Historical values fade amid the fakes
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Chairman Mao Zedong would be alarmed if he knew how his countrymen were interpreting some of his words.
In 1964 Mao came up with the principle of making the past serve the present and foreign things serve China.
So instead of conserving historical buildings local governments prefer to tear down the not-so-perfect and the not-so-new buildings and construct replica historical buildings that fit their modern needs and which are supposed to appeal to tourists.
The Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911) “streets” and the palaces in the style of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) in many cities are a false past created for material gains.
Datong, a city in Shanxi province with a history of more than 2,300 years, is ambitiously trying to restore its historical face. It invested 10 billion yuan (Bt49 billion) in a “conservation and restoration” project in 2008.
Shanhaiguan of Hebei province started restoring the section of the Great Wall within its territory in 2006, and the city has built 150 structures in the styles of the Ming and Qing dynasties in its old part. These “old” buildings were opened to tourists in 2008 when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.
Many city planners seem to be nostalgic for the past but choose to glamorise their heritage in irrational ways. Is it because the historical elements in our communities disappear so quickly, or because people need historical and cultural heritage?
Governments at all levels have published their regulations on protecting old cities and historical buildings. But in the hands of many city planners, it seems history is something they feel free to dress up. They knock down old buildings and replace them with new structures that are intended to look old.
A real-estate company reduced the house of the famous architects and intellectuals Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin to rubble in January, despite the fact the former residence of the couple was listed by Beijing’s bureau of cultural relics as immovable.
The outcry from preservationists pushed the bureau to fine the company 500,000 yuan and request it build a replica at the original site.
As early as 1933, the International Congresses of Modern Architecture passed a document on city planning, in which it made clear that the use of past styles for new buildings in historic areas under the pretext of aesthetics has disastrous consequences. “The continuance or the introduction of such habits in any form should not be tolerated.”
In addition to the past, some city planners have turned their eyes to foreign models.
Last year Huizhou in Guangdong province copied Austria’s village of Hallstatt, complete with artificial lake. The small village with 900 inhabitants attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year and some Chinese real-estate developers have seen this with envy.
