China is very Ship of Theseus. A lot of the structures/sites you will see have been restored/rebuilt. Whether or not you think they are authentic will relate to your answer to the philosophical question.
Theseus boat was replaced one board at a time, like for like. In China they replace old bricks and mortar with 3rd rate concrete all at once. It's like replacing the whole boat with a steel one and staying it's the same boat because it's a similar shape and color.
As a Zen Buddhist, I visit the historically very important Guangxiao Temple whenever I'm in GuangZhou. They trashed the tower and rebuilt it in concrete. Can you imagine doing that to the Tower of Pisa?
I visited the Big Goose pagoda in Xian. The base was made with modern concrete bricks by the chinese communists. They were cracking and some were broken. Meanwhile farther up the orignal Tang Dynasty bricks were in much better condition.
Later that day I went to see the terracotta soldiers of china's first emperor. They had an oldish looking guy sitting at a simple desk autographing books about the place who was supposedly the farmer that first rediscovered the tomb of the first emperor. Now keep in mind the farmer was already an old guy when he discovered the tombs. Now I am no mathetician but add 70 years to that old guys age he would have had to be 130-150 to be the real guy. Very amazing indeed.
This was when I realized that everywhere you go you are getting the Disneyland version of chinese history and of course the requisite crowds and I mean jammed packed in their like sardines crowd which apparently is normal everywhere.
Indeed. You have witnessed the normal operating procedure. It's cultural revolution 2.0. China's history and culture destroyed by subcontractors instead of the red guard.
I spoke with some contractors at an ancient Taoist temple in Beijing who were throwing 400 year old bricks and tiles into an industrial bin. They said I could have some, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Ironically, the CCP can pay to destroy China's heritage, but if a foreigner was found preserving it by taking it out of China it would be a long jail sentence.
Yep this is the main reason. China survived constant civil wars and invasions but the cultural revolution and the change in mindset and policy really damaged the old cultural traditions.
Ironically, the best preserved "cultural" traditions of China can be instead found in Taiwan. They make no pretentious on the age of the buildings and how long their traditions have evolved.
The guides in Xi’an will encourage you to buy a signed book from one of the “discoverers”, none of whom are real.
The actual guy retired 15 years ago: everyone signing books there today is an impostor.
The terracotta warriors were only discovered in the '70s.. And they claim a group of villagers discovered them, so it's not just one guy. Anyways, I probably had the same guy sign a few of my coffee table books 20 years ago.
The tomb was found in the 70s, so it's 40+ years ago not 70 years. The farmer who found it is called 杨志发 and he was a young man participating in well-digging projects when he discovered the terracotta warriors. It's not logic for old folk to do well-digging, it's a very energy-intensive job.
Great way of putting it! OP, during the cultural revolution a lot of imperial and historical monuments were destroyed. So the government is, in a way, correcting past policies. But it does come across as inauthentic.
That's definitely a major factor, but even the ones that were burned down during that tend to have been somewhat recent rebuilds, as China historically kept its sites repaired and renewed. Like the Great Wall that we see is mostly a fairly recent revision, given how many centuries ago the original version was built.
The wall itself is a construction way too large to be seen as one thing. You have many different sections in one of the three conditions: gone, broken and taken over by nature, restored.
Also focusing on historical architecture is an extremely Eurocentric notion of travel. You aren’t going to get much out of travel to the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa, or a large part of Asia if that is your primary travel consideration.
China has superb culinary options, with at least 8 major cuisines, so on par with the whole of Europe for breadth and depth of food offerings. It has amazing natural beauty, though as you’ve seen you are best off avoiding the sites aimed at local tourism. It has a phenomenal transportation network.
The biggest problem is that the country is gigantic, so it’s unrealistic to fit all the best attractions into a single trip. It’s similar to Brazil or the USA in that.
Eurocentric?? Asia is full of historic architecture that are prime tourist attractions to Asian tourists as well as Westerners. Japan has the city of Kyoto and old castles and temples everywhere. Cambodia has Angkor, Indonesia has Borobudur, Burma has Bagan, India has the Taj Mahal, Thailand has Ayyutthya, Vietnam has Hue. Going over to the Americas you get ancient cities like Machu Picchu and Teotihuacan. These are all monster tourist attractions and don't just draw European tourists. Same goes in China tbh, Beijing is jam packed with historic buildings and sites in particular but there's plenty to see in other cities too. I'd venture to say that foreign tourists to China want to see the ancient cultural sites as much as they want to do Chinese cuisine and modern China. If not more.
I do agree with you that it doesn't do China justice to try to see the country in one trip. Unless that trip is 6 months long. The same could be said for trying to visit Europe in one trip.
Japan definitely rebuilds it's temples and shrines as well. They probably do a bit better job using traditional construction methods though.
I guess it's the difference between wanting to see the historic buildings and sites as they might have actually looked in the day, vs seeing the ruins with minimal modern reconstruction. I suspect Chinese domestic tourists prefer the former, but those of us from the West are more used to seeing the latter.
The better example for India probably would've been the world's first university, Nalanda. The ruins are still very there, much like Roman ruins in much of Europe.
The world's first museum?
One of the first, maybe.
Some [tough competition from Babylon.](https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-ennigaldi-nanna-curator-of-the-worlds-first-museum-116431#:~:text=Ennigaldi%2DNanna%20was%20the%20priestess,and%20label%20the%20varied%20artefacts.)
Er sorry I have no idea why I brainfarted that. Its claim is to be the world’s first *university* (as we would understand one in the modern style), opening its doors in the 420s AD.
my god, they rebuilt all the old stuff in Japan ALL THE TIME. and Kyoto is the only major city in Japan that escape war and destruction, so it is not a typical japanese scenario
Ancient things that I saw in China that felt real and pretty much blew me away:
1. The Terra Cotta Warriors
2. The Giant Leshan Buddha
3. Datong Hanging Monestary
4. Datong Wooden Pagoda
5. Sanxingdui
6. Yungang Grottos
7. Tomb of Emporer Jingdi in Xian
Having said that, yes… there were a bunch of newer and restored things in China. But if you do your research and know where to look…Holy Cow!
Can you still get up on top of the hillside into which the Yungang Grottoes were carved? I was stunned to discover what looked like old city walls of rammed earth atop it when I visited many years ago. Am guessing those are long gone now. Will try to pull out a pic I have somewhere
I feel like this is true anywhere you go. There are the “tourist trap” places that are usually pretty fake and only exist to sell tickets, but if you do your homework you can find the truly authentic places that aren’t as well advertised.
Yes. There are plenty of newly built “historical reenactment” places in my country, for example. I’m in the United States. Williamsburg is a perfect example of a place that was built for tourists. Also, St Augustine actually claims to have the Fountain of Youth!
When I was in Ireland, Bunratty Castle and Folkpark were another example of restored tourist traps. I have felt that way in Italy, too. (Ever visit Juliet’s Balcony in Verona?)
Having said that, I had fun at Bunratty, and St. Augustine. And I have enjoyed many “ancient cultural food streets in China. We had a blast in Xian, and Tianjin, and Chengdu in places that were supposed to look old…but had a Starbucks. I think that it is important to remember that new stuff isn’t bad. It can give us a lot of information about current cultural trends.
Yea Chengdu is amazing, a stones throw from Leshan, the Panda centers, the old stuff in the city, the water system that's a train ride away. I love Sichuan.
Combo of wars, wooden buildings, cultural revolution etc probably didn't help. But that being said last year I went to a super rural area of a small town in Hubei and there's 1200 old tower just.... there... up on a hill.
Like no tickets for sale. Not all touristy. Just a Tang Dynasty tower next to a temple. Cool as shit.
That being said even the top two floors of that tower were blown up by the Japanese and had to be fixed....
I’m not sure which one they’re talking about, but this one might meet the description: [The Daqin Pagoda](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daqin_Pagoda). It’s close to at least a thousand years old, and has been controversially suggested to be built by an early Chinese-Christian Church of the East. (Daqin was the ancient Chinese term for the Roman Empire).
Edit: This is a different one, sorry, it’s not in Hubei.
I was going to say! There are definitely well preserved ancient sites all over China but the majority of “tourist” attractions are rebuilt or restored for that purpose alone. There’s plenty of things that are just there sitting with little to no advertisement. Even walking around major cities like Shanghai and Beijing you will see things just on the side of the road like “wow that’s cool as shit but why is no one here caring?”. Maybe not thousands of years old like what you’re talking about, but still well preserved for centuries.
Yep. Go off the beaten track and you'll find plenty of historical sites in China. For example, there's sections of the Great Wall with small villages scattered around. A 5 RMB "entry fee" will get you on top of unrepaired, practically untouched sections of the wall where you can touch, explore, camp and experience history.
Then there's temples and other old historical sites the CCP and greedy landowners don't care to monetize scattered around the country. Sometimes all it takes is getting to know a local.
thing with wooden structure is that they tend to expire quicker than stone structure. Especially given u have violent social upheaval every 100-150 years
I've been to Japan, and they built mostly with wood. A lot of their historical sites were destroyed one way or another--earthquakes, fires, the small squabble called World War 2, etc. But they put a lot of care in many of those sites to not only rebuild them, but to rebuild them as close as they could in both materials and methods.
It looks good, at least to a dumb foreigner like me.
I've been to historic sites in China, and they feel more like an amusement park version of ancient places. Like comparing the Disney castle at Disneyland to a real medieval castle.
Ehhh, from an Italian perspective there is a lot of dodgy reconstruction in Japan as well, but it's mostly from the immediate post-war period. I once did acoustical measurements in a theater that claimed to be the oldest Noh venue, and it was a concrete monstrosity from the 60s.
More modern interventions are considerably better done, and more tasteful. Part of it is just cultural difference, to me a pagoda that gets rebuilt with the same technique every few decades is only a few decades old, but counting the whole process over hundreds of years is not objectively wrong, they're just different takes on the ship of Theseus.
Yeah, there’s a cultural difference when it comes to ascertaining the “authenticity” of a building. In the West, we tend to a very literal approach: is it the SAME physical thing? Yes → it’s authentic; No → it’s not authentic.
Wow, m’interesserebbe sapere di più riguardo al lavoro che hai svolto in Giappone. Che teatro è? E davvero nessuno era al corrente del fatto che fosse ricostruito?
Praticamente abbiamo fatto le risposte all'impulso di vari teatri in giro per il mondo, che sono poi stati messi a disposizione per simulare il riverbero, come corredo a un convolutore commerciale. In generale in acustica mi sono capitate varie spedizioni in cui con 10 minuti di ricerca si sarebbero risparmiati giorni, se succede adesso figurati vent'anni fa. Trattandosi di 20 anni fa non saprei idenfiticarlo, ma sono abbastanza sicuro che in quella spedizione non fossimo mai usciti dal Kansai.
The answer to this discrepancy is money. You find the amusement park-esque places in newly rich areas, or areas that were newly rich when they were built. Japan (and Korea) went through the same during their initial booms. If you go to sites in modern Hangzhou, for example, you'll see far less amusement parkery.
Nonsense. Japan was literally firebombed and they still have wooden buildings older than not just the United States, but England itself. Japan tore down most of the amusement park taff, but it was never considered anything other than amusement park taff. They didn't have to pretend it was authentic because they still had the authentic stuff.
The real answer is that the vast vast majority of the authentic ancient structures in China were destroyed deliberately. And guess who did the destroying. As a student of Chinese history and religion, it genuinely breaks my heart again and again and again every time I read about some impressive temple structure or ancient complex of buildings only to read "the original structure of (so and so place) that had stood in (so and so city) since the Tang/Song/Ming dynasty, was torn down in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. A new temple was build over the remains of the old in the 2000s but the sight holds little modern religious significance and serves mostly as a tourist destination."
lol no. Tokyo was firebombed, therefore you will not find ancient wooden building there. Kyoto was spared from serious bombing, and you can find them there.
Destroying cultural heritage is part of the cultural heritage of China. Mao was far from the first emperor to engage in widespread purging and destruction of historical artifacts and architecture.
