The demolition of Jiuhua Agricultural Science Demonstration Park in Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District, Beijing, has ended with the total destruction of the community. It is noteworthy that a monument named “Yuan’s Three Rites Former Residence” was also demolished in the community.
In early February this year, the famous monument “Yuan’s Three Rites Residence”, located in the Jiuhua Agricultural Science and Technology Demonstration Park, a residential area in Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District, Beijing, was completely demolished by the demolition crew. This traditional house, built in the Ming Dynasty, was reduced to a ruin.
On November 17 last year, hundreds of black-clad men hired by Wang Hongmin, the secretary of Xiaotangshan town of the Communist Party of China, broke through the residents and poured into the Jiuhua Agricultural Science Demonstration Park, forcibly demolishing the community and treating the residents left behind with water, electricity, natural gas and violent beatings. Previously, our reporter had a continuous follow-up report on the above process.
It is worth noting that one of the monuments in the neighborhood, called “Yuan’s Three Rites Residence”, also met with the fate of being demolished in early February this year. The former residence was built in the Ming Dynasty and was originally located on Nanheng Street in Xuanwu District, Beijing, and was the ancestral Home of three brothers, Yuan Fuli, a geologist and archaeologist active in the late Qing Dynasty and Republican period, and one of the discoverers of the Yangshao Culture, Yuan Tongli, former director of the Beijing Library, and Yuan Dunli, former president of Beijing Normal University. He bought all the five rooms in the courtyard of the building, dismantled them and transported them to the vacant land he rented in the Jiuhua Agricultural Science Demonstration Park for reconstruction. After ten years, Zong Tongchang poured out his pension and completed the reconstruction with the assistance of experts in accordance with the “Building Method”. However, just four years later, the building was once again faced with the fate of being demolished.
According to China’s “Netease News” on Jan. 18 of this year, Zong Tongchang had to personally carry out the first demolition in order to save the building, in order to try to protect some parts of the building that have heritage value. In the cold climate, Zong Tongchang had multiple frostbite.
However, on January 21, Changping local folk literature and history scholar Gao Jianjun posted an article on his own media “Follow Gao Jian Go Changping”, saying that “the imitation of the ‘Yuan’s Three Rites Residence’ is a near farce It’s Time to end the ‘cultural preservation rights'”. In the article, Gao said that since Yuan’s Sanli Residence has not been recognized by the cultural relics department, the building restored by Zong Tongchang using some of the old materials of the building cannot be considered a cultural relic. And according to Beijing’s newly revised “Beijing Municipal Regulations on Prohibiting Illegal Construction”, which came into effect on November 15, 2020, the Yuan’s Sanli Residence restored by Zong Tongchang is “illegal construction”. Gao Jianjun also said that he was “abused and ridiculed” by “private letters” because he refused to protect Yuan’s Sanli residence.
The company’s first-ever “The House of the Three Rites” was demolished by a bulldozer on Feb. 2, according to a source on Weibo. The informant said, “forced demolition is to make a building all into rubble, demolition can be dismantled in steps, most of the building materials can still be used.” Until February 13, Zong Tongchang was still at the site of the demolition, watching over the ruins of the former residence of Yuan’s three rites.
On the encounter of Yuan’s three rites of the former residence, now living in the United States, the community owner Luo Mingzhu said in an interview with reporters on February 16, Gao Jianjun is only a “no one” scholars, the lack of qualifications to identify cultural relics. She said: “heritage ‘repair as old’, ‘built off-site’ are very normal. What qualifications does he have to judge the ‘old as old’ heritage is not a heritage?”
She also said that Zong Tongchang off-site reconstruction of Yuan’s three rites of the former residence of the land from the town of Xiaotangshan investment project, and the use of land has a contractual basis. She said: “Is it not agreed to follow the rule of law? Forced demolition of cultural relics, grinding it into a pile of rubble, is this considered to be in accordance with the rule of law?”
On February 2, 2021, informed sources announced on Weibo that the former residence of Yuan’s three rites was bulldozed and demolished.
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