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A photographer takes a picture of the Chinese bronze rat head and rabbit head sculptures display on the preview of the auction（拍卖）of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge’s art collection at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, Feb, 21, 2009. Chinese lawyers have asked the French court to stop auction house Christie’s putting two bronze relics（文物） looted from China under the hammer, lawyers said Friday.
A Paris court on Monday ruled against stopping the sale of two looted Chinese bronze sculptures which come up for auction at Christie’s on Wednesday. Under the ruling of the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris, the plaintiff（起诉人）, the Association for the Protection of Chinese Art in Europe（APCAE）, was ordered to pay compensation（赔偿）to the defendant.
Ren Xiaohong, a lawyer for APCAE, told Xinhua that it was “of great significance” to file the lawsuit. “We hope to arouse public attention in Europe on the fate of numerous Chinese works stolen in the past, to help keep those relics well protected and collected,” Ren said.
The Qing Dynasty（1644—1911）relics, the heads of a bronze rabbit and a rat, were among an original set of 12 bronze animal heads that were once decorated at the imperial summer resort Yuanmingyuan. They were looted when the palace was burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.