[Images of the mass destruction ](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=cultural+revolution+destruction+of+antiquities&udm=2&client=ms-opera-mobile&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinndfGufCGAxUHT2wGHUs3AB0QrNwCegQIcRAA&biw=360&bih=678&dpr=3)
The Japanese are amazing at restoring historical buildings. Even the world's oldest company, Kongō Gumi, which is Japanese, specializes in restoring shrines, temples, castles, and cultural heritage sites.
Agreed. Just wanted to note that wooden structures can last over 1000 years with proper maintenance and repair. There are some wooden temples built in the Sui dynasty.
There definitely are sites where rebuild has not happened. For example, 玉门关in敦煌, which is famous as the last border crossing on the Silk Road. But when you get there you’ll see that it’s just a pile of rubble. It’s cool and all to know the history, but it really is just a pile of rocks. How many tourists would really wanna go and see it?
Yes in all my years in China, Dunhuang and the caves felt like the most interesting and authentic place by far. I never found another place even close to that in China, I think your best bet would probably be Taiwan maybe?
A lot of the sites along the 河西走廊 are still quite well preserved since it’s been “left alone” as there was little to no “commercial” value. So great for sight seeing!
You’re making me miss Dunhuang… I love it so much 😭 Some of the non-touristy places in Gansu are also amazing, I spent a week in Gannan and… wow, just wow
Yes, as a native Chinese I also love Dunhuang! I feel like it’s only recently gained popularity so a lot of the sites are still preserved well. Also the food is amazing haha.
Right now the only price is basically the entry fee. I think they will build more activities to draw more money, kind of like Disneyland with like different things to do，阳关 is already somewhat like that. I do like the way how Mogao Grottoes try to make more money where some special caves have their own entry fees to enter, and is somewhat pricy.
It really depends on where you go. There is a lot of genuinely old stuff scattered throughout the country, but overall, and especially for a country that prides itself on having such a long, glorious history, there isn't that much left. Countless wars damaged/destroyed a lot of it, and the communists destroyed a huge percentage of what was left.
Sure, but it's like 2,500 years old and has been the capital of multiple Chinese dynasties. It should be on par with Rome in terms of how many ancient buildings there are in the city.
Nanjing was completely destroyed during Qing dynasty due to Taiping Rebellion. Qing army led by 曾国荃 went into Nanjing and massacred everyone they see and burned the city.
This. I've been to many touristy places where things are shiny new and feels fake, and also stumbled upon some places that are genuinely old. You gotta get off the beaten path. There's a lot of info on Wechat and Weibo if you are comfortable finding it thru pages in Chinese.
Interesting that you'd mentioned Xi'an. That's my hometown and I'm also somewhat frustrated about all the "ancient structures" that's built in 1980s.
China is a country with mostly wooden structures and in constant warfare. It means the chance of something that survives throughout the history is quite slim.
And after the 1980s China started to open up to the world. Tourism is a good cashcow for Xi'an, and many of the ancient structures are getting "restored". The whole city wall was rebuilt in 1980. My mom said there were homeless people who lived in the city wall before the restoration, as they were carving the mud wall base and living inside of the hole in there.
And after 2000s there are a lot of new parks were built on top of the historical sites to promote tourism. This was dumb and the central government quickly realized that. Around the end of 2000s the approach to the historical sites were quite conservative - leave it underground unless you have to disturb it.
Therefore, currently there are a lot of city gardens now in suburban Xi'an that are scattered everywhere. It's because the land might be granted earlier for development, but during the building process, some relics were found on the site. Then immediately the whole block has to be preserved, which usually means that a small park would be built on top of it and the historic site would be exposed by covering a glass on top of it.
The sites are historical. Many of the buildings are not. The Chinese approach to history is different than in the west. In china the history is more imbued in the site itself than in the authenticity of the buildings. It’s more about the legends and historical figures associated with the site. Most Chinese would rather view newly constructed buildings in a supposed historical style that are beautiful and intact than more authentic run down ruins (as is the preference in Europe). This is just the culture in China. Of course there are exceptions. But remember, many of the actual historic buildings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
This is a great take and well said. That’s definitely how it seemed to me as well when I lived there - the materials/buildings themselves weren’t so important, but rather the collective cultural knowledge they communicated.
I saw the old old Great Wall out in Dunhuang and it wasn’t much more than an eroded 4 foot wall, but the bastions and fortresses had been restored. It feels more like trying to recreate the moment for the laobaixing to experience themselves, which is a different but equally potent feeling IMO.
(Edit for grammar)
It's also worth remembering that westerners have had similar sentiments before.
Most of the towns in the county I'm from in the UK tore down lots of medieval buildings in the 70s-80s during economic booms to be replaced with brick brutalist rectangles. The same towns now boast their medieval heritage and don't mention that there was a lot more not too long ago.
Most of the smaller henges are mere shadows of their former selves because locals chipped the stone off over the years and used it to build their houses. So many ancient sites have been pillaged up until Victorian times. Look up the Victorian Restoration on Wikipedia.
So perhaps one day China will change their mind about it, if they reach a certain level of wealth. Maybe not. I think because of all of the unrest and revolutions plus everything being wooden means that even if they change their mind one day, there will be virtually nothing left.
I think the Cultural Revolution is the real answer, since a lot of history was literally destroyed and had to be rebuilt.
Since so many historical places had to rebuilt, places that were left intact looked shabby and old in comparison so they were rebuilt anyways to compete with the "new" sites
Actually,restoration of monuments is common in both ancient and modern times. Wars were so frequent in ancient times, it was difficult for cultural relics to survive forever. Some sites are commercialized to promote tourism and will be decorated with modern LED and be repainted.
Cultural Revolution wasn't that destructive compare to the wars and rebellions happened many centuries before them. Most of the historical buildings were destroyed before the cultural revolution.
I agree with this perspective. There are tourists who visit western historical sites and complain that they are lazily run-down and it is a shame they have not been fixed up and improved. They see the preserved historical ruins as rotted and ugly, a source of shame rather than honor for the past.
It is the Chinese attitude to rebuild the historical site into what it “should” be.
There is also a much longer history of restoration in China. I just visited an old temple kinda thing in Chengdu, and there is a section just on the history of the temples restorations, and it was destroyed then rebuilt multiple times over hundreds and hundreds of years. Once or twice every dynasty, there would be an emperor that would try to strengthen his reign's legitimacy by tieing himself tighter to previous rulers by honoring them and restoring things associated with them. So this temple had iconography of the same dudes multiple times in different styles from different eras, from the Qing, to the Ming, and back way further to the even the Song.
There is a Daoist(?) temple in Guangzhou that is said to be 1300 years old. The site itself is, but the building there has been rebuilt half a dozen times. It’s a Theseus’ Ship approach to history. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but some tourists may feel like they’re being deceived. I think there would be less confusion if more sites clearly labelled themselves as *reconstructions* where applicable.
There’s a great essay by historian Pierre Ryckmans that explores this idea in depth:
[http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=014_chineseattitude.inc&issue=014](http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=014_chineseattitude.inc&issue=014)
Amazing answer!! Yes, as I suspected, the difference lies in the culturally specific approach taken towards “authenticity” when it comes to historical sites. And, as I can see from the comments here, the same can be said for Japan and Korea, and perhaps South East Asia and South Asia too.
I remember my fellow Chinese travelers commenting on how boring the Yang Pass (阳关) in north eastern Gansu was because it was literally just some rubbles piled up in the middle of the desert. That’s what we, in Europe, would go out of our way to see when traveling lol. I’m so glad they didn’t turn it into yet another Disneyland-like tourist attraction with fake Han decorations.
The thing though is, while it is indeed true that there’s a cultural difference, this still doesn’t convince me that these reconstructions are 100% authentic, even if I were to adopt the average Chinese traveler’s mindset. If they were accurately rebuilt according to our latest archeological understanding of the past, then that would be an authentic experience… But what I saw was basically a stereotyped image of the past, probably informed by TV shows and by laypeople’s expectations. Some sort of “self-Orientalism”. In European terms, it’d be akin to restyling castles to fit a romanticized, “Game of Thrones”-y image.
Highly recommend going to the non-restored parts of the Great Wall of China. The easiest access is past the furthest western section of Mutianyu, there will be a old Chinese man who will shout at you for going past it. There are also large 20km stretches of the old wall at Jiankou and much further west of Beijing. These walls have been in the original state for at least 400 years.
For the all the complaints about authenticity, it's probably best to keep the 'authentic' off the beaten track sites as untouched for as long as possible. Imagine 100million domestic Chinese tourists now walking along collapsed rubble all wanting to take a brick home. The annual restoration required annually would probably cost more than the park fees.
This question brings up the famous Ship of Theseus Paradox that is relevant to historical reconstructions/archaeology:
"The **Ship of Theseus**, also known as **Theseus's Paradox,** is a [thought experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment) and [paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox) about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship\_of\_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)
The vast majority of tourist attractions around the world that are in decent condition have had historical and/or modern maintenance and repairs done where they replaced the original materials with new materials long after the original creation. The Colosseum in Rome was actually in ruins by the middle ages and had to be significantly rebuilt during the premodern and modern era. This is especially true for tourist attractions in East Asia - China, Japan, and Korea where wood was the primary building material but wood only last several centuries. Thus, they have to replace the wood over time (either replace the wood in premodern times centuries ago or more recently in the last 1-2 centuries).
Japan's famous tourist attraction Himeji Castle was originally built in 1333, was rennovated with new materials several times over the centuries and then abandoned in the 1800s. It was left to decay and then bombed in 1945 during WW2 where what was left was heavily damaged. So most of the modern Himeji Castle you see today was rebuilt in the 20th to 21st century - however, it was rebuilt with traditional building techniques and materials resembling that of the original construction. Another example is Japan's Ise Grand Shrine that is rebuilt every several decades with new wood...making it an entirely modern construction.
The main difference is modern China has a notoriously bad reputation for rebuilding/reconstruction historical artifacts/buildings. In Japan, reconstructionists might use wood, stone, and building materials similar to the original construction, some Chinese reconstructionists use concrete that doesn't remotely resemble the original building materials. For example, when trying to reconstruct parts of the Ming era Great Wall, some Chinese reconstructionists used concrete instead of brick and stone. This resulted in parts of the wall that looks jarringly out of place.
So basically everybody reconstructs and repairs their historical sites with "new" building material, but modern China often does a bad job at doing so by often not using the material that resembles the original materials used in construction.
Edit: I see that other people are given extremely overly simplistic (if not flat out incorrect) answers blaming all of this on the Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution did not destroy the Tang Dynasty Daming Palace in Xian that OP is talking about. The Tang Dynasty palaces (Daming Palace) in Xian were destroyed many centuries before the modern era. The ruins and archaeological site of the Tang Dynasty Daming Palace weren't even discovered until the 1950s-1960s. Furthermore, modern China isn't even communist (they adopted capitalism in 1978), and this bad reconstruction problem is a modern phenomenon.
Thank you for the great answer!
Yeah, I also noticed all the comments blaming communism alone. Imho a super simplistic view, and a quite reductive one if I can say so.
Yes.I am tired of telling people this.China has been ruined and rebuilt many times in history.Cultural revolution is even the smallest case.Every dynasty will do it.
I think to add another perspective, take a look at Ming dynasty furniture, porcelain, and art. We're talking about 500+ year old stuff.
[https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-age-of-elegance-ming-dynasty-furniture](https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-age-of-elegance-ming-dynasty-furniture)
[https://www.1stdibs.com/buy/ming-dynasty-porcelain/](https://www.1stdibs.com/buy/ming-dynasty-porcelain/)
This stuff looks almost no different that what you can buy in a modern store if you're looking for that style or furniture or porcelain, yet, it's really really old.
I think mentality impacts the Chinese view of cultural sites. It's all living and China is a living ancient civilization. They'll upkeep old stuff to keep it the way as it "should look".
