Comment

City needs to make tenants vacate cultural relic sites

By Yao Yuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-09 10:31

The fundamental way to ensure the safety of the city's cultural relic sites is to work out a timetable for tenants to vacate.

The city has already designated 54 cultural relic sites for protection. However, the drive has not made much difference in terms of cultural relic protection. As such, the Beijing municipal cultural heritage bureau will sue those tenants who have refused to make improvements in safety standards.

However, the essential cause for the safety risks is the traditional and historical use of the sites. Among the 324 sites that enjoy the protection of the city or even higher authorities, 70 percent are exposed to fire risks while 60 percent are deemed to have been used improperly.

In recent years, the government spent 690 million yuan on repairing 180 architectural relic sites. However, a total of 4,155 families are still residing in and near the sites. This means it needs about 10 billion yuan more to vacate these residents.

Of course, vacating the buildings is not just about evicting all the old Beijingers and making the sites into "dead museums". We also have to make flexible plans to keep the integrity of the historic buildings.

For instance, those memorable buildings can be made into museums or sightseeing places after residents leave. For some traditional residential buildings, we can ask residents to stay to keep the old Beijing flavor. We can also encourage owners of some old buildings to open family hotels so that domestic and overseas tourists can enjoy courtyard houses.

Different departments have to work together to vacate the historic buildings occupied by government institutions. The ownership of cultural relics is complicated. It is hard to solve the problem only by cultural relics departments. The government needs to encourage the development of suitable cultural and tourist industries, while relocating those unsuitable for the old city.

The fire in Nianhua Temple last year was the second that had struck an ancient temple since the 2004 Huguo Temple fire. The timetable for vacating the buildings should be made as soon as possible. Otherwise, it is possible that a fire will break out someday in some other cultural relic sites.

(Excerpts of a commentary that appeared in the Beijing News on Feb 8.)