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Li Xiaojie, head of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, presented a gold ornament to Liu Weiping, Gansu provincial governor, at a hand-over ceremony on Monday morning, marking the relics' return.

It was the first time cultural relics have been successfully returned to China following bilateral negotiations between the Chinese and French governments. They were returned by French private collectors Francois Pinault and Christian Deydier earlier this year.

The 32 gold items came from tombs in Dabuzishan in Lixian County, Gansu Province dating back to the Spring and Autumn period (770 BC-476 BC). The tombs were badly looted during the 1990s and a large number of relics, including the gold ornaments, were smuggled abroad.

A public exhibition of the relics also opened on Monday and will last until Oct. 31. After that, they will be permanently displayed at the Gansu Provincial Museum.

Source: Xinhua [July 20, 2015]

According to research by the China Great Wall Society, it is not optimistic about the protection of the Great Wall. For example, only 8.2 percent of the Great Wall built in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) is in good condition presently.

Moreover, in the report released by the Chinese State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 2012, less than 10 percent of the Ming Great Wall is preserved adequately, 20 percent is moderately preserved, and almost 30 percent has disappeared.

The World Monument Fund based in New York announced in 2003 that the Great Wall was among the 100 most endangered historic sites.

Bad weather is one of the main causes of damage to the Great Wall. Dong Yaohui, the deputy of the China Great Wall Society, said that most parts of the masonry structure of the Great Wall are in Beijing and Hebei province. Though they are more stable than the sun-dried mud brick Great Wall, in the rainy seasons during July and August, they can be easily broken by storms.

Local data shows that in the summer of 2012, 36 meters of the Dajing Gate part of the Great Wall in Zhangjiakou, a city in northwestern Hebei province, was damaged by storms; the Shanhai Pass part in Qinhuangdao, a city in northeast part of Hebei province, leaked badly; while some fighting towers of the Wulonggou portionin Laiyuan, a city in western Hebei province, totally collapsed.

Even in the dry seasons, because of lack of protection, the Great Wall in the mountain areas in Hebei province was eroded by mountain springs or even plants. In Funing County, a county in Qinhuangdao, if you slightly touch the wall of the watchtowers, you will find soil peeling off. There are also trees growing in the cracks of the Great Wall.

People living around or travelling to the Great Wall which has not been developed into tourist attractions are also damaging the wall. According to Zhang Heshan, a Great Wall protector in Funing County, more travelers have been exploring the wild Great Wall in recent years. The frequent trampling has led to damage, causing the bricks to loosen, and even walls to collapse. However, there were not enough protectors to patrol around these areas, and not enough money to restore the damage.

Journalists from the Beijing Times also found that people in some villages of Lulong County, in the west part of Qinhuangdao, lived in the houses built with ancient blue and grey bricks. They told the journalists that these bricks were removed from the Great Wall nearby.

Some villagers even sold the Great Wall bricks with carved characters. An unnamed villager in Dongfeng Village told the Beijing Times journalist that the market price of these bricks is 40 to 50 yuan ($6.4 to $8.05) a piece, or even as low as 30 yuan ($4.83). The villagers collect such bricks from the Great Wall without a second thought.

Accordign to Dong Yaohui, it is difficult for the government to fully protect the Great Wall. "In Funing County, there are only 9 people in the department of cultural relics, but they have to go on a 142.5 km tour of inspection. It’s definitely impossible to take good care of the Great Wall by themselves," Dong said.

Dong also stressed that the counties along the Great Wall are relatively poor. Most of the counties surrounding the Great Wall in Zhangjiakou are national assigned poverty counties. Local governments cannot afford to repair and protect the Great Wall, or only invest in the parts which bring in revenue from tourism.

To some people, developing tourism is an effective way to protect the Great Wall. Xu Guohua, the head of Banchangyu Great Wall Development Company, said that the destruction from the villagers has stopped after development. Meanwhile, tourists know which part of the Great Wall is endangered.

"You have to admit that the development of the wild Great Wall brings rules and regulations to both the villagers and travelers. In recent years, the protection of the Great Wall in our scenic spot became much better than the undeveloped parts in our county," said Xu.

However, many point out that it is impossible to develop the whole Great Wall into tourism sites. And the development may bring more visitors to the endangered Great Wall, but not all the tourism development companies are committed to protecting the Great Wall. Instead, some of them only focus on the income from tickets, regardless of the intrinsic value of the Great Wall.

How to protect the disappearing Great Wall? Obviously, it is an important test for Chinese society. Just like what Dong Yaohui said in an recent article, "the Great Wall belongs to everybody of China. The duty of protection of the Great Wall not only belongs to the government, but also to the common people. The most urgent goal for us is to arouse the enthusiasm of the public to protect the Great Wall. "

Source: China Daily [June 30, 2015]

The first phase of the project covers 18 sections of the "Great Wall of Qi" with a total length of 61 km. It will cost 208 million yuan (34 million U.S. dollars), according to Xie Zhixiu, head of the provincial cultural heritage administration.

Shandong will also launch projects this year to protect the natural environment and ancient military facilities along the Wall, said Xie.