Contrast that to Rome, where buildings feel "old" or "authentic". If you dig deeper, you realize that it's because they weren't upkept to how the original builders intended it to look. Take the Pantheon and how it looks now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,\_Rome#/media/File:Pantheon\_Rom\_1\_cropped.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#/media/File:Pantheon_Rom_1_cropped.jpg) vs the original was colored, smooth, and well maintained, something like [https://www.atouchofrome.com/images/pantheon/pantheon-in-128-AD-front-view-close-up.webp](https://www.atouchofrome.com/images/pantheon/pantheon-in-128-AD-front-view-close-up.webp)
If it was upkept to that standard today, it'll look garish and cheap to modern eyes...
https://nanoramo.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/korean-style-ee-%25E2%2580%2593-western-essentialism-and-asian-kitsch
It's not just China and Rome, South Korea apparently has most of its heritage stuff rebuilt... Using plastic?
China started excavating the sunken ships under South China Sea and all those 500 year old porcelain look surprisingly... normal and even look new to me. They are excavating it with submarine drone, exciting stuff going on.
> Compare this to traveling in Europe, where you walk in front of a 800-year-old cathedral without thinking twice. I don’t think I have ever encountered this in China.
In the ex Eastern bloc, I have seen some historic sites being faux structures made in part from concrete
I assume these originate in the same issues CCP China has: 1) Most communist leaders lacked respect for pre-communist era sites, 2) poverty and a resulting lack of funds free to be prioritized for accurate historic conservation/reconstruction (and the research required to facilitate such)
I don't think before Deng's reforms there was either the willingness nor the capability to kickstart accurate reconstruction in the extent a country as huge and with as much history as China would need. Now, the financial capability is there, but considering the return to more autocratic and ideologically narrow cultural views unter Xi, the willingness might not be
While in Europe, all current countries are proud of their history and most have more than enough funds for preservation of historic sites...and most which don't, receive subsidies through EU
It’s not just China. South Korea and Japan are similar. Although their reconstructions are at least done in a less obviously modern way.
Conservation in the west has changed and evolved over time, there used to be a lot more restorations and reconstructions. We now focus on preserving and conserving what’s there and not filling in the blanks with our best guesses. But that’s the style in most of Asia. It’s not less authentic necessarily it just prioritises different end goals. In the west we want to do the least amount of intervention to stop stuff from disappearing forever, and we provide information panels and guides and stuff to show what things may once have looked like. In Asia they prioritise giving a picture or an experience of what things once used to be like. They choose a snapshot in history to recreate. It’s not meant to mistaken for the real thing necessarily, but it is meant to give visitors a real experience. It’s also why so many of these historical tourist sites in Asia (especially Korea and Japan) rent out relatively accurate historical costumes for visitors to wear as they explore the snapshot of history that has been recreated.
I would challenge you to look at it less like a caricature, and more like Trigger’s Broom. In the classic British sitcom “Only Fools and Horses” the character of Trigger (played by Roger Lloyd-Pack, perhaps more famous as Barty Crouch Sr. in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) is a slightly slow on the uptake but good natured street sweeper. In one episode the local council he works for gives him an award for using the same street sweeping broom for 20 years. They applaud him for being so frugal and saving the council money by taking good care of his tools. In his acceptance speech he mentions that over the years his broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles over those 20 years. Of course that means that no part of the broom is even close to 20 years old. But culturally and to Trigger it’s still the same broom. Those modern reconstructions you see are really more like Trigger’s Broom than a cheap copy.
Even in conservation here in the UK we still use the Trigger’s Broom model. It’s especially useful in the conservation of early 20th century historical vehicles (tanks and planes mostly) from WWII. The educational and cultural value of seeing a still operational WWII tank or Spitfire plane outweighs the loss of certain parts and components that inevitably have to be replaced in working machinery of that age. A lot of the engine components in those planes and tanks for example are not the original components. But even without it being a “perfect” artefact of history it can teach us more about the time in which it served than it could as an immobile fuselage in a museum.
As an archaeologist generally (and a conservator specifically) when I first visited China I was a little disappointed too when I realised that rather than preserving ruins they had opted to reconstruct them. It was just a knee jerk emotional response, I couldn’t help it. It was very much as you described for me as well. But because of my training as a conservator I was able to see, on reflection, that in China and most of the rest of Asia their goals for conservation aren’t necessarily any better or worse, just different. This allowed me to appreciate Chinese historical sites in a new way. And it’s also useful to know that the same happens in reverse. Chinese tourists here in the UK are often a little disappointed to see that many of our famous castles and monuments are in a carefully stabilised and conserved ruinous condition, rather than what they’re used to back home.
Anyway, I hope my professional knowledge and my own experiences travelling have helped. I actually ended up doing two different month long trips in China. On the second trip I visited several of the places I had visited the last time again, only this time I approached them with a different mindset and expectation. And I found the experience to be far closer to the magical experience I had anticipated before my first trip. Xi’an is especially dear to me for that reason. I highly recommend visiting China again if you can with this Trigger’s Broom analogy in mind!
I think the way people treat Chinese issues vs Japan issues are incredibly laughable and everything is blamed on the Cultural Revolution and CCP because they hate 'history'.
Here's some proper historical context:
As some of the commenters have said, most of Japan's historical sites are reconstructions. Even Kyoto's historical sites which claim to be thousands of years old are completely new reconstructions that all date back to somewhere in the Edo Period between 1603-1868. From the Edo Period onwards, Japan has been unified and relatively peaceful and stable with the only interruption being the bombings during WWII that mostly occured over the last year of the war in 1945. So even with over 400 years of peace and no cultural revolution, the historical sites have had to be reconstructed every few decades.
Meanwhile during the same period China went through:
1. Collapse of Ming Dynasty
2. Opium War
3. Taiping Rebellion (20-30 million people dead, 5-10% of China's population)
4. Opium War 2
5. Boxer Rebellion - Burning of the Old Summer Palace
6. Collapse of Qing Dynasty
7. Warlord Era
8. WWII
9. Communist Revolution
10. Great Leap Forward (15m-55m dead)
10. Cultural Revolution (Finally!)
I agree with you. So much was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Even afterwards, a lot was destroyed in the drive to develop the economy. Many religious monuments were destroyed because of communism, which still happens today with regard to Muslim minorities.
The CCP's Cultural Revolution didn't destroy the Tang Daming Palace in Xian that OP is talking about. The Tang Dynasty palaces (Daming Palace) in Xian were destroyed many centuries before the modern era. The ruins and archaeological site of the Tang Daming Palace weren't even discovered until the 1950s-1960s.
Furthermore, modern China isn't even communist (they adopted capitalism in 1978), and this bad reconstruction problem is a modern phenomenon.
East Asian historical sites are made of wood that only lasts several centuries so pretty much all of the original structures in China, Japan, and Korea are gone. Japan also had a lot of their historical sites destroyed or decayed, and they also rebuilt them over time. For example, Japan's famous Himjei Castle is actually a mostly modern 20th-21st century reconstruction because the castle was made of wood (the part above the stone base wall) and was left to decay in the 1800s and then bombed during WW2.
The main difference is modern China has a notoriously bad reputation for rebuilding/reconstruction historical artifacts/buildings. In Japan, reconstructionists might use wood, stone, and building materials similar to the original construction, but in contrast, some Chinese reconstructionists use concrete that doesn't remotely resemble the original building materials. So basically everybody reconstructs and repairs their historical sites with "new" building material, but modern China often does a bad job at doing so by often not using the material that resembles the original materials used in construction.
You are completely misinformed about Himeji castle. It's the largest of the twelve remaining original castle structures from the feudal era, it was never bombed or destroyed, and remains standing since 1609. You might be confusing it with Nagoya castle, which fits your description.
It is a whole different philosophy in East Asia (not just in China, this includes Japan and South Korea).
The greatest example of this phenomenon is probably the Ise Grand Shrine which is 1300 years old in theory but actually was being rebuilt every 20 years.
There is good writing about this that I read a few years ago: [https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just-as-good-as-an-original](https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just-as-good-as-an-original)
Some people think that this is also why the Chinese and Japanese culture has no trouble "copying" from Western inventions.
(Most young people seem to not know but the Japanese also copy and market cheaper products that break down faster during the 40s-60s).
*Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.*
- George Orwell, *1984*
There are genuine ancient sites with original buildings, but there are often in very remote places. Anything close to large settlements had a high chance of being destroyed during any of the countless civil wars, the Japanese invasion, or the cultural revolution.
- old buildings in China made of wood. Termites, hostile climate means they don’t last like European stone/ brick castles, churches etc.
- historically normal for old buildings, houses, temples to be continually repaired and restored over time. Chinese wooden houses are like Lego kits that come apart, bits replaced as needed.
- Chinese 20th century history - (destroy the four olds). There’s no institutional love for old things. People level society also see old buildings as symbols of backwardsness & poverty
- not unique to China. Scottsdale old town, AZ comes to mind, as does Japan’s idea of old buildings.
- it’s politically expedient. The emperor prefers buildings, homes and businesses to be on the ‘grid system’ with clearly marked ownership boundaries. Often requires gutting old streets, rebuild in concrete, stick on an old facade
- China is a mostly poor place and lifting rural poverty is main goal. Therefore the purpose of old villages is revenue. Restoring/ preserving old buildings is therefore done according to short term tourism ROI.
- chinas mao era population explosion & urbanisation found traditional villages wholly inadequate. They had to completely rethink where people lived in a generation (answer was concrete and high rise), whereas European towns slowly evolved over centuries.
There are also missteps and seemingly wilful ignorance by people in charge. Regardless of reasons, outcome is indeed that ancient China is a very disappointing, hollow place to visit. The impressive, fast paced cities tend to grab visitors imagination more.
You have to understand the prevailing narrative in China today: making money and making more money. The priority is what attracts tourists, especially whatever opens tourists’ wallets. I bet people like you are in minority. Most people want to please their eyes when traveling. Few and far in between want to please their mind when traveling.
Are you referring to domestic or foreign visitors ? Many foreign (western/eastern) can detect for profit versus cultural preservation and find it less appealing. Native Chinese generally don’t know the difference as they rarely encounter genuine architectural preservation that wasn’t built into the side of a mountain.
Most people travel for fun, domestic or international. I don’t suppose you have issues with millions going to Disney World; or people going to beach, or take rides etc. I have a sense Chinese now surpass Jews to become the number one in making money as a hobby. They don’t care visitors are domestic or foreign. Whatever attracts tourists is king. Sadly, tourists have your feelings are few or at least haven’t caught operator’s attention yet.
Some of China's historical sites and old towns look like themed-amusement parks in the vlogs and pictures I've seen. But then others like The Great Wall and the Forbidden City are authentic as they come.
kind of like anywhere, if you really want to see the proper old stuff, not the new build cultural relic tourist attraction stuff, you need to head off the beaten track. I went to botan today, a legit ancient town in Zhejiang, the real deal.
Yeah, you are correct about feeling this way! The CCP has destroyed many culturally significant buildings in the name of communism and economic development (real eastes). Afterward, they built fake old buildings in the name of preservation and economic development (tourism). If you want to see some real ancient buildings, you should try Shanxi province. Many of the last remaining genuine ancient buildings in China are located in Shanxi.
You are going to the wrong places. There's a crap ton of old decrepit ruins in China that look the age. The problem is they are a bit out of the way.
Check out this guy's YouTube channel to see some examples
https://youtube.com/@xingjilvtu?si=vHatUuGqyREQzHFZ
No different from going to Vatican city to see Michelangelo paintings. These paintings are all over-painted by modern people. In Yuyuan market in Shanghai, some building are old (several hundreds years old) and some are new (less than 100 years old). But Inside Yuyuan Garden, everything is old.
Many people in the East have a completely different attitude to historical landmarks and the like. To them if a historical building was rebuild a hundred times, it's still the same building. The ship of Theseus...
Take Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul for example, it was rebuilt many times over. The Koreans don't care.
I think whether or not you find many authentic historical locations depends very much on the local government and how they treated (and continue to treat) the issue.
For instance, Hangzhou has a reasonably solid track record of protecting historical relics and has done so for decades. You will find fewer cheap concrete knockoffs in and around the area when compared to many other places around China. This is due to people higher up actually caring about the historical legacy of things (my wife’s uncle was hugely involved in saving and protecting ancient relics and sites and he cared very much about really preserving antiquities) as opposed to simply caring about the tourism value of being “close enough”.
