A librarian who admitted to a court this week that he substituted his own paintings for works by Chinese masters, and then sold the originals at auction¹, insisted he was not the only one to carry out such fraud. He was simply the best at it.

一名图书馆馆长本周向法院承认，他用自己的画作替换中国大师的作品，然后将原画拿去拍卖。他坚称自己不是唯一采取这种欺诈手段的人，只不过是其中做得最好的一个。

Xiao Yuan, the author of several books on Chinese art and a former librarian at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, said he came up with the scheme when he began a project to digitize the school's collection in 2003 and noticed that many originals had been replaced with fakes.

曾出版了几本有关中国艺术的书籍的广州美术学院图书馆原馆长萧元表示，在2003年开展对学校藏品进行数字化处理的项目时，他发现很多真迹被假画掉包，因此想到了这个瞒天过海的办法。

That was what gave him the inspiration to do it himself, he told the court on Tuesday, according to a video of the proceedings².

一段庭审视频显示，萧元周二在法院表示，这一发现让他产生了自己也去掉包的念头。

"At that time, when I first looked, I realized there were already many fakes that had already been substituted before me, but I didn't say anything," he said. "I was very greedy and tempted³. How was it that in the past there were so many people who did this? Now I had the keys, and I could do it, too."

"我有机会第一次看到这些画作。远远地看着，感觉很多是赝品，被人‘掉包'过。我当时没做声，却起了贪念，心想之前有人掉包过，我现在手里就有钥匙，也可以这样做，"他说。

A year later he began visiting the library on weekends, taking home works by famous painters such as Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian, then copying them himself. He avoided the best-known works, including the more impressionistic paintings of the Lingnan School, which scholars at the institution knew well and were likely to be lent out for exhibitions.

一年之后，他开始在周末来到图书馆，将齐白石、张大千等著名画家的作品带回家，然后自己临摹。他会避开名画，比如岭南画派的印象派风格画作，因为这些作品为广州美术学院的学者们所熟知，而且还很可能会借出去展览。

Mr. Xiao purchased centuries-old blank paper and ink to render his forgeries⁴ and boasted that no one at the school's library could tell the difference. "From then up to the present, no one else understood except me," he said. "They just understood how to keep track of the numbers."

萧元买来几百年前的宣纸和砚墨，临摹出赝品。他夸耀说学校图书馆里没人能看出差别。"从那时到现在，在图书馆我是唯一懂美术的人，"他说，"其他人只会点数。"

Prosecutors⁵ said that Mr. Xiao sold 125 paintings valued at 34 million renminbi, about $5.5 million, through auction houses. He also still had in his possession 18 works from the library with a total estimated worth of 77 million renminbi. He told the court that auction houses had thought those works were fake and had refused to sell them.

检方称，萧元通过拍卖行出售了125幅画作，总共价值3400万元人民币。他手里还有18幅从图书馆盗走的画，总价值为7700万元人民币。他在庭审中表示，拍卖行认为后面这些画是假的，拒绝出售。

He was discovered after a Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts graduate noticed a work at auction in Hong Kong had the school's seal.

广州美术学院的一名毕业生注意到在香港拍卖的一幅画作上有学校的印章，萧元的行为因此才被发现。

Mr. Xiao told the court he stopped swapping⁶ his fakes for the school's real works in 2006, after the collection was moved to the school's new campus, restricting his access. Upon seeing some of the collection later, he noted⁷ that some of his forgeries had been replaced with even cruder fakes.

萧元在法庭上表示，馆藏字画在2006年转移到了学校的新校区，他的出入受限，因此停止了掉包行为。后来看到一些画作时，他注意到，自己的一些临摹作品又被更粗糙的赝品掉包了。

"I realized that paintings I had substituted 10 years ago had been substituted again," he said. "I could tell right away they weren't mine. The quality was too low. I pointed⁸ this out to people, but they didn't pay any attention."

"我发现自己10年前已经临摹掉包的画作被再次掉包，"他说。"因为画技拙劣，我一眼就看出来，我曾向办案人员指出，但没有得到重视。"