TAINAN, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hong-Sen Yan, a renowned collector of ancient Chinese locks in Taiwan, told a Hong Kong magazine that part of the joy of pursuing this hobby was in inspiring people’s interest in studying old locks.
Yan, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the executive vice president of National Cheng Kung University, was recently interviewed by a freelancer from Shang, a quarterly bilingual magazine published by Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post with a 70,000-strong circulation worldwide.
During the interview, freelancer Steven Crook asked Hong-Sen Yan to tell anecdotes from his 25-year experience of collecting locks.
Yan said he was inspired by his advisor at University of Kentucky who collects European antiques when pursuing a master degree and also by his teacher at Purdue University who collects scales and whose wife collects candle stands when pursing a doctoral degree.
After he returned to Taiwan in 1980, Yan made up his mind to collect ancient items with 5 requirements: they should be a mechanism, they should be related to native culture, they should not be too large, they should not be too expensive and they should not be too commonplace.
Yan did not truly acquire the hobby of collecting ancient Chinese locks until 1990, when he was fascinated by the locks he purchased in Shanghai. Before that time, locks were merely toys for his two kids.
“The value of a collection is to enjoy the process of buying the locks and study them in the hope of inspiring more interest from people in ancient locks and induce more activities in the collection, research and publications of ancient locks,” said Yan.
Yan recalled an interesting experience during a business trip in Beijing in 1996. He and his friend tried to bargain for a lock that they thought was 3,000 Chinese yuan or renminbi. Though the owner tried to settle the deal by offering 500 yuan, they were able to cut the price down to 350 yuan.
Yan plans to donate his entire collection of approximately 900 locks, which are currently exhibited at the NCKU Museum, to a museum in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, in November, 2012.
The magazine Shang will feature Hong-Sen Yan and his locks in its winter issue in late December this year.