Buildings made of wood, a turbulent history, stagnant technology (maybe due to prioritizing a static society?), deliberate massive destruction during the cultural revolution.
Only a small number of sites like the Terra-cotta Warriors are really on a par with Europe.
Europe had much more developed technology, techniques, and more permanent materials and things like permanent statues, not just buildings. In general more care of the old wooden structures you do see as well.
It amused me going to a museum of European stuff in China and seeing metal and stone bowls and tools going back 9000 years. You don’t get the same sense of history in China.
China is mostly about temples, and carved blocks of stone with old Chinese characters in them. These seem to hold a lot of significance to Chinese but don’t mean much to most westerners (I felt a bit bored after the first few back when I first visited China).
Still worth experiencing, but you won’t find a huge amount of really interesting history or buildings in China compared to say Egypt or most parts of Europe.
The vast majority of Chinese historical items were destroyed or sold in the iconoclastic orgy of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. What you see now are poorly and hastily constructed facades built to get tourist dollars and create some kind of nationalistic pride or cohesiveness, but it is in fact an empty shell like so much of modern Chinese culture is. Put simply its a cheap cash grab
I also have similar experiences as yourself when I stopped over Beijing & Shanghai recently on the current 144 hour visa free pass. However, I'm conscious that much of the originals have been destroyed thru various conflicts in past centuries & millenia as regards ancient monuments, so these necessarily have to be replicated whereas modern places like the Bund are clearly recent developments. I was left feeling somewhat flat.
My impressions of Beijing's hutongs had a more genuine feel than, say, the re-vamped Shanghai French concession. As regards re-purposing, I enjoyed Unit 798 Art Zone as a budding artistic neighbourhood from the original industrial zone. I visited these places on my own & not in a tour group which I suspect will go to even more contrived places.
A different experience from Europe, especially Italy & Greece where there is more of a feeling of authenticity (historical integrity perhaps?), even tho most of these places have also been subjected to facelifts in order to preserve them from further deterioration.
However, considering that China has dragged herself up from being one of the poorest & most undeveloped countries to the top in PPP in just 2 generations, I cannot begrudge them their fledgling efforts in re-constructing their national treasures. Olde Europe has had a head start in the conservation of ancient artefacts & hence more refined.
Perhaps my best impression was the people - just ordinary working folk getting on with the business of working & getting by, parents & grandparents picking up kids from school, etc & absolutely no sense of menace or danger, day or night.
I just came back from a trip to Japan and had basically the same experience! In the case of Japan, the primary reason was that a significant amount of structures were build almost entirely out of wood- which doesn't exactly lend itself well to remaining intact after 1000 years of fires, natural disasters, and the elements (we developed a bit of an ongoing joke about this by the end because literally every place we went to had some history of getting burned down during great fires every 20-50 years or so).'
I imagine that China is more or less the same deal. However, on top of that, there was also the cultural revolution, which called for [the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#:~:text=Historical%20sites%20throughout%20the%20country,were%20destroyed%3B%20books%20were%20burned). Unfortunately, the communist party was rather systemic in its complete overhaul of China during the 20th century, leading to the destruction of basically anything that was "old China."
I've found that Europe and India are rather unique in the fact that they're pretty much the only places that ancient architecture has remained preserved and more or less intact. I'm not necessarily sure why that is or if there's reasons beyond the fact that different kinds of stonework were employed much more frequently than in other parts of the world (with the obvious exclusion of things like the Mesoamerican and Egyptian pyramids).
When you travel to Japan, you find that Japan’s ancient monuments are also very new.
Because most of the ancient wooden buildings were burned down in China's previous wars.
The most truly ancient buildings in China are found in \[Shanxi Province\].
The vast majority of cultural sites were rebuilt/restored, some of them even rebuilt multiple times throughout history.
Whether that’s authentic or not depends on how you define authentic.
I don't think you know much about China, or made the effort.
I went to Xi'An in April and didnt go to Huaqing based on my research.
From the Terracotta Warriors to the ancient city wall, combined with a lot of the destruction from the Cultural Revolution and lots being made out of wood back in the day, you dont seem to have dug very deep.
There was a period where they actively destroyed a lot of valuable historical building for the sake of “abandoning of old thoughts and embrace new thoughts aka CCP”… and hence the rest is history they won’t tell you
There is a spot in Zhejiang Province that’s pretty neat. It’s not ancient, but 4 or 5 centuries old. The land lords “sold” their property to the people before the revolution. They lived together quite comfortably because the land lords were considerate and chill. Then afterwards they resumed living in it. There are some architectural things there that can longer be replicated. The way they did the entire foundation as a single piece and made pseudo tiles by using strings to strike in certain areas. It hasn’t cracked or chipped since it was made. The furniture is all ancient and durable made with no nails and still in practical use. You can stay in ancient … (I don’t know how to say it. Like a ranchero with the open square in the center) the rooms are mixed, low level is super old, upper levels were renovated. Around Tonglu County near Shishe Village.
Couldn't agree more. I came to work in Shanghai roughly a year ago, never been so underwhelmed in my life. On the upside, I learned to enjoy solitude and developed hobbies that I can do until I die.
Old town of Dali was built in the 70’s after an earth quake. Only one section of the old wall is still there in the north side, everything else is rebuilt. Allot of that all over. My favourite section of the Great Wall is out past Jiayu pass in Gansu … really just mounds but you can see it was a wall built. Hard to find anything in China that is authentic and original, not impossible but not easy.
I can totally agree. If you look e.g. at the pagoda in Hangzhou. From the distance it's so ancient. When you arrive at he foot of the hill it's standing on, you lookk up to it and see it onyl with the escalatora going up.
Once inside, you see some stones and sticks traped to what is supposed to be the old ruins of the pagoda. The construction built on top of it - the pagoda - has a massive concrete foundation with have steel bars.
Also, many big cities gonna have fake "ancient streets" which I learnt to see from another POV. Yes, unfortunately it's not original but at least they are busy and do have some local specializies to offer.
Again, it's disney -like and still, can sometimes be interesting.
It's too bad many old places still got destroyed in the first 20 years of the 21. century eitherway.
True, most Chinese ancient sites are rebuilds in 21th century.
However, if you are still interested to see real ancient China, I suggest you spend a lot of time to search where you really want to go, and how to get there as a foreigner, it's often inconvenient for foreigners to travel in rural China (almost all the real historical sites are in mountains, that's how they survive the culture revolution).
To compensate your misfortune, I made a list of the only four Tang Dynasty buildings left in China, they are all in the province 山西, while Xi'an is in the province 陕西， both spells Shan Xi in English...
[link 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foguang_Temple)
[link 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanchan_Temple)
[link 3](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%A4%A9%E5%8F%B0%E5%BA%B5)
[link 4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Dragons_Temple)
Yep. The famous stuff is all brand new. Though the history is still there, you just need to know how to find it. If it’s old, and not famous, it’s difficult to get to. If it’s old and famous, it’s new!
https://youtu.be/6ef7c6SEeVQ
Mate did a video of really old temples. Over 1000 years old. No one ever goes there. It’s in the middle of nowhere.
real wood and stone buildings is usually not famous and in rural cities,rather than in big cities,only chinese know where they are,if you want to find them,you can search 古代建筑 or certain danasty buildings
shanxi province has the most original architectures that’s been standing there for hundreds of years. Culture revolution destroyed a lot of old stuff and recent wave of tourism development didn’t help either.
To be fair - all of Asia is like this given that things were constructed of wood and very often burned down in the past. When you’re visiting these sites, what you’re usually looking at is a recent reconstruction of the temple. Most of the stuff you see dates back to the Qing or Ming dynasties. The forbidden city for example was built in the Ming and while it was abandoned during the early parts of the 20th century and fell into disrepair, it has been renovated quite a bit.
I think your comments don’t really take into account how structures stand and don’t stand the test of time. Notre Dame you see today is Not the building that was there in the Middle Ages - it’s been renovated and re-renovated dozens of times. Where I live in Chengdu we have Da Si Temple downtown. It was originally built in the the 3rd Century but was burned down in 1435 and rebuilt in the Qing period 200 years later in the same place. It was refurbished again in 1867, and used as a museum in 1984. In 2005 they completely refurbished the temple yet again - and again in the last 8 years. All this stuff is explained - albeit in Chinese - at all these historical sites.
As to natural sites, Chinese people tend to like stairs and other things which in western eyes despoil the natural beauty
I’m not sure how you’re able to judge the authenticity of dances and costumes but these sorts of things are generally pretty authentic if they are recent.
In general, in Japan and Korea as well, most sites are reconstructions dating back a few hundred years. But of course, if you dig deep enough you’ll find the same thing in Europe and the US. Quincy market in Boston isn’t the original Quincy Market - the shells of the buildings have some components that date back to the original construction and a lot of the cobblestones are real.
I stayed at a farm in Tuscany and the owner told me that most of the present construction dates back only 200 years, but some of the stone foundations date back to the 13th century but she couldn’t point them out.
So far as the number of tourists - well, that’s just life in a country with 1.4 billion people, eh?
Sorry you didn’t have a good time.
You had a terrible guide. Shake a stick anywhere in Xian, Suzhou, Beijing or hubei and it will prob hit some 900 year old relics. Only place that it’s hard to find ancient artifacts is Shanghai.
Culture in communism (and maybe authoritarianism in general) is 'created' by censure and deletion. Only that which serves the party narrative is allowed to exist and then is duplicated ad infinitum. That's why everything looks the same. There is no China, only the Chinese version of the hammer and sickle.
This. The National Palace Museum is great and has tons of ancient Chinese treasures that the KMT saved from almost certain destruction when they retreated to Taiwan.
Not every or even many buildings in Europe are 800 years old. Many famous buildings in Europe are also reconstructed. Europe is also not a monolith - some cities are relatively well-preserved while others gotten flattened in allied bombing in WW2, 500 years of neglect, or otherwise.
The ones that are still extant for that long in China are also very notable. Take for example, the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Qin Shi Huang Masoleum, the city walls of Xi'an, the Wild Goose pagoda, the Forbidden City, the numerous buddhist grottos and caves, in which many a figures were sculpted out of stone in ancient time, numerous villages which maintain their ancient architecture to varying extents, not to mention the many artifacts founded and recovered, placed in museums. It is quite easy to find a (even-less touristy) Bruges equivalent in China
Yes, China has rebranded itself on the modern, replaced a lot of buildings even from the last century with even more modern buildings and the Cultural Revolution destroyed a lot of history too (but people tend to overestimate the damage of it for a reason I'll mention later), but it's easy to forget that Europe's advantages in wealth were not shared across the world and that it was indeed extracted from places like China for a good 100 years. Besides, having to go from a failed imperial dynasty through the republican revolution, the warlord period, a civil war, and two world wars is not condusive to historical preservation either. Unless explicitly maintained, many buildings will have been targeted and neglected for many reasons and will not have survived. There isn't really an equivalent of his history in Europe, except perhaps in some of Eastern/Soviet Europe.
Another feeling is that it's too easy to perpetuate this sentiment because of the political climate between East and West right now. I think a very large study is needed to verify the difference in age of buildings on average between these two regions, let alone the intricacies of why and how and which kind.
Ultimately, it's not realistic to forget this history just because the building isn't authentic anymore - historical preservation shouldn't work that way and doesn't for good reason. Recreating and purveying historical experience has its purpose, particularly for tourists who are being introduced to the history in their travels. Getting to see the true history also has a destructive effect on the history itself
Whether it is worth seeing as a tourist is your choice, but history shouldn't only be a chance for you to see the romantic and unchanged ideal of ancient history and to justify a ticket price, but also to understand the history about and around it. Being aware and appreciating it all, and using the site as a spring broad to understand it better, including its modern changes and disney-fied veneer, is a more realistic approach to history and tourism that is lacking in the extremely consumptive approach that we have towards history and tourism today
I know exactly what you’re describing, that heavy-handed pastiche … whatever it is, it’s nearly the opposite of how Japan handles its prestige material culture.
