Beijing to spend millions to fix cultural relics before Olympics

Asian Economic News, April 4, 2005

BEIJING, April 1 Kyodo

Beijing city officials said Friday they would spend 600 million yuan (about $72.5 million) to fix dozens of damaged landmarks, including parts of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games so foreign tourists have more to see then.

The money will give facelifts and new parts to mountainside temples and downtown altars as well as world-renowned relics such as the Summer Palace, Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau Vice Director Kong Fanshi said at a press conference.

Fix-up projects, which began in 2003, have fortified or beautified 10 parts of the Forbidden City, a landmark from imperial China, and four segments of the Great Wall, which has crumbled since its construction 2,000 years ago. Last year 26 sites got attention. About 310,000 square meters of land have been fixed up since 2003.

''In 2004, with the strong support of the city government, with the proactive cooperation and hard work of all parties, the whole city's work to preserve relics and the famed old city attained new progress,'' the relics bureau said in a statement.

Repairs dovetail with the city's goal of holding a ''cultural Olympics,'' the statement says. Better, stronger relics will help to welcome more tourists in 2008, said relics bureau director Mei Ninghua.

This year, the city will repair 22 landmarks, including a Confucian temple and the Marco Polo Bridge, where Chinese and Japanese armies clashed July 7, 1937, marking the beginning of a war that would last for eight years. Italian and French experts will help out with two projects.

Despite demolition of older homes, shops and trees surrounding historical landmarks, Beijing will stick to rules requiring preservation of 40 inner-city historical tracts in their original form, without wholesale demolition or reconstruction, Mei said.

City officials passed a detailed regulation in February, due to take effect May 1, to strengthen neighborhood preservation, he said.

''The system of laws on regulations on preserving relics and the famed old city are more complete with each passing day,'' the bureau's statement says.

Beijing officials, under criticism from conservative preservationists, are debating whether to restore old monuments to look exactly as they did before or to give them a more modern face, Mei said.

Another issue is fixing relics corroded by air pollution, he said.

Local media have questioned some projects, such as draining water from the chain of lakes outside the Old Summer Palace ruins to install an impermeable membrane that would stop water from seeping into the ground. Critics say it the change will disrupt Beijing's underground water system.