From October 2nd to 7th, most areas of Shanxi were hit by heavy rainfall that was rare in history.
During the heavy rain, the safety of ancient buildings in Shanxi became a worry for the people of the whole country.
"Look at Shanxi from the ground and above." Shanxi is the province with the largest number of ancient architecture remains in China. It has a complete sequence of times, a wide variety of categories, and complete forms. It is known as the "treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture."
This time we encountered the strongest autumn flood in Shanxi's history. How was the damage to these ancient buildings?
How is the emergency repair?
Are local cultural relics protection funds sufficient?
With these questions, the reporter visited Jincheng and other places to explore the situation of ancient buildings.
More than 1,700 cultural relics in distress
The rain started on October 2nd.
"The rushing rain is like falling from the sky. I have been a cat at home for a few days. After the rain stopped on the 7th, I went out and saw part of the wall in the community collapsed." Pingyao fellow Mi Haiying said, "It stopped. After a while, the heavy rain on the 8th came again."
What she didn't expect was that not only the walls of her own community, but also the ancient city walls of Pingyao, which carried the memories and emotions of Pingyao people, had collapsed.
The ancient city of Pingyao is the most intact ancient county in China, with an urban area of 2.25 square kilometers. The ancient city wall is 6,162.68 meters, 199 streets and 3,798 traditional houses in Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is a world-class cultural heritage.
From October 3 to 5, the precipitation in Pingyao area reached 120 mm.
As a large-scale open-air soil cultural relic building, there were 51 wall passages where the ancient city wall collapsed and slipped, and 15 of them collapsed with rammed earth on the inner wall.
“The collapse of the ancient city wall is very sad. People in Pingyao have deep feelings for the ancient city wall. This section of the ancient city wall is the symbol of the city.” said Shao Shuai, a traditional architectural technician in Pingyao County. The ancient city of Pingyao has suffered heavy rainfall since 1977. After the ancient city was flooded and part of the walls collapsed, it never rained for such a long time and with such a heavy rainfall.
As a "treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture," Shanxi was far more "injured" in this flood situation than the ancient city of Pingyao.
The roofs of many Jinci buildings leaked, and the retaining wall at the southwest corner of the main hall of Fengsheng Temple collapsed; part of the grottoes of Tianlongshan Grottoes leaked, and the mountain landslide damaged the road surface of the scenic area; the site of Kaihua Temple on Mengshan suffered water leakage and collapse; the new Jianglongxing Temple in Yuncheng was caused by Rain leaks, endangering the safety of the statue; the roof of the Ten Thousand Buddhas Hall in the Luliang Thousand Buddha Caves caves and leaks, and the back wall of the Daxiong Hall cracks and there is a risk of continuing to collapse; the foundation of the Fan'an Temple Tower in Wenshui County, Luliang is flooded...
According to data from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China, as of 19:00 on October 11, a total of 1,783 cultural relics in Shanxi have suffered roof leaks, wall cracks and collapses, collapsed foundations, surrounding slopes, and wall collapses to varying degrees.
After preliminary assessment, the disaster-affected cultural relics include 176 national key cultural relics protection units, 143 provincial-level cultural relics protection units, 661 city and county-level cultural relics protection units, and 803 immovable cultural relics that have not been approved and declared as cultural relics protection units.
“The most severely damaged cultural relics are Jincheng City, Jinzhong City, Yuncheng City, Yangquan City, Luliang City and Taiyuan City, accounting for about 90% of the province’s total.” said Bai Xuebing, director of the Cultural Relics Protection and Utilization Division of the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. From the perspective of cultural relic damage, the more severely damaged cultural relics are mostly concentrated in cultural relics protection units at the county level and below, including a large number of unregistered, ungraded, and traditional buildings scattered in remote villages.
"Although these huge numbers of traditional buildings are not national, provincial, or municipal, they are also cultural relics, and they also carry history and culture. They have suffered heavy losses and are worrying." Bai Xuebing said.
"Umbrella" for Shanxi Ancient Construction
"The character of Shanxi Ancient Architecture is like a Shanxiese, honest and dull, standing quietly and not obvious. As a major energy province and national transformation and comprehensive reform demonstration zone, Shanxi has always paid silently and obeyed the needs of the overall national development. "Professor Mi Jun, Dean of the School of Management Science and Engineering of Shanxi University of Finance and Economics and an expert in emergency management, said.
Shanxi has "seeked for help". For those "baby bumps" that carry history and feelings, and for the ancient buildings that are swayed by wind and rain, Shanxi has issued a "letter for help" to the whole country.
#风雨中山西古建正被力量#, #为山西抱把伞# rushed to the hot search on Weibo.
At the Pingyao International Photography Festival held as scheduled, Shanxi director Jia Zhangke said that Shanxi is a province of cultural relics. ", "Please help."
