HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS BRIEFS

TEMPLE TO SUN FOUND IN ALTAI MOUNTAINS

On 18 June, Xinhua News Agency's Urumqi office reported the discovery on the southern slopes of the Altai mountains in Qinghe county, north-eastern Xinjiang, of more than fifty tombs constructed from massive stones arranged into a pyramid formation. Lü Enguo of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute suggests that this is not a necropolis, but a large altar erected to the sun, and that it dates back to 1000BCE.

BRONZE FOUND AT HONGSHAN NEOLITHIC SITE

The Hongshan Culture Research Centre in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, revealed on 20 June that archaeologists over recent years have discovered bronze moulds and some bronze implements at a number of Hongshan cultural sites, including a small bronze ring found at the second locus at the Niuheliang site in Liaoning and two square bronze moulds found at the Aohan Xitai site in Chifeng. These are the oldest discoveries of worked bronze in China to date.

BMW DONATES TO CHINESE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Germany's BMW Corporation has donated RMB 200,000 yuan to assist the government of Shanxi province protect some of its 32 listed items of intangible cultural heritage. BMW has also donated money to cultural heritage protection projects in Xi'an and Dunhuang.

PRIVATE FOUNDATION TO PROTECT GRAND CANAL

Shanghai Daily announced on 18 June that Ruan Yisan, an architecture professor at Shanghai's Tongji University, has set up the Ruan Yisan Heritage Foundation to monitor the condition of the Grand Canal from observation stations in 17 cities between Beijing and Hangzhou.

'INHERITORS' NAMED

On 6 June, China's Vice-Minister of Culture, Zhou Heping, announced that China would shortly announced the names of 224 people who are the first batch of artists designated to pass on China's intangible cultural heritage. These inheritors or 'national treasures' have special knowledge in various areas of folklore, acrobatics, handicrafts and traditional medicine.

FIRST NATIONAL PARK DECLARED

The Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan province announced on 21 June the establishment of China's first 'national park'. Diqing has been officially renamed 'Shangri-La' in recent years, but the declaration of the 2,000 sq km Potatso National Park is an attempt to undo some of the damage that excessive tourism has created in the area since the name change to Shangri-La was adopted.

SILK ROAD SITES NAMED

Representatives from five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) and China met in Urumqi, Xinjiang, on 18 June and named 54 preliminary sites for their joint application for the listing of the Silk Road as a world cultural heritage item to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in early 2009.

ANCIENT WRECK FOUND OFF GUANGDONG COAST

On 13 June, the Guangdong Archaeology Institute announced the discovery of a hulk containing large quantities of Ming dynasty porcelain. Dubbed Nanhai-II, the vessel is estimated to be about 18m in length and is lying at depth of 20m. The location of the ship came to light when police discovered that an illegal salvage operation was underway. Ironically, the ship came to the attention of the authorities only several days after the undersea excavation had begun of a Song dynasty vessel dubbed Nanhai-I.

TAIMIAO TEMPLE RE-OPENS

On 9 June, after ten months renovation, Taimiao Temple, located on the eastern side of Tiananmen rostrum, re-opened to the public. Taimiao was built in 1420 as the ancestral temple for the emperor. In 1950, Taimiao was renamed The Cultural Palace of the Labouring People of Beijing. The renovation which cost RMB15 million began in August 2006.

CHENGDU DECLARATION

On 10 June, the First International Festival of Intangible Cultural Heritage ended in Chengdu. The festival had run for 19 days, and showcased cultural heritage items from around the world. The events included the First Extraordinary Session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, where experts and scholars from around the world attended the Chengdu International Forum on Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection and released the Chengdu Declaration on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The declaration calls on all nations to safeguard their intangible cultural heritage and raise people's awareness of it so that these traditions will continue to flourish in the future. This event marked China out as one of the leading nations in the field of cultural heritage work.

China's attention to cultural heritage has been prompted by the current wave of destruction brought about by the country's massive building programs. At the forum, Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of construction, hit out at local governments for condoning actions which have 'devastated' historical sites in the name of renovation, and he likened the current wave of destruction to those which took place during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Tong Mingkang, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), agreed with Bao, and lashed out at local governments who demolished historical sites in poor repair and replaced them with ersatz cultural monuments.

EARLIEST FIGURINES UNEARTHED

On 10 June, it was announced by Yin Shenping of the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Institute that archaeologists had discovered four coloured timber figures, standing about 80cm tall, which are older than the terracotta warriors of the Qin dynasty. They were unearthed at the Zhou dynasty site in Liangdai village, Hancheng city, Shaanxi, which was first excavated two years ago.

EXHIBITION OF IMPERIAL GOWNS

On 9 June, an exhibition of imperial gowns opened at the Palace Museum in Shenyang, Liaoning province. The exhibition opened to coincide with China's second Cultural Heritage Day. The exhibition includes more than 50 exquisite dragon robes.

ATLAS OF CULTURAL RELICS

On 3 June, SACH held a ceremony at the Palace Museum in Beijing to launch the 11th title in the series Zhongguo wenwu dituji (The atlas of Chinese cultural relics). This work, in three large volumes, is devoted to the cultural relics of Shanxi province.

WORLD MONUMENT FUND LISTS TWO CHINESE SITES

On 6 June, the New York-based World Monument Fund announced its list of the world's 100 most endangered architectural and cultural sites. The list included two Chinese sites—the Nanking theatre in Shanghai and the Xumishan Buddhist grottoes.

