The State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) will now conduct regular inspections and random checks of the wall across its perimeter in 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. SACH will also open a hotline for callers to report anyone they catch damaging the Great Wall.

A recent video shared on Chinese social media showed a 49 year-old Hubei man destroying a piece of the Great Wall of China. Zhu Shining eventually surrendered himself to police, and explained that he didn’t think the wall he was damaging was the “actual” Great Wall of China because it “looked so old”.

Even with this new campaign, irreversible damage has already been caused to the Great Wall of China.

An estimated 30 percent of a 6,200-km section of the wall built in the Ming Dynasty has disappeared. Only eight percent of this section remains in good condition.

The Great Wall has all but vanished in some areas. Originally totaling 1,500 kilometers in length, the size of the Great Wall diminished to just 800 kilometers in Ningxia Province in the 80s, and then 500 kilometers in the 90s. Today, just 300 kilometers of the Great Wall remains in Ningxia.

Aside from vandalism, Hubei villages have taken to selling off specially-inscribed bricks, while villagers in Lulong County take stones from the Great Wall and re-purpose them in new structures. Additionally, breaches in the wall have been made to accommodate local traffic.

At the same time, weather and the natural elements, notably sandstorms, have eroded much of the wall.

According to Vice-Chairperson of the National Great Wall Society, Dong Yaohui, it’s difficult to protect and preserve the Great Wall of China with limited resources. “In Funing County, there are only nine people in the department of cultural relics, but they have to go on a 143 kilometre inspection tour. It’s definitely impossible to take good care of the Great Wall by themselves,” Dong said.

A 2006 law introduced fines of up to $62,500 for anyone caught damaging the designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

For his part in vandalizing the Great Wall of China, Zhu was sentenced to ten days administrative detention and issued a RMB 500 ($75) fine.

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However, it turns out that not only were the pundits wrong, but that the Forbidden City was one of the few areas of Beijing that remained business as usual while the rest of the city was effectively shut down. And, it’s all due to a 600 year-old drainage system that continues to work to this day.

The official Weibo account for Forbidden City Magazine responded to flooding allegations at the international tourist attraction by publishing photos taken during Wednesday’s storm. In them, the former imperial palace is seen free of flooding as its drainage system, described as “perfect”, rid the compound of rainwater.

A representative for the Forbidden City revealed that despite flooding that closed Beijing subway stations and canceled flights at the airport, the palace took in 30,000 visitors during the storm.

The designers of the Forbidden City knew of Beijing’s tendency to incline from the northwest down to the southeast. As a result, courtyards of the former palace all run from north to south and are slightly raised in the middle to prevent rainwater accumulation. From there, an underground system collects the water and carries it away from the city center.

Flooding is of such importance to Chinese culture that it is featured in the culture’s creation myths. China’s earliest emperors established their rule by controlling floods through techniques like dykes. Calamities like massive flooding were often seen as signalling the end to a ruling dynasty.

But while Beijing and other Chinese cities contend with annual flooding problems, new cities continue to pop up at a blistering rate.

Chinese officials plan to urbanize the country by creating housing for a potential 3.5 billion residents in 3,500 urban developments. As well, a proposed 42 trillion yuan megacity that includes Beijing, Tianjin and parts of Hebei has plans to create 23 new subway lines by 2030, allowing residents to travel from city to city in under two hours.

Here are more photos of the Forbidden City hard at work during the storm:

The post Beijing Floods Not a Problem for Forbidden City’s 600 Year-Old Drainage System appeared first on The Nanfang.

The newly opened areas include the passageways from Duanhong Bridge to the Longzong Gate, from the Archery Pavilion to the Hall of Literary Glory, and Western Canal Street. Seventy-six percent of the Forbidden City is now open to the public, compared with 65 percent last year.

The Forbidden City opened up four previously closed parts of the former imperial palace last October, the first public expansion since 1926.

Future plans involve opening up 85 percent of the Forbidden City to the public.

The cultural relic protection and technology department of the Palace Museum will be relocated to Western Canal Street where a glass viewing room will be built. This addition will be 361 meters long and cover an area of 13,000 square meters.

Palace Museum curator Shan Jixiang, who announced the openings yesterday, said restoring the wooden architecture and artifacts in these ancient buildings required massive amounts of time and money.

The restoration of cultural relics in the Forbidden City have also reached public attention with the three-part documentary series Masters in Forbidden City that show the work of various relic restoration workers that work at the Palace Museum.

The post Forbidden City Opening Up More Restricted Areas to Tourists appeared first on The Nanfang.

Although some of China’s history has been lost to time, here’s a fascinating look at how life was at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University during the 1920s.

This historical footage was unearthed by CCTV and features footage taken at the university in 1926 for the school’s 30th anniversary. Shot by an unnamed school alumni, the black and white silent film shows students and teachers at Jiaotong going about their classes and taking part in sports like rugby, tennis, basketball, swimming, and ping pong.

What’s notable about the footage is that even though students are seen wearing both Western and Chinese attire, all men are seen with their hair cut short and worn in a long queue as was the tradition during the Qing Dynasty. This distinction also points out that of all the footage from the school, not one woman is seen.