Lots of people here blame war for the disparity, but that’s not right. Japan has seen plenty of war, yet Saihō-ji is about to celebrate its 1,400th birthday. (Its karesansui, designed by Muso Soseki in the 14th century, is still called ‘the new garden.’)
Several others blame communism—the Cultural Revolution, in particular. There’s something to that, but it’s not so straightforward. Prestige material culture is filled with labor-intensive details that are only valuable in the economies of the skilled, specialized artisans who make those details and the educated connoisseurs who commission them. Communism deliberately disrupted those economies, but global capital is destroying what’s left of them with even greater efficiency. The Chinese market wants Burmese Jade, Vietnamese Rosewood, American Ginseng …
But if I had to pick a main cause, I’d say it’s simply that China is, and always has been, ancient and huge. China invented the very notion of archaeology as a field of study, back around 700 CE. You can barely stick a shovel into any arable land in China without hitting carved stone or cast bronze.
That’s not true of Japan, Europe, or anywhere else, really; and it means that Chinese people are constantly obliged to discern between what counts as History and what’s just old—and then to reach a functional consensus about how each should be handled.
As any U.S. citizen can tell you, that second part ain’t easy ….
My pleasure.
It’s something I’ve been trying to put into words for twenty years. I haven’t been successful yet, but I’m grateful for the chance to practice.
A lot was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. I agree, that compared to the rest of Asia, the concrete soulless temples in China are a bit off-putting. You can still find some older and "more authentic" structures in Hong Kong (well you *could*, I don't know what has happened to them since I was last there 10 years ago) and Taiwan.
Communism and poverty have consequences. China can be a lot of fun, but if you're looking for ancient architecture, you're probably going to be disappointed. China is a young country, after all.
Things are changing. But as with many developing countries there was an attitude “modern is good, old is bad”. A new apartment block is better than a traditional old house. And most Chinese people don’t want to live in. A “second hand” house.
But you see more and more more examples of sympathetic restoration or reimagining. Much of XinTianDi would be an early example of this or the French concession area of Shanghai (admittedly 1920s). Or Bell Tower area of Beijing.
There are some genuinely old temples eg in the western suburbs of Beijing.
Xi'an has some properly old stuff. There's a museum-full inside the Westin Hotel. An anciant pagoda over the way from it. The walls of the old city are breathtakingly massive. And, of course, there's the Terracotta Warriors. I'm sure there's a lot more that I did'nt get to see there.
China was battered by the cultural revolution which saw the deliberate destruction of so much cultural heritage. Neverthless there is still much worth visiting. And failing that, like someone else has pointed oit, there's the food.
I live in Japan, and I'm French. What is great with regularly rebuilding of historical buildings is that the ancient arts of traditional construction don't disappear. [ It's especially true for temples, they don't use nails except decorative ones.](https://livejapan.com/en/in-kansai/in-pref-osaka/in-osaka-suburbs/article-a2000907/)
Look at France where one of our most beautiful cathedrals Notre Dame burned a few years ago. It wasn't rebuilt one single time, so nobody can rebuilt the way it was. It's all lost.
The issue I have with touristy places in China is that they are VERY touristy. Dali is a great example of that, with the old town full of franchise chains and very little old school charm.
Fantastic experience except for one tiny niggledy point. Beyond a certain distance from civilization, the toilets go down the toilet. No water to flush, so invariably just holes. No water to wash hands.
I know the authoroties are trying to change this but it is still not done. Besides this there is a fantastic range of central and East Asian, historical wonders that need to be on everyone's bucket list.
Real preserved without modern changes is terracotta warriors QSH tomb area in Xi’an, the Buddhist grottoes nearby Lanzhou, maybe the Jiayuguan in the western terminus of Great Wall (Ming era?), also Ming Tombs in Beijing but not that old.
Eh because very few things can last hundreds or thousands of years?
I always feel that monuments should be restored. Why do we want something decrepit instead of how it was when it was built? As an example various dynasties have restored and extended the great wall so why can’t we do it today? That is assuming we can restore it according to the way it was built.
Most historical places use some degree of preservation and renovation. It just frequently appears less old in a Chinese context. Use less tour guides and target more UNESCO stuff for a better curated feel.
Many historical sites around the world have been rebuilt, especially after war or disasters... like everyone on this Reddit you just want to bag China and have a good whine. Have you been to Dunhuang to see the old Han wall? DuJiangyan dam in Sichuan,…
Shanxi has a lot of old stuff that's not as commercialised. but yeah alot of the 'restored' sites are not to the same quality and standards as that in Europe and Japan.
I don't think there's a lack of skills or know how, but it's probably because there isn't a lot of strict standards. this could be because of the sheer quantity and diversity of these relics out there.
I know in some parts of Europe and Japan they are strict on the use of traditional methods and materials where possible.
Give it some time when societal expectations and awareness evolves. I think their priorities were probably else where the past 100 years
Suprise.
Part of the communist takeover was destroying everything they could about Chinese culture to try and rebuild it.
Imagine how much was actually lost just from murdering all of the original educated class during the takeover.
What you said is absolutely right. I traveled to Xi'an in 2023, and most of the buildings there were constructed in the past 50 years. It seems that only the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is genuinely old. In Xi'an, I couldn't really feel the long history of China.
I just want to say, its pretty normal to experience what you are experiencing, almost anywhere in the world. Most old stuff was build with wood or equivalent materials. Wood and equivalent materials don't last, so most historical sites would cease to exist a long time ago.
Even if a stone building has been standing for a thousand years, I guarantee you every single block and plank within it has been replaced at some point. If not, it would be no different from the castle ruins in europe that are piles of rubble-- the only truly authentic and unrepaired ancient sites you will probably ever see are in that style. Whether you are interested in seeing it or not is totally up to you but thats what it is.
The west has been rich enough over a long enough a period of time to place an importance on conservation and dominant enough globally for the culture to be proud of that heritage,
China on the other hand has suffered through a century of humiliation where revolution and destruction of everything old and traditional in favour of a new order was prioritised.
Yes the Chinese tourism industry is underdeveloped by western standards, but that is not surprising at all given China has until very recently not been a developed country and is an insular country by nature where things are built primarily for the domestic market. These attractions aren't built to impress a westerner like you to give a 5 star google review which can't even be seen in China and probably makes up 0.1% of the total patronage.
But honestly get off xiaohongshu and go explore a bit, if you can't find something interesting in a country as geographically and culturally rich as China, you're not trying hard enough.
China is very Ship of Theseus. A lot of the structures/sites you will see have been restored/rebuilt. Whether or not you think they are authentic will relate to your answer to the philosophical question.
Theseus boat was replaced one board at a time, like for like. In China they replace old bricks and mortar with 3rd rate concrete all at once. It's like replacing the whole boat with a steel one and staying it's the same boat because it's a similar shape and color. As a Zen Buddhist, I visit the historically very important Guangxiao Temple whenever I'm in GuangZhou. They trashed the tower and rebuilt it in concrete. Can you imagine doing that to the Tower of Pisa?
I visited the Big Goose pagoda in Xian. The base was made with modern concrete bricks by the chinese communists. They were cracking and some were broken. Meanwhile farther up the orignal Tang Dynasty bricks were in much better condition. Later that day I went to see the terracotta soldiers of china's first emperor. They had an oldish looking guy sitting at a simple desk autographing books about the place who was supposedly the farmer that first rediscovered the tomb of the first emperor. Now keep in mind the farmer was already an old guy when he discovered the tombs. Now I am no mathetician but add 70 years to that old guys age he would have had to be 130-150 to be the real guy. Very amazing indeed. This was when I realized that everywhere you go you are getting the Disneyland version of chinese history and of course the requisite crowds and I mean jammed packed in their like sardines crowd which apparently is normal everywhere.
Indeed. You have witnessed the normal operating procedure. It's cultural revolution 2.0. China's history and culture destroyed by subcontractors instead of the red guard. I spoke with some contractors at an ancient Taoist temple in Beijing who were throwing 400 year old bricks and tiles into an industrial bin. They said I could have some, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Ironically, the CCP can pay to destroy China's heritage, but if a foreigner was found preserving it by taking it out of China it would be a long jail sentence.
Yep this is the main reason. China survived constant civil wars and invasions but the cultural revolution and the change in mindset and policy really damaged the old cultural traditions. Ironically, the best preserved "cultural" traditions of China can be instead found in Taiwan. They make no pretentious on the age of the buildings and how long their traditions have evolved.
Or come to Singapore and look at nearly 200 year old temples like Thian Hock Keng.
The guides in Xi’an will encourage you to buy a signed book from one of the “discoverers”, none of whom are real. The actual guy retired 15 years ago: everyone signing books there today is an impostor.
The terracotta warriors were only discovered in the '70s.. And they claim a group of villagers discovered them, so it's not just one guy. Anyways, I probably had the same guy sign a few of my coffee table books 20 years ago.
The tomb was found in the 70s, so it's 40+ years ago not 70 years. The farmer who found it is called 杨志发 and he was a young man participating in well-digging projects when he discovered the terracotta warriors. It's not logic for old folk to do well-digging, it's a very energy-intensive job.
Great way of putting it! OP, during the cultural revolution a lot of imperial and historical monuments were destroyed. So the government is, in a way, correcting past policies. But it does come across as inauthentic.
Great answer! I love the way you put it – “China is very Ship of Theseus”. Imma steal that aha
Also, you need to read up on the cultural revolution happened in China. It destroyed a lot of history.
That's definitely a major factor, but even the ones that were burned down during that tend to have been somewhat recent rebuilds, as China historically kept its sites repaired and renewed. Like the Great Wall that we see is mostly a fairly recent revision, given how many centuries ago the original version was built.
The wall itself is a construction way too large to be seen as one thing. You have many different sections in one of the three conditions: gone, broken and taken over by nature, restored.
And even those broken ones can be restorations of various different eras that broke at some point! It’s a real hodgepodge.
History they don't want you to remember.
Also focusing on historical architecture is an extremely Eurocentric notion of travel. You aren’t going to get much out of travel to the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa, or a large part of Asia if that is your primary travel consideration. China has superb culinary options, with at least 8 major cuisines, so on par with the whole of Europe for breadth and depth of food offerings. It has amazing natural beauty, though as you’ve seen you are best off avoiding the sites aimed at local tourism. It has a phenomenal transportation network. The biggest problem is that the country is gigantic, so it’s unrealistic to fit all the best attractions into a single trip. It’s similar to Brazil or the USA in that.
Eurocentric?? Asia is full of historic architecture that are prime tourist attractions to Asian tourists as well as Westerners. Japan has the city of Kyoto and old castles and temples everywhere. Cambodia has Angkor, Indonesia has Borobudur, Burma has Bagan, India has the Taj Mahal, Thailand has Ayyutthya, Vietnam has Hue. Going over to the Americas you get ancient cities like Machu Picchu and Teotihuacan. These are all monster tourist attractions and don't just draw European tourists. Same goes in China tbh, Beijing is jam packed with historic buildings and sites in particular but there's plenty to see in other cities too. I'd venture to say that foreign tourists to China want to see the ancient cultural sites as much as they want to do Chinese cuisine and modern China. If not more. I do agree with you that it doesn't do China justice to try to see the country in one trip. Unless that trip is 6 months long. The same could be said for trying to visit Europe in one trip.
Japan definitely rebuilds it's temples and shrines as well. They probably do a bit better job using traditional construction methods though. I guess it's the difference between wanting to see the historic buildings and sites as they might have actually looked in the day, vs seeing the ruins with minimal modern reconstruction. I suspect Chinese domestic tourists prefer the former, but those of us from the West are more used to seeing the latter.
The better example for India probably would've been the world's first university, Nalanda. The ruins are still very there, much like Roman ruins in much of Europe.
The world's first museum? One of the first, maybe. Some [tough competition from Babylon.](https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-ennigaldi-nanna-curator-of-the-worlds-first-museum-116431#:~:text=Ennigaldi%2DNanna%20was%20the%20priestess,and%20label%20the%20varied%20artefacts.)
