The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic GamesAugust 8-24 2008
Related story: Beijing preserves cultural heritage while achieving modernization
Date/Time: 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, July 30
Venue: Main Press Center (MPC)
Sun Weide
Friends from the media, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to today's press conference organized by MPC. The topic for today is preserving Beijing's precious historical landmarks. Let me first introduce our guests for this morning: Kong Fanzhi, director of Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage; Yu Ping, vice director of Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage; and Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. First of all, I would invite Mr. Kong to speak on the preservation and heritage of Beijing as an ancient capital.
Kong Fanzhi
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to today's press conference. First of all, on behalf of Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, I would like to express my gratitude for your care about the preservation and heritage of the city.
As we all know, Beijing is a very ancient city. So a great deal of heritage, relics and artifacts have been accumulated forming layers of history. In fact, protecting the cultural heritage has always been an important task for the central and municipal government. It is also a long term task with a lot of problems involved and a lot of controversies. As all of the famous cities in the world, preservation and conservation of the cultural heritage is also difficult and Beijing is not an exception. Being the capital of the country, we have faced a lot of difficulties and contradictions in our preservation task. In fact, conservation of the all city heritage is not purely a problem or a task of conservation. It is also a matter of how you can deal with conservation on one hand and the development of the city of the other, construction of the whole urban environment, providing good conditions for the people living there, modernization of the city as well as keeping your own cultural heritage. Handling well the relationship between conservation and the relevance is something that we have always done by taking into account the experience of developed countries, how they deal with the urban promotion, the concepts involved as well as the heritage protection ways. So through learning experience from developed counties, we have learned the implementation of the preservation of the city. Now I would like to talk about 2 aspects.
First of all, I would like to talk about the methodology involved in the preservation of the famous historical and cultural city of Beijing. In fact, we have adapted 3 major measures. First of all, we focused on preserving the core essence of the city. Now this slide shows the layers of history for the development of Beijing. You can see first of all the sites 1000 years ago on the left corner, which is during the Liao (907-1125 AD), Yuan (1271-1368 AD) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1912 AD). Now what we are preserving are the sites of the Ming and Qing Dynasty more than 500 years ago.
Now let us look at this map, which shows you the Central Axis of Beijing. From the south upward towards the north, the Central Axis stretches from Yongdingmen, crossing through Zhengyangmen, the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park and then to the Bell and Drum Towers at a stretch of 7.8 kilometers. The Central Axis with these famous building gives Beijing a very balance layout.
Our second measure aims to preserve the original of the old shape of the city of Beijing. That is to say, it is a reversed T shaped. As the old city walls no longer exists, we have the moat in the south that indicate where the walls stood, whereas in the north, we have put up tires of pine trees to show the northern perimeter of the old walls.
The third measure is to preserve the imperial city with 8.6 square kilometers. It will include the Forbidden City as well as its accompanying imperial garden.
The fourth measure is the preservation of large areas of cultural houses and hutongs which are indicated on the map in yellow, which we identify as the historical and cultural sites. There are 33 identified and classified sites. It is around the imperial city, the Forbidden City and the Jingshan area, which covers 1,074 hectares with another 440 hectares of low-lying houses. So the protection of Siheyuan (the traditional Chinese courtyard) houses will cover 20 square kilometers.
Our fifth measure is the protection of the heritage buildings within the old city with an amount of over 1,000. As for the culture and the heritage buildings under protection, in fact, we are focusing on the protection of the buildings of the main city as they stood during the Ming Dynasty, especially the historical buildings on the east and the south as well as the city gate. In fact, these parts have always been part of the modern city as you see it now. So what I have been talking just now constitutes the first part of the major measure.
The second part would involve the setting up of certain rules, regulations and laws to protect the famous historical and cultural city. There are quite a number of laws and regulations involved, for instance, the laws protecting the imperial city and the imperial palace, cordial houses as well as the rules and regulations for the conversation measures.