The voice drew more attention, and donations from various foundations, chambers of commerce, and enterprises followed one after another.
On October 10th, museums across the country relayed their papers to join hands in "Jin" to support Shanxi with the "wind and rain" umbrella. The Shanghai Museum, Chengdu Museum, Sichuan Museum, Jilin Provincial Museum... Shanxi people's power.
The Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau issued a statement that the emergency repair work of the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau is being carried out in an orderly manner.
The first is to carry out special arrangements for disaster prevention in the rainy season, requiring all localities to strengthen daily management and adopt measures such as covering and temporary support to eliminate dangerous situations in dangerous buildings.
The second is to strengthen emergency duty, require all localities to do a good job of danger monitoring, and promptly deal with dangers found to ensure the safety of cultural relics and surrounding people.
At the same time, statistics are made on the dangers of cultural relics units across the province.
The third is to organize qualified units across the province to take the initiative to intervene, carry out on-site risk elimination, and pay close attention to the preparation of emergency rescue plans.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage sent a team of experts to investigate the impact of cultural relics on site, guide cultural relics relief work, urgently allocate cultural relics emergency rescue funds, and support Shanxi in carrying out emergency, rescue, and restoration of cultural relics damaged by disasters to ensure that cultural relics receive emergency protection at the first time.
"Cultural relics are non-renewable historical and cultural resources. Once damaged, they cannot be restored." The relevant staff of the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau said, "This flood also reminds us that to'keep an umbrella' for cultural relics must be used in normal times. Everywhere. We must cherish cultural relics and historic sites as we cherish green waters and green mountains."
Emergency rescue and normal protection
Among the ancient buildings, Shanxi ancient buildings are the most famous for their wooden structures.
According to statistics, there are 495 ancient wooden structures in Shanxi before the Yuan Dynasty, accounting for about 85% of the country's 580; there are only 4 ancient wooden structures in the country in the Tang Dynasty, all of which are in Shanxi.
The ancient buildings in Shanxi are not only the buildings themselves, they also have 24,000 square meters of murals attached to them. These murals are also precarious, with many diseases such as fracture, armouring, hollowing, and so on.
Shanxi has a large number of ancient buildings, high value, and wide distribution. The task of protecting ancient buildings is very heavy.
Coupled with the influence of capital, finance, geographical environment and other factors, the status quo of a large number of low-grade ancient buildings is worrying.
At present, the annual investment in cultural relics protection in Shanxi Province has increased from 10 million yuan a year to 170 million yuan.
This fund needs to take care of 53,875 treasures (only immovable cultural relics) scattered over 156,700 square kilometers, which is a drop in the bucket.
Ancient buildings in Shanxi are divided into cultural relics protected by national and provincial protection units and county-level and below protection units. The protection of the two types of cultural relics is very polarized, and the funds for the protection of cultural relics at the grassroots level are even more stretched.
"Cultural relics are just like people. They need regular physical examinations. In addition to daily maintenance, they must be treated in time if they find illnesses." Ren Yimin, director of the Institute of Ancient Architecture and Painted Sculptures Conservation in Shanxi Province, told reporters that these cannot avoid funding and manpower issues. The property rights of the cultural relics at the small village level are vague, some have no property rights, and some are private property rights. As for protection, some are financial investment, some are jointly invested by finance and users, and in many cases, the owner is unwilling to declare and do not want to pay. We must pay attention to the problem."
With limited financial resources, Shanxi is also exploring new paths for cultural relics protection.
In 2017, Shanxi Province officially launched the "Civilization Watch Project" to encourage and guide social forces to participate in the protection and utilization of cultural relics through the method of "cultural relics adoption".
With the intervention of social forces, a large number of cultural relics and ancient buildings, such as the "Four Pailou" of the Ming Dynasty in Quwo, the Dazhang Wang Family House of the Qing Dynasty in Xia County, the Guanyin Temple of the Jin Dynasty in Xiangfen County, and the Zhangbi Castle in Jiexiu City, have all ushered in. The new life really makes the cultural relics "live".
After five years of exploration, 238 cultural relics have been adopted, attracting more than 300 million yuan of social funds.
The implementation of the "Civilization Watch" project has effectively protected some ancient buildings scattered in the countryside, but this is far from enough.
On October 11, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held an office meeting to conduct special research to support the rescue and protection and repair of cultural relics damaged by the disaster in Shanxi Province, and will give Shanxi key tilt arrangements for subsequent cultural relics protection projects and funding.
This torrential rain brought many irreversible regrets to Shanxi, and it also brought Shanxi ancient buildings into the eyes of more people.
I hope that the ancient building after the storm can see a rainbow, and I also hope that Shanxi will have more manpower, financial resources and ability to protect this "treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture".
Our reporter Liang Jing