.

"What's going on? Why did the police have to come to our door?"

Rinpoche said urgently, "A thief has broken into the house."

“The money was stolen.” Liu Hua shook his head: “I told the property management company to increase patrols and, ideally, install CCTV.”

"The money is a small matter; I don't keep much cash at home. It's my two strings of dzi beads that are missing."

"That nine-eyed dzi bead you were bragging about?"

“What do you mean by bragging, Professor Liu? You don’t understand if you don’t play with this stuff. Mine is the real deal.”

Liu Hua joked, "You must have consecrated it yourself, aren't you a Rinpoche?"

“These were blessed by an old monk from the Potala Palace,” Rinpoche said with distress. “A string of these costs over two million; it’s going to cost me my life.”

"I reckon Qi is probably gone for good. But it's okay, out with the old, in with the new. There are plenty of dzi beads, aren't there? They're all made of agate. There are also plenty of old monks in the Potala Palace. We can have them consecrate them for you again."

The police officers investigating couldn't help but laugh, because they thought so too. These nine-eyed dzi beads all looked pretty much the same, such a small thing, like a gold ring dropped on the street, most likely never to be found again.

Rinpoche clapped his hands and complained, "I'm just unlucky. In this area, who isn't richer than me? Putting aside everything else, that painting by Huang Binhong hanging in your study is worth at least ten or twenty million. How could he be so blind as to steal the dzi bead?" "Nine times out of ten, he didn't know its value. What thief could know that the ordinary painting hanging in my study is by Huang Binhong? Your dzi bead is at least made of agate, which is a gemstone."

After the police technicians looked around, they came out and said, "Are you sure all your money was stolen? Or did you just lose it yourself?"

“I’m sure, I put it in front of the shrine.” Rinpoche frowned and said, “I should have put it in a safe. The ancestors said not to flaunt wealth. How could I have been so ostentatious?”

“We checked it. Your shrine is made of bulletproof glass, and the lock is very sturdy, but there are no signs of prying. There are no footprints, no fingerprints, not even a hair in the room. This must be considered master thief. I can’t understand why a master thief would steal offerings from in front of the Buddha. What wouldn’t he get rich by stealing?”

“That’s a nine-eyed dzi bead, it’s very valuable.”

The technician laughed and said, "Come on, I think the craze for dzi beads is just like the orchid craze back then. Everyone says they're valuable when you buy them, but when you want to resell them, you're stuck with them. I doubt insurance companies would insure these things."

Liu Hua felt that people who collect nine-eyed dzi beads were comparable to the "national treasure gang"—they all thought they were rare treasures. In fact, these things were just processed agate, but it is said that the processing method was lost in the Tang Dynasty, and very few have survived.

There are quite a few people who own dzi beads, and when you add those in the entertainment industry, it's like having an 82 Lafite that you've been drinking for forty years and still haven't finished.

I once read an entertainment news article about Yang Zi, the younger brother of the owner of Juli Group. He's supposedly a big collector of dzi beads, owning over three thousand. Even if these beads are truly valuable, three thousand of them wouldn't be worth much.

So where did this Rinpoche's dzi bead go? Actually, it was the American field agent who was monitoring Liu Hua. Because Liu Hua always had bodyguards with him, he couldn't eavesdrop on any valuable information.

In order to complete his mission, he broke into the Rinpoche's home to collect some useful information. Seeing that the two dzi beads were enshrined in front of the shrine, he thought they must be extremely precious, so he stole them.

This field agent is from South Korea. Compared to field agents from China, Americans trust their own sons more.

Unfortunately, this young man was completely unaware of the intricacies of the situation and assumed that anything precious must be valuable, so he stole the two dzi beads to complete his mission.

South Korea may lag behind in other areas, but it is absolutely top-notch when it comes to stealing. It can steal not only tangible things, but also intangible things.

So when this South Korean thief made his move, there were no clues at the scene.

The two dzi beads were handed over to the Americans after much back and forth. After repeated research, the American researchers concluded that they were just two ordinary agate beads of very poor quality.

(End of this chapter)