Here’s the video:

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The 14-minute black and white footage, uploaded to Sina Video, shows street scenes of Beijing during the 1920s. While the footage was taken after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the fashions of the time remained feudal as men still wore their hair in queues. Rickshaws and horse-drawn wagons fill the streets of Beijing while bystanders turn and gawk at the camera, probably the most advanced technology at the scene.

The video shows some familiar Beijing sights such as the city’s massive gates. There are also some familiar Chinese traditions, including hawkers selling their wares on the street, and open air diners.

One of the most interesting parts of the video comes at the end when we get a taste of Beijing culture almost a hundred years ago. Although there isn’t any audio, Beijing residents greet each other with a double curtsy by bending at the knees as well as bowing, customs that don’t exist anymore.

Check it out for yourself. Here’s the video:

[h/t GoHiroki of reddit China]

The post Watch: What Beijing Was Like in the 1920s appeared first on The Nanfang.

The 2.5 meter-long, o.8 meter-wide sign is believed to be a wedding gift from Zhang Bilu, the provincial commander-in-chief of three provinces during the reign of Emperor Daoguang (1821-1850). The four Chinese characters inscribed on the wood sign read, “Simple and kind; proper and honest.”

The cultural relic was discovered when Shiwo villager, Zhao Hongxian, went looking for a table in Luowen County. Zhao found the sign on top of a vat of water, being used as a cutting board. Over the years, the numerous chopping marks have defaced the front of the sign.

The resident of the home, also named Zhao, recalled the sign hanging over a house that once stood on the property. A reporter then discovered in a book of genealogy that the former house may have belonged to Zhao Weicai, who received the sign as a wedding gift from Zhang Bilu.

Zhang is considered to be an important figure in Chinese history. Originally a Wanyuan resident, Zhang was among the first to fight the British in Sichuan before becoming the governor of Sichuan, Yunan, and Guizhou.

If the artifact can be authenticated, the Wanyuan Cultural Management Bureau has said it will have it restored and ensure it is protected.

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While many of the scenes in the film appear to be staged, it’s still a welcome bit of nostalgia. With the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution still to come, life in 1955 seems to reflect a simpler time.

A Sunday in Peking also shows that despite the rapid urbanization that defines modern China, some things haven’t changed. Beijing’s parks are still packed with people enjoying their time off, while city avenues are still jammed with tiny stores and alleys that lead to the city’s hutongs.

Most surprising however is that face masks worn by residents were about as common in 1955 Beijing as they are today. While there doesn’t seem to be as much air pollution and haze judging by the city’s blue skies, the city was still prone to sand storms. Perhaps least surprising, is the city’s love affair with military parades, which as the photos suggest, were just as popular 60 years ago as they are today.

Seeing face masks make an appearance in the documentary had a big impact on many Chinese netizens. One person wrote, “The smog back then was also severe,” while another said, “So back in 1955, Beijing already had smog?!!!”

Sunday in Peking recently had its Kodachrome film stock fully restored.

Here’s the video on Youku, with full English narration:

And here it is on Youtube:

The post Documentary Depicts A 1955 Beijing In Vivid Imagery appeared first on The Nanfang.

According to a Xinhua report, Macao-based heart surgeon, Dr. Tan Jianqiao, claims that ten Chinese emperors, including Kangxi and Qianlong, the second and sixth Emperors of the Qing dynasties, respectively,  died from smog while living in ancient Beijing.

In his book, Unheard Anecdotes of History: Medical Treatments that You’ve Never Heard About, Dr. Jianqiao argues that smog was a severe problem in ancient Beijing, and ten emperors died as a result.

Dr. Jianqiao poured through the imperial records and found that, during the twelfth lunar month of the sixth year of the Yuan Dynasty, “the fog that enshrouded the capital was so thick that it blocked out light from the sun for days, and the gates of the capital were hidden by the haze.” The smog was even worse during the Qing Dynasty, during which a “fog disaster” struck the capital in 1721, shrouding the city and blocking out the sun.

In 1856AD, the sixth year of Emperor Xianfeng’s reign, the imperial records show that, “upon entering the winter, snow was light but the fog was thick. Dust, rain, wind and fog all descending upon the capital, especially in the areas of Changping and Wanping.”

Chinese historians have been trying to prove that air pollution in Beijing is nothing new. It has been suggested that ancient China’s smog was worse than today’s, primarily because scholars at the time didn’t have access to modern technological devices for analysis.

Although a Chinese term exists for “air pollution”, many Chinese media eschew the term in favor of 雾霾 (wùmái), a combination of two words that describe the naturally occurring weather phenomenon of “fog” and “haze”. As such, wumai is often used to downplay the severity of air pollution, particularly when Chinese media write wumai as just one Chinese character.

So while wumai is a new term that reflects the growing concern of Beijing residents over the health risks of air pollution, these two Chinese terms have existed individually in Chinese language for perhaps thousands of years, and now have been used by Dr. Jianqiao as synonymous with air pollution in an industrialized and urbanized China.

The way Dr. Jianqiao explains wumai is that wu comes from natural sources, while mai comes from man-made sources. The reason smog could exist in ancient China is because of dust of the nearby desert as well as the bustling industry of the capital.