XIWANGMU NOMINATION

On 6 June, it was reported that the Lake Bogda (Tianchi) management authority outside Urumqi in Xinjiang site was planning to nominate the legend of Xiwangmu (lit., Queen Mother of the West) for listing as a local intangible cultural heritage item. A new temple to Xiwangmu was constructed on the shores of Lake Bogda in recent years, on the basis of records concerning the existence at an early date of a temple to Xiwangmu on the shores of Tianchi. However, there were several lakes called Tianchi in Xinjiang, and it is more likely that the original temple was located on the shores of what is today called Lake Sairam, north of Yining.

KAREZ MUSEUM COMPLETED

On 6 June, work was completed on the Karez Museum in Turfan, Xinjiang. The museum, built by the Karez Research Institute, documents the ancient underground waterways that once flowed throughout the Turfan oasis, but are now endangered by modern development.

EXHIBITION AT HONG KONG'S HERITAGE MUSEUM

On 6 June, an exhibition of 120 valuable ancient artefacts from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau went on display in Hong Kong's Heritage Museum. The exhibition, titled 'Splendour and Mystery of Ancient Shu: Cultural Relics from Sanxingdui and Jinsha', will run until September.

QING EASTERN TOMBS THREATENED BY MINING

At the beginning of June it was reported that the Qing Eastern Tombs (Dongling), where 161 members of the Qing imperial household, including five emperors and 15 empresses, are buried are threatened by illegal iron ore mining. The tombs, located in Zunhua county, Hebei province, were listed as a world cultural heritage site in 2000. Some of the mines, which go down for 50 to 80 m, are located only 200m from the Huiling mausoleum, where the Tongzhi Emperor is buried.

EXCAVATIONS AT GREAT YU SITE CALLED OFF

On 31 May, local archaeologists called off the excavation of a site in Yuhui village, Qinji township, in the Yuhui district of Bengbu city, Anhui, reputed to the ruins of the capital of the ancient sage-king Yu. The site called the Ruins of Yu had been excavated for a month, but was called off under pressure from authorities from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and various universities, ostensibly because of heavy rain.

VIRTUAL DUNHUANG

At the end of May, Ms. Fan Jinshi, director of the Dunhuang Research Institute, announced that the long-term plan to digitalise the Mogao grottoes at Dunhuang is making slow but steady progress. She announced that it will probably take five years to record the first 20 of the 492 caves.

BAN OF EXPORT OF RELICS OLDER THAN 1911

On 30 May, Shan Jixiang, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, announced that, under new regulations, the Chinese government will ban individuals taking cultural relics predating 1911 out of the country. Similar, but less stringent, regulations issued in past years have had no effect, and seem to make no sense in light of the booming antique auction scene in China.

EMPEROR FUXI HONOURED IN GANSU

On 24 May, Xu Shousheng, governor of Gansu province, told a press conference that the city of Tianshui would annually honour the mythical Fuxi at ceremonies to be conducted on 22 June. Tianshui is said to have been the birthplace of Fuxi.

DRAGON THEME PARK UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Some archaeologists have identified a sculpted figure found in a tomb in Puyang, Jiangxi province, as the oldest representation of a dragon unearthed in China. The Puyang city government now plans to build a theme park around this major 'heritage item'. Puyang's Dragon Research Institute has attracted substantial Hong Kong private funding to build a five-storey museum dedicated to the ancient Chinese dragon, as well as a 300-hectare theme park.

ANCIENT HIEROGLYHS DISCOVERED IN NINGXIA

On 18 May, archaeologists in Ningxia made the remarkable announcement that they had found more than 2,000 pictographs dating back 7,000 to 8,000 years carved on rocks at Daimaidi in the Beishan mountains. Here more than 10,000 prehistoric rock carvings have been found over an extensive area. If the identified symbols are pictographs, then they are much older than the Yinxu oracle bone glyphs, which are believed to be about 3,000 years ago, or the undeciphered characters on pottery that date back 4,500 years.

ANCIENT COFFINS FOUND IN JIANGXI

On 1 May, archaeologists announced the unusual discovery in Lijia village, Jiang'an county, Jiangxi province, of a 2,500-year-old tomb containing 40 coffins. This group burial is believed to date back to the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-221BCE).

BEIJING'S OLDEST THEATRE DEMOLISHED

On 23 April, it was announced that Beijing's oldest theatre, Guanghe Theatre, originally built as the villa of a salt merchant in the Ming dynasty, and renamed Guanghe Lou during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, was being demolished. Located at no. 46 Qianmenwai Roushijie, the theatre was still a venue for Peking Opera performances into the 1970s.

CHINESE CULTURAL HERITAGE FESTIVAL IN PARIS

On 16 April, a festival of China's intangible cultural heritage opened at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris. Hosted by Cultural Ministry of China and undertaken by Academy of Arts of China and National Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center of China, the art festival featured exhibitions and performances, including the staging of Xinjiang Muqam music.

CAPITAL IRON AND STEEL HERITAGE SITE

After the Beijing Capital Iron and Steel Group relocates its operations to Tianjin next year, the old industrial site in western Beijing will be turned into an industrial heritage park, Beijing's municipal planning committee announced on 9 April.

WALL RESTORATION

On 2 April, it was announced that a 3.7 km stretch of the Great Wall at Badaling would be restored in June as part of the preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The restoration will entail the use of ancient materials and 'craft methods'. The stretch to be restored is not open to tourists.