Built between 770 BC and 476 BC in the ancient state of Qi, today's Shandong, the Great Wall of Qi started at a small village in what is now Changqing District of Jinan City, with passes, gates, castles and beacon towers along a total length of 641 km till it met the sea near Qingdao.

Due to natural erosion, construction, mining and land reclamation, the Great Wall of Qi is in a worsening condition.

As military defense projects, more than 20 emperors in ancient China ordered the building or renovation of walls and fortifications. The Great Wall of China was made a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Source: Xinhua [June 26, 2015]

The robbers worked in 10 separate groups and four suspects are archaeologists, the ministry said. Each group had a clear division of labor covering everything from excavation to sales, the ministry said.

They were found to have robbed ancient tombs from the Neolithic Age to Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in seven provinces and 10 cities, it said.

Police have recovered some extremely precious artifacts including jadeware and earthenware dating to the Neolithic Age, porcelain from the Liao Dynasty (907-1125), as well as ironware, silverware and gold items from the Jin (1115-1234) and Yuan (1206-1368) dynasties, The Beijing Times reported yesterday.

“Many recovered pieces fill in gaps that existed in our archaeological finds,” said Zhang Guilian, director of the Liaoning cultural relics administration.

The pieces included a coiled jade dragon, one of the earliest known representations of the Chinese totem. It had been sold by an archaeologist surnamed Deng for 3.2 million yuan (US$516,000), the report said.

The cross-provincial network emerged after police in Liaoning Province found signs of illegal excavations in Niuheliang, a Neolithic site in Chaoyang City, the newspaper said.

The site was discovered in 1981 and given protected status in 1988. It boasts ancient temples, altars and tombs believed to have significant scientific, historical and artistic value. The discovery of the site provided new evidence that Chinese civilization originated about 5,000 years ago.

After a five-month investigation, Chaoyang police located several gangs and their ringleaders, the report said.

One alleged ringleader, surnamed Yao, 53, had more than 30 years of grave robbery experience, according to the report. He used astrology and feng shui, a Chinese system of geomancy, to decide where to dig. He asked subordinates, mostly farmers, to do the excavation work, police were cited as saying.

He robbed tombs in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning and Hebei and his actions damaged the relics, police said in the report.

His group was found to have committed 23 robberies at ancient tombs or cultural relic sites, the report said. Police have recovered 263 pieces from the group, the newspaper added.

Last December, police from seven provinces and 10 cities launched the first intensive crackdown and netted 78 suspects. In follow-up operations police caught another 97, according to the newspaper report.

Author: Li Qian | Source: Shanghai Daily [May 28, 2015]

A team of heritage preservation experts inspected the work on Wednesday and announced that the project was complete.

"This repair work has tackled a series of technical challenges to preserve the cultural relic with modern scientific technologies and new materials to ensure the authenticity and integrity of the statue," said Huang Kezhong, the leader of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage Inspection Team.

The team has also suggested the local government should repair the Great Mercy Pavilion, which houses the statue, as soon as possible.

The Dazu Rock Carvings, 60 kilometers west of Chongqing, date to the Song (960-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties and comprise more than 5,000 statues. They were opened to Chinese visitors in 1961 and foreign visitors in 1980. The carvings were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

"They are remarkable for their aesthetic quality, their rich diversity of subject matter, secular and religious, and the light that they shed on everyday life during this period. They provide outstanding evidence of the harmonious synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism," the citation said.

The statue of Kwan-yin in Baoding Mountain was carved about 800 years ago during the South Song Dynasty (1127-1276), with 830 hands in an area of 88 square meters in the hillside. It is 7.7 meters tall and 12.5 meters wide, featuring color painting and gold foil. It is the largest of its kind in China.

Water seepage and weather damage caused the statue to deteriorate, and a conservation project began in April 2011. It was listed as the top restoration project by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

The work was led by the China Cultural Heritage Protection Research Institute. Experts from Dunhuang Research Academy, the Academy of Dazu Rock Carving, Peking University, Tsinghua University and China University of Geosciences also participated.

Three phases

The project went through three phases from inspection, planning and the actual repair work. The team used X-ray and 3-D laser scanning to collect information needed to effect the restoration.

"We found 34 kinds of viruses on the sculpture that have greatly damaged the historical and artistic value of the carving," said Zhan Changfa, the chief scientist of the restoration project.

They also found that 283 of the statue's 830 hands and arms were damaged. To respect the religious history, the team consulted reference books and pictures to ensure the restoration was accurate.

The major part of the restoration involved attaching a new layer of gold foil to the statue. The original foil was between 83 percent and 92 percent gold. In some parts the statue had six layers of gold foil as a result of restoration work in the past.

An ancient technique from the Song Dynasty was applied. The gold foil was first separated from the statue, washed in pure water and alcohol before being reapplied. Once in place, it was painted with three coats of lacquer.

The statue is due to reopen to the public on June 13, which is China's Cultural Heritage Day.

Author: Tan Yingzi | Source: China Daily [May 30, 2015]