In 2021, when archaeologists opened the Xuewei No 1 Tomb in Dulan county, Qinghai province, the tomb chamber was a picture of chaos. Many artifacts were missing, while others lay scattered in pieces, bearing clear evidence of repeated tomb raids.
As the tomb was identified to be from the period of a Tuyuhun khanate, a crucial power contemporary with the Tang Dynasty (618-907), conservators of cultural relics immediately launched research on how to protect the fragile remains and turn them into timeless treasures.
After four years of concerted efforts, they restored several artifacts including the first-known "golden armor" from the Tang period discovered in China, an exquisite bronze cauldron replete with ethnic features, and a burnished lacquer plate with gold and silver inlay.
Guo Zhengchen, a researcher at the Key Laboratory of Archaeological Sciences and Cultural Heritage of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who participated in the restoration effort, said that in addition to making tangible achievements, the program also introduced a new cooperative mode.
Unlike traditional restoration practices, which focus solely on excavated artifacts, their missing spatial context and disease states, the team that was formed for the Xuewei No 1 Tomb project integrated multidisciplinary experts from the start, making conservation a core theme throughout the duration of the excavation work, Guo said.
This practice is precisely a microcosm of the upgrading of China's cultural relics protection initiative. "It marks innovations in our cultural relics protection methodology, fulfilling our goal of 'excavating with a focus on protection and conserving with a focus on interpretation'," Guo added.
President Xi Jinping's consistent attention to cultural relics protection has greatly augmented the development of the practice, bringing continuous progress across China.
As the International Day for Monuments and Sites falls on Saturday, Xi's guidance has encouraged cultural conservators to further devote themselves to prolonging the existence of China's priceless artifacts.
Since the 18th Communist Party of China National Congress in 2012, Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, has toured more than 100 cultural heritage sites and made important instructions on the importance of archaeology and cultural relics conservation.
In a guideline statement released in 2016, Xi called cultural relics "a valuable legacy from our ancestors", emphasizing that conservation will benefit future generations.
Cultural relics and heritage uphold the brilliance of the Chinese civilization and legacy, and they help Chinese people bond better with the strong ethos they embody, he said.
"While prioritizing the protection of historical and cultural heritage, we need to make the best use of it in providing public cultural services and meeting the people's intellectual and cultural needs," Xi said at the 23rd group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in 2020.
Previously, in 2016, Xi also urged the full implementation of China's principles regarding its cultural relics work — protection first, rescue priority, utilization rational and management strict.
Sun Hua, an archaeology professor at Peking University, said the principles place cultural relics conservation at the core of all related work. They prioritize the rescue of cultural relics, emphasize their important role in socioeconomic development while ensuring their safety, and strengthen management to provide the essential support for effective protection and appropriate utilization.
"The principles make it very clear in simple words the priorities and major tasks of our country's cultural relics work, and the sequence and interrelationships among them," Sun said.
In 2022, China upgraded the principles regarding its cultural relics work. The revised version still places protection first, but also urges enhanced management, value exploration and effective utilization, calls for making cultural relics "alive", and aims to promote a deep integration of cultural heritage protection and modern society.
During his visit to Yuncheng, Shanxi province, the same year, Xi highlighted the new principles and urged a comprehensive improvement in the protection and use of cultural relics and the inheritance of cultural heritage.
Sun, the archaeology professor, said the revised principles further clarify how to make rational use of cultural relics. "We have put tremendous effort to realize this cause. The newly added clauses highlight our goal of bringing cultural relics back to life and making their value understood by more people, so that a wider audience can benefit from our protective endeavors," he added.
Overarching framework
In his 2016 guideline statement, Xi urged Party and government departments to enhance their sense of awe regarding history and cultural relics, and to keep in mind that this conservation effort is also part of their official duties. Therefore, institutional construction and law-making have been continuously advanced in this area.
Sun noted that China's cultural relics conservation effort has achieved rapid progress through the establishment of cultural relics protection laws and regulations, the development of cultural institutions and museums at all levels, the improvement of protection and management systems, and the substantial increase in funding for cultural relics protection.
Since the implementation of the Law on Protection of Cultural Relics in 1982, the State Council, China's Cabinet, as well as relevant departments and local governments, have formulated a series of supporting regulations, essentially establishing a legal and regulatory framework for cultural relics protection in China, Sun said.
Moreover, governments at all levels have set up administrative and professional bodies for the protection and management of cultural relics, ensuring that their preservation is now governed by law and enforced by designated authorities, he added.
Last year, the revised Law on Protection of Cultural Relics took effect, marking a new era of legal governance in protection efforts.
China has announced 5,058 National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units, a designation for the nation's most significant and legally protected immovable cultural relics sites, which were identified in eight batches between 1961 and 2019. The first five batches totaled 1,271 sites; the sixth batch covered 1,081 sites; and the seventh included 1,944 sites.
"As China's economy has developed, the country has taken on greater responsibility for the protection of cultural relics and has invested more resources," Sun said.
Tech empowerment
In 2019, President Xi visited the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, and underscored the need to leverage advanced technologies to strengthen the protection and research of cultural relics and enhance the professional level of research teams.
In recent years, technological measures have been widely applied in this field.
Du Xiaofan, an archaeology professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, noted that modern technologies play an irreplaceable role when treating newly unearthed artifacts from archaeological sites, especially some organic relics that are extremely unstable, such as silk textiles, water-saturated wooden and lacquer ware, and jiandu, or inscribed wooden and bamboo slips.
For example, when thousands of water-saturated bamboo slips were unearthed years ago from the mausoleum of Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) Marquis Haihun in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, these would quickly lose moisture, deform and crack once exposed to air, and the inscribed characters would disappear.
Researchers had to immediately place these bamboo slips into a protective liquid and rush them to laboratories for systematic dehydration, consolidation, cleaning, flattening and information interpretation, thereby protecting the artifacts and the information they carried to the largest extent, Du said.
"The traditional Chinese restoration and protection techniques, centered on experience, have been reshaped by modern scientific knowledge, restoration ethics and values. They are no longer closed or experience-oriented, but are open to dialogue with modern science and technology," he added.