The third major measure is the control of new buildings, the high-rises in particular. There are 2 stages in our control. Prior to the year 2004, we only put the height of the modern buildings under control but not the amount. However, after 2004, we are putting both the amount and the height under control.
The control of the height of the building has been carried for a long time. What we are doing is we took the Forbidden City as the center. For the buildings that are going to be build close to the Forbidden City, the height is strictly controlled. Farther away from the Forbidden City as it radiates out, we allow higher buildings. That would mean that for the buildings that are close to the Forbidden City, there will be low-lying houses. There are different bench marks, such as 6 meters, 12 meters, 18 meters and 45 meters. So after 2004, we apply very strict control for the buildings in the old city itself, which cover 62.5 square kilometers. However, outside the area, we will allow development for the 1000 square kilometers. So we have divided the city into two parts, for protection and for development.
I have been talking about the protection of sites, and then I will come to the protection of heritage. For a long time, because we lack finance, we would like to renovate a lot of heritage buildings but we can't. However, recently we speed up our conservation and we enforce our efforts in this area. There are two aspects of this kind of conservation. First, the government output. The financial output is enormous over the last eight years from 2000 to 2007. For the first 3 years during the period, the input stood at 110 million RMB. And for the last 5 years, there are about 120 million a year. From 2008 to 2015, we will continue with 150 million of output a year.
For the 8-year period, we have already put in 1.2 billion, which is unprecedented. Let me make a comparison to highlight the unprecedented input involved. Before 1990, the yearly input is one million a year. From 2000 onwards, the government put 110 to 120 million a year. It is almost 110 times over period before 1990. So there has been an increased input.
Now for the conservation of the number of buildings, we have the recent efforts to make up for the gap left before. Over the last 7 years, the government has put in 930 million RMB while the public have put in 5 billion for moving out as well as renovation, etc.
So over the last seven years, we have undertaken 139 projects, of which 78 projects, after they were completed, have been increased their displays as well as the areas that open to the public. For example, the Summer Palace, after renovation, has opened up the western part to the public, with 20 hectares of accessible garden. Another example is the Temple of Heaven, the Hall of Music inside is now open to the public. And within the 139 projects, there are 28 open to the public for the first time.
Now, please take a look at the pictures indicating the conservation sites. The first slide shows the Nanchizi area, which is located to the east of the Forbidden City. And we have renovated it. Now you can see how they look like now. So this is Shichahai, and this is scene of Hutong near Chichahai area. Now we have the before and after picture of Yandaixiejie Hutong. This is another Hutong of Baimixiejie, before and after. Now this slide indicates the project that involves French, German and Chinese experts. This is a gate leading to the Guozijian road, where the Imperial College is.
This slide shows Hutong of Yuan Dynasty over 700 years ago, which is to the east of the Forbidden City. This is another before and after of the street east to the Drum Tower. Now this one indicates more recent buildings, the diplomatic complex, Dongjiaominxiang. There are some pictures of the famous diplomatic area. This is Belgium Embassy in Beijing and now it becomes a hotel. This used to be the U.S. and Dutch embassy. This is a typical western style of more than 100 years ago. This is bird view of the Lama Temple and the surrounding area.
This picture describes some of the huge renovation projects that is undergoing. The government has put in 1 billion RMB for the renovation of these Hutong and Siheyuan area. This is white pagoda area and the neighboring houses. This is the western and eastern part of Liulichang, which is a commercial shopping area.
Now, let me introduce some of the most outstanding cultural heritage sites and its renovation projects. First of all, some of the historical heritage sites restoration. This is the Forbidden City and its surrounding area. This picture indicates the renovation of some part of the Forbidden City.
This is the restoration of the Temple of Heaven. This is our protection planning of Temple of Heaven and its neighborhood. This is the picture depicting the restoration going on at some parts of Temple of Heaven. Painting and dedusting are another restoration for another part of Temple of Heaven. This is one of the five most famous temples. It was designed for praying for good harvest. This is a picture of the surrounding area, especially for the western part of the Temple of Heaven.
