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They are regarded as the holy grail of Chinese porcelain and only a handful of them remain; almost all of them carefully guarded in the world’s most important museums.

But after spending more than $38 million (HK$281.24 million) to buy a Chenghua Meiyintang “chicken cup,” Liu Yiqian decided to put it to immediate use. “It happened when I was paying,” the Shanghainese billionaire told the Wall Street Journal.

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“A Sotheby’s staffer poured me some tea. I saw the [chicken cup] and excitedly poured some of that tea into the cup and drank a little. Such a simple thing, what is so crazy about that?”

“Emperor Qianlong has used it, now I’ve used it,” he added, referring to the Qing Dynasty emperor. “I just wanted to see how it felt.”

The rare cup was created during the Chenghua reign (1465-87) and survived in mint condition for more than 500 years.

In order to purchase it at auction, Mr. Liu reportedly had to swipe his American Express card at least 24 times because of a Sotheby’s limit of about $1.6 million for each transaction.