"On that day, Hao Di formed his first collection," says his father. "Though we didn't realize that he would be so much into it in the future."

A year later Hao Di had become a frequent dealer at a famous antique market in Tianjin. He once carried home four bags of broken ceramic pieces excavated at a construction location. He sold them at the market and earned 170,000 yuan ($24,900).

His purchases included a coin from the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (Taiping Tianguo, 1851-64) period, which he bought for 5 yuan. It is the only one of its kind and may be worth up to 40,000 yuan ($5,900) now.

Wang Peng, a writer and collector and Hao's neighbor, introduced a friend to Hao Di one day.

"My friend is a celebrated coin collector. He showed Hao Di his collection of more than 3,000 ancient coins, to which he had added seven replicas, on purpose. Hao looked over them for three minutes and stunned my friend by correctly spotting all the fake ones," he says.

Hao Di believes he has a kind of spiritual power to distinguish antiques from counterfeits.

An ideal day for him is spending time going through his treasure trove of antiques, which includes about 200,000 coins, 3,000 ancient weapons, 7,800 bronze mirrors and dozens of sets of armor. He also spends a lot of time in libraries studying the Chinese classics and archaeology books.

Hao Di's treasure trove of antiques has gradually expanded over the years.

"There are stories behind each of the items in my collections that would take a whole lifetime to explore," Hao Di says.

Despite being dubbed an archaeological genius, Hao Di's father did not appreciate this for many years.

"I didn't understand why he was so crazy about antiques. I didn't know why he collected and studied them. I wanted him to quit and devote himself to schooling wholeheartedly. We didn't get along with each other," Hao Wenmin says.

Hao Di lost his grandfather when he was 9. He felt enormously sad and guilty about his grandpa passing away.

"He told me after the funeral that grandpa had given almost all the money for his medical treatment to him in order to buy a rare bronze sword. My father was his financial backbone for a long time, though he lived on a small pension himself," Hao Wenmin says.