 |
 |
Angry Chinese Blogger:
The news and views about China that the big media can't, or won't, tell you The is no single truth Menu: Home |
|
Entries By Country
   |
How can China expect the foreigners to respect its heritage, if it doesn’t?: 2000 years of history used to pave a driveway
Having stretched out, at its height, 6300KM through burning deserts and over freezing mountains, the Great Wall is wisely regarded as being one of the most ambitious constructions endeavors ever undertaken in the ancient world. However, despite its stone rampart, cultural, archaeological, and symbolic value to the Chinese people, even the Great Wall has not managed to defend against the latest barbarian invaders to threaten China, greed and self interest.
Today, of the original 6300KM, less than 2500KM remain of China’s great wall, and while much of this has been due to nature; with the elements simply eroding away sections of China’s history, a staggering amount has been down to human endeavors.
Under Threat
Despite possessing world heritage status, and being the first and last thing on the minds of many of the countless tourists who visit China each year, the very wall that kept China safe is now under threat, and from no one less that the Chinese people themselves.
With threats ranging from the organized plundering of the wall for stone, to town planners who considered it to be an ‘inconvenience’ for there to be a wall where they wanted to build a road, China’s heritage is being eaten away meter by meter each and every year.
The latest round of concern over the future of what is arguably one of China’s most valuable cultural icons comes after two night time incursions in February of this year, when construction workers in Ningxia, North China raided a section of the Great Wall near the city of Zhongwei for stone; completely destroying a 100 Meter section of the wall that had been standing since the Ming Dynasty. Their reason, they needed rubble to build a road.
This wasn’t the first time that the wall had been raided in Ningxia; in 2004, a 400 meter section of the wall simply ‘vanished’. Nobody was ever caught.
The Blame Game
Many critics of efforts to protect the wall have laid much of the blame on the governments decision to allow the wall to be administered regionally rather than centrally, saying that local authorities often lack the will and funding to protect sections of the wall that come under their jurisdiction, particularly in areas where the wall generates fewer tourist dollars than it takes to maintain and police it.
Though the government recently took damage limitation action and went as far as to take direct control of the wall in 2004, there has been a concerted call for Beijing to permanently centralize control of the wall under a single protective umbrella, and to redouble efforts to protect what remains of China’s largest archeological marvel.
Calls to permanently remove responsibility for the walls maintenance and control from local authorities come after several cases in which it was the local authorities themselves who were directly responsible for the destruction of sections of the wall by simply bulldozing track of Chinese history to allow for road building and other city expansion schemes.
Is History Cheaper than Building Rubble?
Much criticism has also been levelled at the low level of punishment for destroying sections of the wall, with Dong Yaohui, the vice president of the China Great Wall Academy, decrying the penalties placed on those who destroy eat away at China’s heritage as being paltry, saying that one man who raided the wall for stone received only a fine of 80,000CN Yuan ($US9700), notably less than he would have had to pay for the stone had he brought it commercially.
Can only Foreigners Desecrate Chinese History?
At the end of the day, the desecration of what is arguably the greatest symbol of Chinese culture and history begs two questions.
1. How can China expect the rest of the world to respect its heritage, when many Chinese people don’t?
2. When people in China accuses other countries of disrespecting its heritage, are they serious, or are they merely repeating a phrase that they heard somewhere?
Next time a Chinese tour guide tells a foreign tourist that they are standing on the site of an ancient building that was destroyed by British colonial forces, or an historic site that was burned to the ground by Japan Imperialist soldiers during the butchery of the 1940s, and says that it was a despicable act against China’s heritage, maybe that tourist should ask “what happened to 100 Metres of the Great Wall that ran through Ningxia, early in 2005?”.
Wow, hard to believe they wouldn't protect it with rules and stiff
punishment. For some reason, that surprises me more than many of your
other posts.
Visit me @ http://www.theloonybin.blog-city.com/
The Chinese government is very authoritarian but also very selective. They
are very hot on some things, but not on others. If something doesn’t
threaten the survival of the government or contradict what the government
is telling people, it is low on the list of things to stop.
An Example
In 2003 several pirated soccer games were widely available in Chinese internet cafés and nothing was done to halt their use but, in 2004, a game appeared that depicted Taipei as having its own soccer team. The government immediately threatened to put any café that distributed the game out of commission along with any website that allowed people to download it.
The games use was halted not under copyright legislation but under rules governing the status of Chinese Taiwan.
There is also a certain amount of apathy towards the wall in areas where it doesn’t make money. If tourists don’t want to come and see it, it is sometimes thought of as little more than a stretch of inconveniently located stone or rammed earth that happens to sit right where you want to build something.
Along side this mixed application of authoritarianism, I have often found that many people in China will only become defensive about something when the perceived slight comes from a foreign country. It is OK for a Chinese factory owner to work their employees into an early grave, but if the factory owner has a foreign backer, then that foreign backer is automatically branded as monster who is exploiting the Chinese people.
You can bet that if a US lorry were to back into the wall and damage it, the government would demand substantially more than $US9700 from the company that owned the lorry.
I find your story of the destruction done to the Wall upsetting and
shocking, as well as your response to CrazyGirl about the response to
foreigners' actions vs. Chinese actions. Are they schizy?
Visit me @ http://www.journalscape.com/rhubarb/
I'm not sure if you are shocked at me, or about the situation, but it is a
common trait in China, and in many other countries, to be apathetic towards
something when it is one of your own, and then to be angry about it when it
is somebody else doing it.
Though this problem is especially pronounced in Chinese society. The minute that a foreigner is involved, the knives come out.
I'm afraid that I had to look up schizy in a dictionary. I'm not very good with British or American slang.
I was shocked at the destruction of The Wall. I well imagine that
construction companies might need stone and "wild" stone is always up for
grabs, but using part of a precious national heritage seems to me to be
unconscionable.
I meant schizy in the sense that the attitudes toward
foreign vs domestic actions are characterized by the coexistence of
disparate or antagonistic elements. Hmmmm...not any clearer? I seem to be
afflicted by polysyllabic posturing today. Just as bad as using slang, I
suspect.
Please forgive me.
Visit me @ http://www.journalscape.com/rhubarb/
Heritage, chinese, respect? Have you been on a Chinese tour of their
cultural sites. It's a sprint from picture location to picture location.
The site itself and its surroundings cultural or otherwise are completely
ignored. It is merely backdrop to the pictures. That was truly one of the
saddest things I witnessed.
You forgot to mention that you will undoubtedly be lead to each picture
location by a woman with a yellow flag and a bullhorn. The latter is mainly
to be used in areas such as temples and gardens dedicated to tranquility.