Old China bulldozed amid rapid building boom

Last Updated: Friday, February 23, 2007 | 1:36 PM ET

CBC Arts

Chinese archeologists are concerned that the rapid pace of construction in China's booming cities is putting the wrecking ball to the country's cultural heritage.

From Olympic venues in Beijing to the constant building of skyscrapers in Shanghai, China is under construction.

This Shanghai construction site is one of thousands in China. Archeologists say when the shovels go in, workers are discovering ancient artifacts, but they don't always report them.
(Color China Photo/Associated Press)

When workers uncover historic treasures, the temptation is to bulldoze them under so they can get ahead with the important work of building new factories, offices and housing, said Song Jian, head of the archeology department at the Shanghai Museum.

In Nanjing, there are reports that workers destroyed a burial site of 10 nobles from six different dynastic periods. Bulldozers crushed the ancient crypts and looters stole whatever artifacts they could get their hands on.

Archeologists are urging the central government to come up with a way to protect China's past, Song said.

On paper, China has strict laws about cultural protection, but enforcement is lax, he said.
 
"We archeologists have told the central government this must stop," Song told CBC Radio, speaking through an interpreter.

"Because everything is developing so fast, there are many challenges for archeologists."

In Shanghai, which isn't as old as some Chinese cities, most of the discoveries are from the Ming dynasty, dating from 1368 to 1644.

700 burial sites found at Olympic venue

Occasionally, Song will get a call from a construction site.

"Recently, we found two tombs … each tomb contained several people and a concubine. One of them was a physician who served a Ming emperor," he said.

But many treasures are much older. In Beijing, when workers started digging up the site of the skeet-shooting venue for next year's Olympics, they found 700 ancient burial sites, going back 2000 years to the Han dynasty.

Local officials don't like to slow down big development projects, and most developers would rather avoid stopping a project so archeologists can dust off and excavate whatever is found in the ground.

Archeologists fear the speedy pace of building a new China comes at a cost, Song said — the destruction of relics of the old China.