In the last two years the Chinese art market has been an enigma, too hard for even the professionals to understand. Prices are getting higher and higher, and it seems that nothing can stop the trend.

Painting of Xu Beihong. [Global Times]

As this year's autumn sales are drawing to an end, art collectors, dealers and economists have all been stunned by a number of new record-breaking sales. Last year's records have been toppled, and there seems to be no ceiling to prices.

"I don't guess prices," is the answer once-confident experts give when asked to speculate before a sale.

They don't dare guess, because they have no idea how high prices might go in a market as hot as the Chinese one.

"It is totally crazy," said Zhang Liguo, an expert from the China Academy of Art. "No one knows what's happening, and what would happen next."

Records shattered

Prices that shocked last year have become normal this autumn.

A millennium-old replica of Jin Dynasty (265-420) calligraphy master Wang Xizhi's work, Safe Placard, was sold for over 300 million yuan (US$45 million) last month at China Guardian, one of the domestic auction giants.

Few of Wang's works have survived, and imitations from the later Tang (618-907) or Song (960-1279) dynasties are valuable in their own right.

Wednesday night witnessed another record broken: a 1938 painting by Xu Beihong (1895-1953), was sold for 171 million yuan (US$26 million) at the Beijing Hanhai, another Chinese auction house. This was a new record for modern Chinese paintings.

The previous record only lasted a few days, as the work The Long March by Li Keran (1907-1989), was sold for 1.07 million yuan (US$16 million) at China Guardian on December 3, which broke last year's record for a painting by Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) at the spring auctions this year.

"There are too many records being broken too fast," said Zhao Li, professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. "I can't find any other word but 'crazy' to depict Chinese art market in recent years."