A few days ago, thousands of ancient cultural relics and thousands of ancient tombs were discovered in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, during the construction of the subway and the expansion of the airport, which sparked the attention of a large number of netizens. In the picture: yellow is the area of Tang Dynasty imperial tombs and red is the area of Han Dynasty imperial tombs. (Zhihu @Mengdi Tenfang)
A few days ago, thousands of ancient cultural relics and thousands of ancient tombs were discovered in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, during the construction of the subway and expansion of the airport, sparking a lot of concern among netizens about the damage to cultural relics caused by large-scale infrastructure.
Experts say that the Chinese Communist Party has not only burned cultural relics and monuments, paintings and books through the Cultural Revolution since it stole the government, but in recent years, it has been vigorously digging graves and robbing tombs for so-called archaeological research under the pretext of construction, which is actually aggravating the destruction of ancient cultural relics.
Shaanxi TV News February 17 news, the New Year of the Ox during, Xi’an City Institute of Cultural Relics Protection and Archaeological Research subway line eight Changming Road vehicle section of the archaeological team does not stop work, to protect the subway construction.
Xi’an Metro Line 8 is located in the eastern suburbs of the Sui and Tang tombs dense area, since the archaeological work was launched in April last year, so far has been explored and found all kinds of ancient remains 1574, including 1356 ancient tombs, ancient kilns 4, unearthed all kinds of cultural relics about 140 pieces (groups).
The official microblog of Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics (Hantang.com) on Feb. 15 reported that during the New Year period, the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute’s Airport New City Archaeological Research Base mobilized all members to give up their vacations and work overtime to carry out archaeological excavations to ensure the smooth progress of the Xi’an Xianyang International Airport Phase III expansion project (groundbreaking in July 2020).
According to the news, within the scope of the construction project, the exploration found a total of more than 4,600 ancient cultural relics of various types, including more than 3,500 ancient tombs of various periods, the number and scale of the relics are very huge and the task of archaeological excavation is very arduous.
The two news items mentioned above have been read by more than 1.5 million people on Chinese web portals, and netizens have commented viciously: “Building the subway while digging for antiques.” “Is it archaeology for the expansion of the airport or the expansion of the airport for archaeology?” “Shaanxi is to engage in a construction to engage in an ancient tomb.” “It is true that in Xi’an everything works in archaeology.”
“Alterations and expansions, early to change the ancient capital of tolerance.” “Ancient people: I have been buried as far as possible to the edge of Chang’an City, and still be dug out by you.” “Archaeology is not digging up people’s ancestral graves, talking so lofty.” “Obviously is digging graves, have to make it look like archaeology.”
“A good ‘large underground community’ said demolition on demolition, this is to protect a peaceful land god how embarrassed?” “If the tomb-robbing infrastructure, that can be openly dug.” “Thinking about it from another perspective, how many cultural relics have been destroyed by the construction of Xi’an in the past seventy years?”
“I wonder what there is to be proud of in this? Since we know it’s a historical city, why don’t we protect it properly?” “There are many historical records of kings and generals buried there, so why choose that area?” “Why build a subway when you know that there are antiquities everywhere? How many cultural relics will be destroyed? This is a crime!” “No peace for the ancients!” “No evil can be done! Lawlessness! Virtuous!” “Oh, disturbing the sleeping ancients will be condemned by heaven.”
Li Yuanhua, an expert in Chinese history and former associate professor at the School of Education Science of Capital Normal University, told the Epoch Times that the netizens’ statement represents the basic view of the general public, knowing that there are a large number of cultural relics, including tombs, under the ground in this area, and not taking measures to protect them, but in the name of modernization in the overall urban development planning to make “one side of a thousand cities”. It is destroying the ancient cities with historical and cultural deposits or historical and cultural deposits. “In fact, this itself is a manifestation of disrespect for Culture, or a manifestation of the absence of culture.”
According to information, Xi’an’s western neighbor, Xianyang City, from the Qin Xiaogong built the capital after six generations of monarchs, so far 2400 years of history. Xianyang Airport is located on the Xianyang Plateau, where there are as many as 27 imperial tombs and more than 400 accompanying tombs, such as the Zhou Mausoleum (the tomb of King Wen of Zhou and King Wu of Zhou), the Western Han Dynasty imperial tombs burial area, Zhaoling (the tomb of Emperor Taizong of Tang), Qian Mausoleum (the combined tomb of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Wu Zetian), which is a concentrated distribution area of tombs from the Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Xi’an is also the ancient capital of 13 dynasties, where numerous emperors, generals and royalty are buried.
Large tombs around Xianyang Airport (white block in the picture). (Zhihu @Mengdi Tenfang)
Grave digging and grave robbing aggravate the destruction of ancient cultural relics
Starting in the 1950s, the CCP continued to discover ancient tomb relics during the so-called construction work in Xi’an, after which arbitrary excavations began under the pretext of large-scale infrastructure.
According to information, incomplete statistics, from 2002 to 2014, Xi’an’s cultural relics department has excavated nearly 1,000 ancient tombs of different periods. For example, more than 60 Qin and Han tombs were excavated in 2002; more than 60 tombs were excavated during the construction of the second phase of the Xianyang Airport expansion project; more than 130 ancient tombs were excavated during the construction of Xi’an Metro Line 2; and more than 600 tombs were excavated at one Time during the construction of the new campus of Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications.
In March 2019, the suspected capital city of Yong King Zhang Han was discovered during the second phase of Xi’an Metro Line 5. From August to December, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated a large Tang Dynasty tomb with four patios and front and rear brick coupon chambers in Yan Village, Di Zhang Street, Xi’an New Airport City, and excavated tomb records confirming that the owner of the tomb was Xue Shao, the first horse-in-law of the Tang Princess Taiping, who was buried in the first month of the second year of Shen Long (706).
Officials said that in the whole year of 2020, Shaanxi completed a total of about 11.8 million square meters of archaeological exploration, excavating 3,956 ancient tombs and 105,800 square meters of ancient sites. An average of 10 ancient tombs were discovered every day. The ancient sites are Fenghao site, Liujiawa site, Qin Xianyang city site, etc., the official said the archaeological results are fruitful.
Netizen “not think Shu niche travel” said, “a Xi’an city half of China’s history. The underground of Xi’an is the historical witness of my great country.”
Li Yuanhua said, “Since ’49, the Chinese Communist Party has been destroying traditional culture on a large scale, from the surface of cultural relics and monuments, including cultural relics, books, calligraphy and paintings to the ‘Four Olds’.”
Now it is vigorously digging graves and robbing tombs on the pretext of construction, conducting so-called archaeological research and aggravating the destruction of ancient cultural relics, “in fact it is not archaeological excavation because it is actually disrespecting this historical and cultural relics. It is only concerned about large-scale infrastructure construction, construction in which they can make a lot of money, from the heart there is no idea of protecting cultural relics, then, this excavation is actually (to ancient cultural relics) is a destructive and devastating.”
Recent Comments