A 1,000-year-old Buddha statue with a mummified monk inside, which is believed to have been stolen from Fujian's Yangchun village, faces huge obstacles in coming home.

In 1995, the statue of a seated Buddhist saint – Patriarch Zhanggong– was reported missing from Yangchun village in Southeast China's Fujian province. This March, the gold-lacquered statue was discovered on exhibit in a Hungarian museum, placed there by a Dutch art collector who claimed ownership.

The villagers immediately started seeking retrieval of the statue and set up a specialized committee for that purpose. The committee wrote several letters to the Dutch collector demanding the return of the statue. China's cultural relics authority also made efforts to contact and negotiate with the collector asking that the statue be returned soon.

The collector initially showed a willingness to return the relic to China, if it were proved to be stolen. However, the collector then asked $20 million for selling the statue, which he claimed was his cost of researching and keeping the relic.

As the negotiation proved to be ineffective, the villagers decided to use judicial means. A seven-member group of lawyers, one from Holland and six from China, volunteered to commence legal action, which will be heard in Amsterdam before the end of November.

According to the Dutch Civil Code, the possessor of another's object can obtain the ownership if the previous owner has not claimed the object back within 20 years, and the 20-year limitation period is about to expire.

The Buddha statue is displayed at the Natural History Museum in Budapest, Hungary, March 4, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]