This is the overall planning for the surrounding area of Zhoukoudian site.
This is the Summer Palace. This is the planning map for the surrounding area for the Summer Palace.
This is the renovation of the buildings along the Central Axis in the Summer Palace.
The restoration of the Great Wall.
The restoration of the Ming tombs before and after.
Now let me come to some of the restoration projects of some of the heritage sites.
Altogether, 139 sites inside and some of them as you can see are inside the old cities. This is the restoration of some of the ancient buildings along the Central Axis. This is the restoration work that has been undertaken along Chaofulu.
This picture is the restoration of the ancient emperor temples and the Imperial City Wall, the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, Zhengyang Gate, the Imperial College, White Pagoda and Pudu Temple. Thank you very much.
Sun Weide
Now the floor is open for questions.
South China Morning Post
Thank you very much Mr. Kong. This is a very admirable presentation and cultural heritage and restoration. There has been some criticism over the years that some of the residences were made to leave their homes by force. And Mr. Sun, that leads to the question that should the residents complain about where they have been moved out and so forth? If they set up a website, why would that website that is criticizing some government policies now be banned to the Olympic reporters despite the prestige of the IOC that such websites as Falun Gong would be open? So, how do you respond Mr. Kong to the criticism of what seems to be such a great situation over the last seven years? Mr. Sun, why the website criticizing government policies is banned despite the IOC policy?
Kong Fanzhi
It is true that we did move some of the residence working units near the cultural heritage sites that we are about to restore, but the movement are largely due to other reasons too.
So my point is that the relocation due to the restoration of the cultural heritage site is very small in terms of its amount. Generally speaking, the relocation because of the cultural heritage restoration has been very smooth. The residents are very collaborative with the government. Because the occupants used to live in the old temples, they find it very inconvenient to live in the temple. The living condition is very poor. So when they hear that the government will restore some cultural heritage sites and need to move them out, they are more than willing to cooperate with the government. As for the website you refer to, I think, perhaps, it is a different matter. Of course, even those people are moving out because some other reasons other than restoration. I think it is still necessary for the government to do a good job in persuading them to be collaborative and we are doing our best to achieve this and we are moving in that direction.
Sun Weide
For your second question, we are going to do our best to facilitate for the foreign media for the website. As for the specific website you mentioned, I am not in the position to make any comments because I know nothing about these websites. But you also made reference to Falun Gong, which is an evil fake religion that has been banned by the Chinese government.
Xinhua News Agency
My question is for Mr. Kong. Two questions. Director Kong mentioned in the process we borrow some experience from Europe. Could you elaborate on that? I heard the rent in Qianmen area after restoration has become very high, so high that some of the former occupants find it difficult to come back after restoration? Could you make some comments about this question?
Kong Fanzhi
First of all, I would like to say that some of the different countries have been doing great job in terms of the cultural restoration. We would be more than happy to draw on some of the practices.
They have adopted the holistic protection approach of the ancient city. For instance, some German cities like Luebeck and Bremen. All of them have done a great job.
In our process of protecting Beijing as an acient capital and famous historical city, we are making efforts to adapt many of the practices that they are doing. They are also much interested in preserving the authenticity and the unpolished image as a result of the many thousands years tear and wear of this country's heritage site. We are trying to do the same in protecting our own sites.
Another perspective of Europe is that they are doing a great job in protecting the battle zones surrounding areas of this site, which is really a good idea. For the protection of the city wall, we should not make it look so brand new. We should try our best in retaining the authenticity and the original look of the city wall.
As for the commercial street in Qianmen, we try our best to restore to its original look. We want to restore its original look in the early days of the Republic of China, so that all the shops will be affordable and all the old brands would be open again including some of the places and institutions named by the emperor.
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