The Xinhua report doesn’t provide any direct proof that air pollution killed the ten Chinese emperors, as Dr. Jianqiao claims, but it does explain that Beijing’s air pollution is a natural extension of the capital’s past. Dr. Jianqiao argues that, as Beijing became the center for politics and culture, and as its population increased, so too did its PM 2.5 levels.

There will almost certainly be academic controversy about the doctor’s theory.  Professor Wu Dui, from the Atmosphere and Environment Safety and Pollution Control Research Auxiliary Center at Jinan University, pointed out that the dust storms of the past were natural phenomenons, while today’s “grey fog” was caused by man-made emissions. Dui also pointed out that Beijing itself is surrounded by mountains, allowing for heavy pollution to settle on top of the city.

We’d imagine that the emperors of old would be impressed with modern Beijing and its large-scale factories, extensive transportation network, and tens of millions of residents. And yet, they’d probably be concerned that these advancements caused the air pollution that possibly killed them.

The post Doctor Argues China’s Emperors Were Killed by Smog appeared first on The Nanfang.

Public reaction to McDonald’s plans to expand into West Lake, a Chinese tourist landmark often referred to as “heaven on earth”, was predictably dismissive. The Qianjiang Evening News criticized the plan, writing, “In the future, will Uncle McDonald (Ronald McDonald) with his red hair, and big smile on his face, be sitting on a bench just metres away from the Broken Bridge?” Online netizens reacted much the same. “This is a joke,” one person wrote on Weibo. “Can we turn Mao’s old house into a KFC?”

However, the outrage was not enough to sway the proposal. In addition to McDonald’s, a Starbucks also opened on the property two months ago.

Before approving the proposal, former Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, Chen Wenjin, argued the residence was a cultural resource and that any commercial proposals should pass the scrutiny of government agencies and experts.

Chen also said the administration would ensure that the residence’s facade and internal structure remain unchanged, and that the residence would continue to serve the public good.

Chiang Ching-kuo was given the two-story residence by the mayor of Hangzhou after the Kuomintang successfully repelled the Japanese invasion during World War II. Ching-kuo’s father, Chiang Kai-shek, was given another residence, also on the West Lake property. Chiang Ching-kuo is said to have planted many of the trees on the property.

After the Kuomintang was ousted from mainland China by the Communists, Chiang Ching-kuo eventually succeeded his father and became President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) where he enacted press and free speech reforms, and allowed local Taiwanese to obtain positions of power in the government.

This isn’t the first time Western fast food franchises have set up shop in culturally-significant locations. In 2007, following a campaign initiated by former CCTV anchor Rui Chenggang, public outcry forced Starbucks to close a store it had opened at the Forbidden City in Beijing.

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The Chinese public is upset after a 300 year-old cultural relic was defaced by two lovebirds at the Forbidden City in Beijing. The suspects won’t be hard to find, though, because they inscribed their names right into the relic.

The vandalized artifact was first posted online to the Weibo micro-blogging service on September 11. In a close-up of the vandalized 300 year-old Ming Dynasty bronze water vat, the names “Zhang Tao” and “Liu Ya” can be seen scrawled onto its surface, encircled by the shape of a heart.

Museum staff say that this type of vandalism happens every year, but that penalties aren’t strong enough to stop anyone else from doing it. Palace Museum staff say they have reported the incident to police.

“Every time I visit the Forbidden City in the future, I don’t want to see cultural relics that have been fully carved up by immoral tourists,” said one person. Some netizens even voiced support for establishing new laws that would further protect the historical treasures inside the Forbidden City.

Though no arrests have been made so far in the most recent case, others have been arrested for damaging relics at the Museum.

In 2013, 22 year-old Wang from Hubei was put into criminal detention and investigated for deliberately damaging cultural relics. Wang had damaged a Qing Dynasty clock by breaking a window pane in Yikun Palace.

But even without specific laws establishing harsher penalties for Forbidden Palace-related crimes, sentences handed out for such crimes already appear to be more severe than other normal cases.

In 2012, Shi Baikui was sentenced to 13 years in jail having stolen nine pieces of art from the Forbidden City the year before. Shi’s lawyer Huang Shiyong argued that his client had been punished unfairly, and was appealing to have ten years removed from his sentence. As Huang pointed out, “There is no legal provision saying that stealing from the Forbidden City is a crime more severe than other theft.”

Chinese tourists have long cultivated a bad reputation for poor behavior that includes vandalism, most famously in 2013 when Chinese teen Ding Jinhao scratched his name into a ancient Egyptian artifact at a Luxor temple. And yet at one point in time, staff at the Palace Museum were their own worst enemy.

In 2011, the institution that served to protect and operate the Forbidden City as a tourist destination suffered a string of embarrassing gaffes, culminating in a scandal that attracted criticism from state-run media outlets. Museum staff were forced to admit they had attempted to hide from the public a number of instances in which cultural artifacts were destroyed by staff. Among the destroyed historical relics include a thousand year-old porcelain dish from the Song Dynasty that was shattered into six pieces after being incorrectly handled by a researcher.

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