Jottings from the Granite Studio

The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday on the twin threats to Chinese antiquities posed by the country’s construction boom and the continued looting of archaeological sites. A great deal has been written about the measures being taken at sites for Olympic venues around the city of Beijing to try and preserve the enormous cache of artifacts uncovered by construction work. Sadly, this model has not been followed nearly as well in other parts of China.

“There are two enemies of antiquity protection,” said Xu Pingfang, president of the China Archaeological Society. “Construction is one. Thieves are the others. They know what they want, and they destroy the rest.”

The Olympics site seems to be an example of how China’s antiquities protection system should work. Construction supervisors and archaeologists have collaborated for four years, conducting excavations and restoring three Taoist temples, including one near the National Stadium, the main Olympic venue, which will undoubtedly become a familiar sight to television viewers during the Games.

But elsewhere in China, archaeologists are often in a losing race against bulldozers. In late January, a work crew in the ancient capital city of Nanjing unearthed and destroyed the burial sites of 10 noblemen from six dynasties. By the time a team of local archaeologists arrived, bulldozers had crushed the burial crypts and looters had combed through the site.

Such stories are common. Last year, local antiquities officials in the city of Luoyang described how unceasing urban development was steadily encroaching on a protected zone of ruins dating to the Tang dynasty, 618 to 906. Meanwhile, a local newspaper reported that a major redevelopment project, including an industrial park, was being planned atop the ruins of an ancient palace.

I see this issue as a kind of little brother to China’s environmental problems, both are the result of explosive and poorly managed development projects. While nowhere near as serious a problem as the continued degradation of China’s environment, China’s historical record, like the environment, once damaged by overdevelopment or commodotized to make a quick buck, is something that cannot easily be reconstructed.

As the article wisely notes, this is a problem not unique to China.

China, of course, is not the first ancient civilization to struggle with balancing modernization and cultural preservation. Controversies still arise in European countries when construction plans intrude on ancient sites, and the United States, a much younger country, has a decidedly spotty record on protecting historical sites.

“This is something that modernization brings with it,” said Lothar von Falkenhausen, a professor of archaeology and art history at the University of California at Los Angeles. “The West went through this 200 years ago.”

But like many aspects of China’s historically unprecedented rate of development, the lack of historical preservation in China tends to be more severe and less easy to mitigate than in past cases. That said, I am hopeful that other cities will start to model their regulations for the preservation of historical antiquities on the protocols worked out at Olympic construction sites in Beijing. Frankly, I’m not holding my breath.

The Chinese are justifiably proud of their long and glorious history, it would be a shame if the stories told in artifacts and sites still yet undiscovered were destroyed and then plowed under a new parking garage or sold off to the highest bidder.