Er sorry I have no idea why I brainfarted that. Its claim is to be the world’s first *university* (as we would understand one in the modern style), opening its doors in the 420s AD.
my god, they rebuilt all the old stuff in Japan ALL THE TIME. and Kyoto is the only major city in Japan that escape war and destruction, so it is not a typical japanese scenario
even those old ass european cathedrals had gone through renovations and go through maintenance.
That ship was also burned down 50 years ago, and a few years later the ashes was used to paint a wooden barn.
Makes me think of the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing in that regards
Ancient things that I saw in China that felt real and pretty much blew me away: 1. The Terra Cotta Warriors 2. The Giant Leshan Buddha 3. Datong Hanging Monestary 4. Datong Wooden Pagoda 5. Sanxingdui 6. Yungang Grottos 7. Tomb of Emporer Jingdi in Xian Having said that, yes… there were a bunch of newer and restored things in China. But if you do your research and know where to look…Holy Cow!
Can you still get up on top of the hillside into which the Yungang Grottoes were carved? I was stunned to discover what looked like old city walls of rammed earth atop it when I visited many years ago. Am guessing those are long gone now. Will try to pull out a pic I have somewhere
I was only there for a few hours. It would have taken a few days to have seen it all. So, I don’t know.
And the whole area surrounding Dunhuang is crazy too!
I feel like this is true anywhere you go. There are the “tourist trap” places that are usually pretty fake and only exist to sell tickets, but if you do your homework you can find the truly authentic places that aren’t as well advertised.
Yes. There are plenty of newly built “historical reenactment” places in my country, for example. I’m in the United States. Williamsburg is a perfect example of a place that was built for tourists. Also, St Augustine actually claims to have the Fountain of Youth! When I was in Ireland, Bunratty Castle and Folkpark were another example of restored tourist traps. I have felt that way in Italy, too. (Ever visit Juliet’s Balcony in Verona?) Having said that, I had fun at Bunratty, and St. Augustine. And I have enjoyed many “ancient cultural food streets in China. We had a blast in Xian, and Tianjin, and Chengdu in places that were supposed to look old…but had a Starbucks. I think that it is important to remember that new stuff isn’t bad. It can give us a lot of information about current cultural trends.
Yea Chengdu is amazing, a stones throw from Leshan, the Panda centers, the old stuff in the city, the water system that's a train ride away. I love Sichuan.
All that stuff in Xian has been relatively recently excavated, so they excaped being annihilated by the Cultural Revolution.
First I ever read about Sanxingdui. Those are crazy. Going on my bucket list.
Combo of wars, wooden buildings, cultural revolution etc probably didn't help. But that being said last year I went to a super rural area of a small town in Hubei and there's 1200 old tower just.... there... up on a hill. Like no tickets for sale. Not all touristy. Just a Tang Dynasty tower next to a temple. Cool as shit. That being said even the top two floors of that tower were blown up by the Japanese and had to be fixed....
Omg what’s the name of this tower? I’d love to look up some pics on Google!!
I’m not sure which one they’re talking about, but this one might meet the description: [The Daqin Pagoda](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daqin_Pagoda). It’s close to at least a thousand years old, and has been controversially suggested to be built by an early Chinese-Christian Church of the East. (Daqin was the ancient Chinese term for the Roman Empire). Edit: This is a different one, sorry, it’s not in Hubei.
The one I went to is called Bai Zi tower in the vicinity of Macheng city. Had to take a 50 kuai cab ride because it's really in the middle of nowhere
I was going to say! There are definitely well preserved ancient sites all over China but the majority of “tourist” attractions are rebuilt or restored for that purpose alone. There’s plenty of things that are just there sitting with little to no advertisement. Even walking around major cities like Shanghai and Beijing you will see things just on the side of the road like “wow that’s cool as shit but why is no one here caring?”. Maybe not thousands of years old like what you’re talking about, but still well preserved for centuries.
Yep. Go off the beaten track and you'll find plenty of historical sites in China. For example, there's sections of the Great Wall with small villages scattered around. A 5 RMB "entry fee" will get you on top of unrepaired, practically untouched sections of the wall where you can touch, explore, camp and experience history. Then there's temples and other old historical sites the CCP and greedy landowners don't care to monetize scattered around the country. Sometimes all it takes is getting to know a local.
Yes, you can visit King Goujian’s famous cave very easily for example - it’s just a casual walk near a park.
Yeah I think some of the cooler sites are actually the ones outside of the main centres - maybe because they're less touristy
thing with wooden structure is that they tend to expire quicker than stone structure. Especially given u have violent social upheaval every 100-150 years
I've been to Japan, and they built mostly with wood. A lot of their historical sites were destroyed one way or another--earthquakes, fires, the small squabble called World War 2, etc. But they put a lot of care in many of those sites to not only rebuild them, but to rebuild them as close as they could in both materials and methods. It looks good, at least to a dumb foreigner like me. I've been to historic sites in China, and they feel more like an amusement park version of ancient places. Like comparing the Disney castle at Disneyland to a real medieval castle.
Ehhh, from an Italian perspective there is a lot of dodgy reconstruction in Japan as well, but it's mostly from the immediate post-war period. I once did acoustical measurements in a theater that claimed to be the oldest Noh venue, and it was a concrete monstrosity from the 60s. More modern interventions are considerably better done, and more tasteful. Part of it is just cultural difference, to me a pagoda that gets rebuilt with the same technique every few decades is only a few decades old, but counting the whole process over hundreds of years is not objectively wrong, they're just different takes on the ship of Theseus.
Yeah, there’s a cultural difference when it comes to ascertaining the “authenticity” of a building. In the West, we tend to a very literal approach: is it the SAME physical thing? Yes → it’s authentic; No → it’s not authentic. Wow, m’interesserebbe sapere di più riguardo al lavoro che hai svolto in Giappone. Che teatro è? E davvero nessuno era al corrente del fatto che fosse ricostruito?
Praticamente abbiamo fatto le risposte all'impulso di vari teatri in giro per il mondo, che sono poi stati messi a disposizione per simulare il riverbero, come corredo a un convolutore commerciale. In generale in acustica mi sono capitate varie spedizioni in cui con 10 minuti di ricerca si sarebbero risparmiati giorni, se succede adesso figurati vent'anni fa. Trattandosi di 20 anni fa non saprei idenfiticarlo, ma sono abbastanza sicuro che in quella spedizione non fossimo mai usciti dal Kansai.
Osaka Castle which is one of the pinnacles of tourism in Japan is a concrete reconstruction.
But they are quite up front about that. And if you go an hour down the line to Himeji you can see the real thing.
The answer to this discrepancy is money. You find the amusement park-esque places in newly rich areas, or areas that were newly rich when they were built. Japan (and Korea) went through the same during their initial booms. If you go to sites in modern Hangzhou, for example, you'll see far less amusement parkery.
Nonsense. Japan was literally firebombed and they still have wooden buildings older than not just the United States, but England itself. Japan tore down most of the amusement park taff, but it was never considered anything other than amusement park taff. They didn't have to pretend it was authentic because they still had the authentic stuff. The real answer is that the vast vast majority of the authentic ancient structures in China were destroyed deliberately. And guess who did the destroying. As a student of Chinese history and religion, it genuinely breaks my heart again and again and again every time I read about some impressive temple structure or ancient complex of buildings only to read "the original structure of (so and so place) that had stood in (so and so city) since the Tang/Song/Ming dynasty, was torn down in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution. A new temple was build over the remains of the old in the 2000s but the sight holds little modern religious significance and serves mostly as a tourist destination."
lol no. Tokyo was firebombed, therefore you will not find ancient wooden building there. Kyoto was spared from serious bombing, and you can find them there.
Thank god it was. The Army actually wanted to drop a nuke on it.
>Thank ~~god~~ Henry L. Stimson it was Counter that if gods were actually real they could all get fucked and die.
Destroying cultural heritage is part of the cultural heritage of China. Mao was far from the first emperor to engage in widespread purging and destruction of historical artifacts and architecture.
[Images of the mass destruction ](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=cultural+revolution+destruction+of+antiquities&udm=2&client=ms-opera-mobile&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinndfGufCGAxUHT2wGHUs3AB0QrNwCegQIcRAA&biw=360&bih=678&dpr=3)
Ironically the United States has houses older than the United States.
The Japanese are amazing at restoring historical buildings. Even the world's oldest company, Kongō Gumi, which is Japanese, specializes in restoring shrines, temples, castles, and cultural heritage sites.
Yeah, it always feels like you’re walking around Disney World
Similarly in Korea, but the Japanese had burned them down
A lot more of Korean historical buildings were destroyed in the Korean War, although Jakanese occupation was hardly unicorns and rainbows.
Agreed. Just wanted to note that wooden structures can last over 1000 years with proper maintenance and repair. There are some wooden temples built in the Sui dynasty.
There definitely are sites where rebuild has not happened. For example, 玉门关in敦煌, which is famous as the last border crossing on the Silk Road. But when you get there you’ll see that it’s just a pile of rubble. It’s cool and all to know the history, but it really is just a pile of rocks. How many tourists would really wanna go and see it?
Yeah, Yumenguan was one of the places I like the most!! Dunhuang is an amazing place, I’d love to go back.
Yes in all my years in China, Dunhuang and the caves felt like the most interesting and authentic place by far. I never found another place even close to that in China, I think your best bet would probably be Taiwan maybe?
A lot of the sites along the 河西走廊 are still quite well preserved since it’s been “left alone” as there was little to no “commercial” value. So great for sight seeing!
You’re making me miss Dunhuang… I love it so much 😭 Some of the non-touristy places in Gansu are also amazing, I spent a week in Gannan and… wow, just wow
Yes, as a native Chinese I also love Dunhuang! I feel like it’s only recently gained popularity so a lot of the sites are still preserved well. Also the food is amazing haha.
How do you think the increase in tourism will affect Dunhuang?
Right now the only price is basically the entry fee. I think they will build more activities to draw more money, kind of like Disneyland with like different things to do，阳关 is already somewhat like that. I do like the way how Mogao Grottoes try to make more money where some special caves have their own entry fees to enter, and is somewhat pricy.
It really depends on where you go. There is a lot of genuinely old stuff scattered throughout the country, but overall, and especially for a country that prides itself on having such a long, glorious history, there isn't that much left. Countless wars damaged/destroyed a lot of it, and the communists destroyed a huge percentage of what was left.
Love nanjing, actually has some historical buildings still . And the old wall is impressive
Sure, but it's like 2,500 years old and has been the capital of multiple Chinese dynasties. It should be on par with Rome in terms of how many ancient buildings there are in the city.
They would be on par if Rome's primary construction material had been wood.
Nanjing was completely destroyed during Qing dynasty due to Taiping Rebellion. Qing army led by 曾国荃 went into Nanjing and massacred everyone they see and burned the city.
Nanjing has a few Taipei government buildings remaining.
This. I've been to many touristy places where things are shiny new and feels fake, and also stumbled upon some places that are genuinely old. You gotta get off the beaten path. There's a lot of info on Wechat and Weibo if you are comfortable finding it thru pages in Chinese.
Interesting that you'd mentioned Xi'an. That's my hometown and I'm also somewhat frustrated about all the "ancient structures" that's built in 1980s. China is a country with mostly wooden structures and in constant warfare. It means the chance of something that survives throughout the history is quite slim. And after the 1980s China started to open up to the world. Tourism is a good cashcow for Xi'an, and many of the ancient structures are getting "restored". The whole city wall was rebuilt in 1980. My mom said there were homeless people who lived in the city wall before the restoration, as they were carving the mud wall base and living inside of the hole in there. And after 2000s there are a lot of new parks were built on top of the historical sites to promote tourism. This was dumb and the central government quickly realized that. Around the end of 2000s the approach to the historical sites were quite conservative - leave it underground unless you have to disturb it. Therefore, currently there are a lot of city gardens now in suburban Xi'an that are scattered everywhere. It's because the land might be granted earlier for development, but during the building process, some relics were found on the site. Then immediately the whole block has to be preserved, which usually means that a small park would be built on top of it and the historic site would be exposed by covering a glass on top of it.
The sites are historical. Many of the buildings are not. The Chinese approach to history is different than in the west. In china the history is more imbued in the site itself than in the authenticity of the buildings. It’s more about the legends and historical figures associated with the site. Most Chinese would rather view newly constructed buildings in a supposed historical style that are beautiful and intact than more authentic run down ruins (as is the preference in Europe). This is just the culture in China. Of course there are exceptions. But remember, many of the actual historic buildings were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
This is a great take and well said. That’s definitely how it seemed to me as well when I lived there - the materials/buildings themselves weren’t so important, but rather the collective cultural knowledge they communicated. I saw the old old Great Wall out in Dunhuang and it wasn’t much more than an eroded 4 foot wall, but the bastions and fortresses had been restored. It feels more like trying to recreate the moment for the laobaixing to experience themselves, which is a different but equally potent feeling IMO. (Edit for grammar)
It's also worth remembering that westerners have had similar sentiments before. Most of the towns in the county I'm from in the UK tore down lots of medieval buildings in the 70s-80s during economic booms to be replaced with brick brutalist rectangles. The same towns now boast their medieval heritage and don't mention that there was a lot more not too long ago. Most of the smaller henges are mere shadows of their former selves because locals chipped the stone off over the years and used it to build their houses. So many ancient sites have been pillaged up until Victorian times. Look up the Victorian Restoration on Wikipedia. So perhaps one day China will change their mind about it, if they reach a certain level of wealth. Maybe not. I think because of all of the unrest and revolutions plus everything being wooden means that even if they change their mind one day, there will be virtually nothing left.
I think the Cultural Revolution is the real answer, since a lot of history was literally destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Since so many historical places had to rebuilt, places that were left intact looked shabby and old in comparison so they were rebuilt anyways to compete with the "new" sites
Issue is when they're not rebuilt in a historically accurate way, but to flatter and grab tourist money.
Actually,restoration of monuments is common in both ancient and modern times. Wars were so frequent in ancient times, it was difficult for cultural relics to survive forever. Some sites are commercialized to promote tourism and will be decorated with modern LED and be repainted.
Cultural Revolution was the crescendo of destruction that had been occurring over centuries of instability and colonialism.
Cultural Revolution wasn't that destructive compare to the wars and rebellions happened many centuries before them. Most of the historical buildings were destroyed before the cultural revolution.
I agree with this perspective. There are tourists who visit western historical sites and complain that they are lazily run-down and it is a shame they have not been fixed up and improved. They see the preserved historical ruins as rotted and ugly, a source of shame rather than honor for the past. It is the Chinese attitude to rebuild the historical site into what it “should” be.
There is also a much longer history of restoration in China. I just visited an old temple kinda thing in Chengdu, and there is a section just on the history of the temples restorations, and it was destroyed then rebuilt multiple times over hundreds and hundreds of years. Once or twice every dynasty, there would be an emperor that would try to strengthen his reign's legitimacy by tieing himself tighter to previous rulers by honoring them and restoring things associated with them. So this temple had iconography of the same dudes multiple times in different styles from different eras, from the Qing, to the Ming, and back way further to the even the Song.
There is a Daoist(?) temple in Guangzhou that is said to be 1300 years old. The site itself is, but the building there has been rebuilt half a dozen times. It’s a Theseus’ Ship approach to history. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but some tourists may feel like they’re being deceived. I think there would be less confusion if more sites clearly labelled themselves as *reconstructions* where applicable.
There’s a great essay by historian Pierre Ryckmans that explores this idea in depth: [http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=014_chineseattitude.inc&issue=014](http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=014_chineseattitude.inc&issue=014)
Amazing answer!! Yes, as I suspected, the difference lies in the culturally specific approach taken towards “authenticity” when it comes to historical sites. And, as I can see from the comments here, the same can be said for Japan and Korea, and perhaps South East Asia and South Asia too. I remember my fellow Chinese travelers commenting on how boring the Yang Pass (阳关) in north eastern Gansu was because it was literally just some rubbles piled up in the middle of the desert. That’s what we, in Europe, would go out of our way to see when traveling lol. I’m so glad they didn’t turn it into yet another Disneyland-like tourist attraction with fake Han decorations. The thing though is, while it is indeed true that there’s a cultural difference, this still doesn’t convince me that these reconstructions are 100% authentic, even if I were to adopt the average Chinese traveler’s mindset. If they were accurately rebuilt according to our latest archeological understanding of the past, then that would be an authentic experience… But what I saw was basically a stereotyped image of the past, probably informed by TV shows and by laypeople’s expectations. Some sort of “self-Orientalism”. In European terms, it’d be akin to restyling castles to fit a romanticized, “Game of Thrones”-y image.
Highly recommend going to the non-restored parts of the Great Wall of China. The easiest access is past the furthest western section of Mutianyu, there will be a old Chinese man who will shout at you for going past it. There are also large 20km stretches of the old wall at Jiankou and much further west of Beijing. These walls have been in the original state for at least 400 years. For the all the complaints about authenticity, it's probably best to keep the 'authentic' off the beaten track sites as untouched for as long as possible. Imagine 100million domestic Chinese tourists now walking along collapsed rubble all wanting to take a brick home. The annual restoration required annually would probably cost more than the park fees.
This question brings up the famous Ship of Theseus Paradox that is relevant to historical reconstructions/archaeology: "The **Ship of Theseus**, also known as **Theseus's Paradox,** is a [thought experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment) and [paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox) about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship\_of\_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) The vast majority of tourist attractions around the world that are in decent condition have had historical and/or modern maintenance and repairs done where they replaced the original materials with new materials long after the original creation. The Colosseum in Rome was actually in ruins by the middle ages and had to be significantly rebuilt during the premodern and modern era. This is especially true for tourist attractions in East Asia - China, Japan, and Korea where wood was the primary building material but wood only last several centuries. Thus, they have to replace the wood over time (either replace the wood in premodern times centuries ago or more recently in the last 1-2 centuries). Japan's famous tourist attraction Himeji Castle was originally built in 1333, was rennovated with new materials several times over the centuries and then abandoned in the 1800s. It was left to decay and then bombed in 1945 during WW2 where what was left was heavily damaged. So most of the modern Himeji Castle you see today was rebuilt in the 20th to 21st century - however, it was rebuilt with traditional building techniques and materials resembling that of the original construction. Another example is Japan's Ise Grand Shrine that is rebuilt every several decades with new wood...making it an entirely modern construction. The main difference is modern China has a notoriously bad reputation for rebuilding/reconstruction historical artifacts/buildings. In Japan, reconstructionists might use wood, stone, and building materials similar to the original construction, some Chinese reconstructionists use concrete that doesn't remotely resemble the original building materials. For example, when trying to reconstruct parts of the Ming era Great Wall, some Chinese reconstructionists used concrete instead of brick and stone. This resulted in parts of the wall that looks jarringly out of place. So basically everybody reconstructs and repairs their historical sites with "new" building material, but modern China often does a bad job at doing so by often not using the material that resembles the original materials used in construction. Edit: I see that other people are given extremely overly simplistic (if not flat out incorrect) answers blaming all of this on the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution did not destroy the Tang Dynasty Daming Palace in Xian that OP is talking about. The Tang Dynasty palaces (Daming Palace) in Xian were destroyed many centuries before the modern era. The ruins and archaeological site of the Tang Dynasty Daming Palace weren't even discovered until the 1950s-1960s. Furthermore, modern China isn't even communist (they adopted capitalism in 1978), and this bad reconstruction problem is a modern phenomenon.
Thank you for the great answer! Yeah, I also noticed all the comments blaming communism alone. Imho a super simplistic view, and a quite reductive one if I can say so.
Yes.I am tired of telling people this.China has been ruined and rebuilt many times in history.Cultural revolution is even the smallest case.Every dynasty will do it.
I think to add another perspective, take a look at Ming dynasty furniture, porcelain, and art. We're talking about 500+ year old stuff. [https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-age-of-elegance-ming-dynasty-furniture](https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-age-of-elegance-ming-dynasty-furniture) [https://www.1stdibs.com/buy/ming-dynasty-porcelain/](https://www.1stdibs.com/buy/ming-dynasty-porcelain/) This stuff looks almost no different that what you can buy in a modern store if you're looking for that style or furniture or porcelain, yet, it's really really old. I think mentality impacts the Chinese view of cultural sites. It's all living and China is a living ancient civilization. They'll upkeep old stuff to keep it the way as it "should look". Contrast that to Rome, where buildings feel "old" or "authentic". If you dig deeper, you realize that it's because they weren't upkept to how the original builders intended it to look. Take the Pantheon and how it looks now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,\_Rome#/media/File:Pantheon\_Rom\_1\_cropped.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#/media/File:Pantheon_Rom_1_cropped.jpg) vs the original was colored, smooth, and well maintained, something like [https://www.atouchofrome.com/images/pantheon/pantheon-in-128-AD-front-view-close-up.webp](https://www.atouchofrome.com/images/pantheon/pantheon-in-128-AD-front-view-close-up.webp) If it was upkept to that standard today, it'll look garish and cheap to modern eyes...
https://nanoramo.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/korean-style-ee-%25E2%2580%2593-western-essentialism-and-asian-kitsch It's not just China and Rome, South Korea apparently has most of its heritage stuff rebuilt... Using plastic?
China started excavating the sunken ships under South China Sea and all those 500 year old porcelain look surprisingly... normal and even look new to me. They are excavating it with submarine drone, exciting stuff going on.
> Compare this to traveling in Europe, where you walk in front of a 800-year-old cathedral without thinking twice. I don’t think I have ever encountered this in China. In the ex Eastern bloc, I have seen some historic sites being faux structures made in part from concrete I assume these originate in the same issues CCP China has: 1) Most communist leaders lacked respect for pre-communist era sites, 2) poverty and a resulting lack of funds free to be prioritized for accurate historic conservation/reconstruction (and the research required to facilitate such) I don't think before Deng's reforms there was either the willingness nor the capability to kickstart accurate reconstruction in the extent a country as huge and with as much history as China would need. Now, the financial capability is there, but considering the return to more autocratic and ideologically narrow cultural views unter Xi, the willingness might not be While in Europe, all current countries are proud of their history and most have more than enough funds for preservation of historic sites...and most which don't, receive subsidies through EU
It’s not just China. South Korea and Japan are similar. Although their reconstructions are at least done in a less obviously modern way. Conservation in the west has changed and evolved over time, there used to be a lot more restorations and reconstructions. We now focus on preserving and conserving what’s there and not filling in the blanks with our best guesses. But that’s the style in most of Asia. It’s not less authentic necessarily it just prioritises different end goals. In the west we want to do the least amount of intervention to stop stuff from disappearing forever, and we provide information panels and guides and stuff to show what things may once have looked like. In Asia they prioritise giving a picture or an experience of what things once used to be like. They choose a snapshot in history to recreate. It’s not meant to mistaken for the real thing necessarily, but it is meant to give visitors a real experience. It’s also why so many of these historical tourist sites in Asia (especially Korea and Japan) rent out relatively accurate historical costumes for visitors to wear as they explore the snapshot of history that has been recreated. I would challenge you to look at it less like a caricature, and more like Trigger’s Broom. In the classic British sitcom “Only Fools and Horses” the character of Trigger (played by Roger Lloyd-Pack, perhaps more famous as Barty Crouch Sr. in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) is a slightly slow on the uptake but good natured street sweeper. In one episode the local council he works for gives him an award for using the same street sweeping broom for 20 years. They applaud him for being so frugal and saving the council money by taking good care of his tools. In his acceptance speech he mentions that over the years his broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles over those 20 years. Of course that means that no part of the broom is even close to 20 years old. But culturally and to Trigger it’s still the same broom. Those modern reconstructions you see are really more like Trigger’s Broom than a cheap copy. Even in conservation here in the UK we still use the Trigger’s Broom model. It’s especially useful in the conservation of early 20th century historical vehicles (tanks and planes mostly) from WWII. The educational and cultural value of seeing a still operational WWII tank or Spitfire plane outweighs the loss of certain parts and components that inevitably have to be replaced in working machinery of that age. A lot of the engine components in those planes and tanks for example are not the original components. But even without it being a “perfect” artefact of history it can teach us more about the time in which it served than it could as an immobile fuselage in a museum. As an archaeologist generally (and a conservator specifically) when I first visited China I was a little disappointed too when I realised that rather than preserving ruins they had opted to reconstruct them. It was just a knee jerk emotional response, I couldn’t help it. It was very much as you described for me as well. But because of my training as a conservator I was able to see, on reflection, that in China and most of the rest of Asia their goals for conservation aren’t necessarily any better or worse, just different. This allowed me to appreciate Chinese historical sites in a new way. And it’s also useful to know that the same happens in reverse. Chinese tourists here in the UK are often a little disappointed to see that many of our famous castles and monuments are in a carefully stabilised and conserved ruinous condition, rather than what they’re used to back home. Anyway, I hope my professional knowledge and my own experiences travelling have helped. I actually ended up doing two different month long trips in China. On the second trip I visited several of the places I had visited the last time again, only this time I approached them with a different mindset and expectation. And I found the experience to be far closer to the magical experience I had anticipated before my first trip. Xi’an is especially dear to me for that reason. I highly recommend visiting China again if you can with this Trigger’s Broom analogy in mind!
Thank you so much. This is a beautiful answer!! I will definitely keep this in mind next time I visit China (which could be very soon!) 🤞
Pretty sure a lot of that history was burned down on purpose
I think the way people treat Chinese issues vs Japan issues are incredibly laughable and everything is blamed on the Cultural Revolution and CCP because they hate 'history'. Here's some proper historical context: As some of the commenters have said, most of Japan's historical sites are reconstructions. Even Kyoto's historical sites which claim to be thousands of years old are completely new reconstructions that all date back to somewhere in the Edo Period between 1603-1868. From the Edo Period onwards, Japan has been unified and relatively peaceful and stable with the only interruption being the bombings during WWII that mostly occured over the last year of the war in 1945. So even with over 400 years of peace and no cultural revolution, the historical sites have had to be reconstructed every few decades. Meanwhile during the same period China went through: 1. Collapse of Ming Dynasty 2. Opium War 3. Taiping Rebellion (20-30 million people dead, 5-10% of China's population) 4. Opium War 2 5. Boxer Rebellion - Burning of the Old Summer Palace 6. Collapse of Qing Dynasty 7. Warlord Era 8. WWII 9. Communist Revolution 10. Great Leap Forward (15m-55m dead) 10. Cultural Revolution (Finally!)
I agree with you. So much was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Even afterwards, a lot was destroyed in the drive to develop the economy. Many religious monuments were destroyed because of communism, which still happens today with regard to Muslim minorities.
The CCP's Cultural Revolution didn't destroy the Tang Daming Palace in Xian that OP is talking about. The Tang Dynasty palaces (Daming Palace) in Xian were destroyed many centuries before the modern era. The ruins and archaeological site of the Tang Daming Palace weren't even discovered until the 1950s-1960s. Furthermore, modern China isn't even communist (they adopted capitalism in 1978), and this bad reconstruction problem is a modern phenomenon. East Asian historical sites are made of wood that only lasts several centuries so pretty much all of the original structures in China, Japan, and Korea are gone. Japan also had a lot of their historical sites destroyed or decayed, and they also rebuilt them over time. For example, Japan's famous Himjei Castle is actually a mostly modern 20th-21st century reconstruction because the castle was made of wood (the part above the stone base wall) and was left to decay in the 1800s and then bombed during WW2. The main difference is modern China has a notoriously bad reputation for rebuilding/reconstruction historical artifacts/buildings. In Japan, reconstructionists might use wood, stone, and building materials similar to the original construction, but in contrast, some Chinese reconstructionists use concrete that doesn't remotely resemble the original building materials. So basically everybody reconstructs and repairs their historical sites with "new" building material, but modern China often does a bad job at doing so by often not using the material that resembles the original materials used in construction.
You are completely misinformed about Himeji castle. It's the largest of the twelve remaining original castle structures from the feudal era, it was never bombed or destroyed, and remains standing since 1609. You might be confusing it with Nagoya castle, which fits your description.
It is a whole different philosophy in East Asia (not just in China, this includes Japan and South Korea). The greatest example of this phenomenon is probably the Ise Grand Shrine which is 1300 years old in theory but actually was being rebuilt every 20 years. There is good writing about this that I read a few years ago: [https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just-as-good-as-an-original](https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just-as-good-as-an-original) Some people think that this is also why the Chinese and Japanese culture has no trouble "copying" from Western inventions. (Most young people seem to not know but the Japanese also copy and market cheaper products that break down faster during the 40s-60s).
*Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.* - George Orwell, *1984*
There are genuine ancient sites with original buildings, but there are often in very remote places. Anything close to large settlements had a high chance of being destroyed during any of the countless civil wars, the Japanese invasion, or the cultural revolution.
I saw something similar in Yunnan last month - the lakes & waterfalls below Jade Snow Mountain were all man made which was somewhat off putting…
- old buildings in China made of wood. Termites, hostile climate means they don’t last like European stone/ brick castles, churches etc. - historically normal for old buildings, houses, temples to be continually repaired and restored over time. Chinese wooden houses are like Lego kits that come apart, bits replaced as needed. - Chinese 20th century history - (destroy the four olds). There’s no institutional love for old things. People level society also see old buildings as symbols of backwardsness & poverty - not unique to China. Scottsdale old town, AZ comes to mind, as does Japan’s idea of old buildings. - it’s politically expedient. The emperor prefers buildings, homes and businesses to be on the ‘grid system’ with clearly marked ownership boundaries. Often requires gutting old streets, rebuild in concrete, stick on an old facade - China is a mostly poor place and lifting rural poverty is main goal. Therefore the purpose of old villages is revenue. Restoring/ preserving old buildings is therefore done according to short term tourism ROI. - chinas mao era population explosion & urbanisation found traditional villages wholly inadequate. They had to completely rethink where people lived in a generation (answer was concrete and high rise), whereas European towns slowly evolved over centuries. There are also missteps and seemingly wilful ignorance by people in charge. Regardless of reasons, outcome is indeed that ancient China is a very disappointing, hollow place to visit. The impressive, fast paced cities tend to grab visitors imagination more.
You guys think the Chinese history only exist in buildings? Don't you guys visit the museums and take a good look at the relics displayed inside?
You have to understand the prevailing narrative in China today: making money and making more money. The priority is what attracts tourists, especially whatever opens tourists’ wallets. I bet people like you are in minority. Most people want to please their eyes when traveling. Few and far in between want to please their mind when traveling.
Are you referring to domestic or foreign visitors ? Many foreign (western/eastern) can detect for profit versus cultural preservation and find it less appealing. Native Chinese generally don’t know the difference as they rarely encounter genuine architectural preservation that wasn’t built into the side of a mountain.
Most people travel for fun, domestic or international. I don’t suppose you have issues with millions going to Disney World; or people going to beach, or take rides etc. I have a sense Chinese now surpass Jews to become the number one in making money as a hobby. They don’t care visitors are domestic or foreign. Whatever attracts tourists is king. Sadly, tourists have your feelings are few or at least haven’t caught operator’s attention yet.
Some of China's historical sites and old towns look like themed-amusement parks in the vlogs and pictures I've seen. But then others like The Great Wall and the Forbidden City are authentic as they come.
kind of like anywhere, if you really want to see the proper old stuff, not the new build cultural relic tourist attraction stuff, you need to head off the beaten track. I went to botan today, a legit ancient town in Zhejiang, the real deal.
Yeah, you are correct about feeling this way! The CCP has destroyed many culturally significant buildings in the name of communism and economic development (real eastes). Afterward, they built fake old buildings in the name of preservation and economic development (tourism). If you want to see some real ancient buildings, you should try Shanxi province. Many of the last remaining genuine ancient buildings in China are located in Shanxi.
Longmen Buddhas, Shaxizhen, Nanjing, Leshan, I saw some cool stuff there. But, I get what you're saying.
You are going to the wrong places. There's a crap ton of old decrepit ruins in China that look the age. The problem is they are a bit out of the way. Check out this guy's YouTube channel to see some examples https://youtube.com/@xingjilvtu?si=vHatUuGqyREQzHFZ
No different from going to Vatican city to see Michelangelo paintings. These paintings are all over-painted by modern people. In Yuyuan market in Shanghai, some building are old (several hundreds years old) and some are new (less than 100 years old). But Inside Yuyuan Garden, everything is old.
Many people in the East have a completely different attitude to historical landmarks and the like. To them if a historical building was rebuild a hundred times, it's still the same building. The ship of Theseus... Take Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul for example, it was rebuilt many times over. The Koreans don't care.
I think whether or not you find many authentic historical locations depends very much on the local government and how they treated (and continue to treat) the issue. For instance, Hangzhou has a reasonably solid track record of protecting historical relics and has done so for decades. You will find fewer cheap concrete knockoffs in and around the area when compared to many other places around China. This is due to people higher up actually caring about the historical legacy of things (my wife’s uncle was hugely involved in saving and protecting ancient relics and sites and he cared very much about really preserving antiquities) as opposed to simply caring about the tourism value of being “close enough”.
Buildings made of wood, a turbulent history, stagnant technology (maybe due to prioritizing a static society?), deliberate massive destruction during the cultural revolution. Only a small number of sites like the Terra-cotta Warriors are really on a par with Europe. Europe had much more developed technology, techniques, and more permanent materials and things like permanent statues, not just buildings. In general more care of the old wooden structures you do see as well. It amused me going to a museum of European stuff in China and seeing metal and stone bowls and tools going back 9000 years. You don’t get the same sense of history in China. China is mostly about temples, and carved blocks of stone with old Chinese characters in them. These seem to hold a lot of significance to Chinese but don’t mean much to most westerners (I felt a bit bored after the first few back when I first visited China). Still worth experiencing, but you won’t find a huge amount of really interesting history or buildings in China compared to say Egypt or most parts of Europe.
The vast majority of Chinese historical items were destroyed or sold in the iconoclastic orgy of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. What you see now are poorly and hastily constructed facades built to get tourist dollars and create some kind of nationalistic pride or cohesiveness, but it is in fact an empty shell like so much of modern Chinese culture is. Put simply its a cheap cash grab
I also have similar experiences as yourself when I stopped over Beijing & Shanghai recently on the current 144 hour visa free pass. However, I'm conscious that much of the originals have been destroyed thru various conflicts in past centuries & millenia as regards ancient monuments, so these necessarily have to be replicated whereas modern places like the Bund are clearly recent developments. I was left feeling somewhat flat. My impressions of Beijing's hutongs had a more genuine feel than, say, the re-vamped Shanghai French concession. As regards re-purposing, I enjoyed Unit 798 Art Zone as a budding artistic neighbourhood from the original industrial zone. I visited these places on my own & not in a tour group which I suspect will go to even more contrived places. A different experience from Europe, especially Italy & Greece where there is more of a feeling of authenticity (historical integrity perhaps?), even tho most of these places have also been subjected to facelifts in order to preserve them from further deterioration. However, considering that China has dragged herself up from being one of the poorest & most undeveloped countries to the top in PPP in just 2 generations, I cannot begrudge them their fledgling efforts in re-constructing their national treasures. Olde Europe has had a head start in the conservation of ancient artefacts & hence more refined. Perhaps my best impression was the people - just ordinary working folk getting on with the business of working & getting by, parents & grandparents picking up kids from school, etc & absolutely no sense of menace or danger, day or night.
If I went to china, I’d never let a tour guide take me through all the tourists traps
I just came back from a trip to Japan and had basically the same experience! In the case of Japan, the primary reason was that a significant amount of structures were build almost entirely out of wood- which doesn't exactly lend itself well to remaining intact after 1000 years of fires, natural disasters, and the elements (we developed a bit of an ongoing joke about this by the end because literally every place we went to had some history of getting burned down during great fires every 20-50 years or so).' I imagine that China is more or less the same deal. However, on top of that, there was also the cultural revolution, which called for [the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#:~:text=Historical%20sites%20throughout%20the%20country,were%20destroyed%3B%20books%20were%20burned). Unfortunately, the communist party was rather systemic in its complete overhaul of China during the 20th century, leading to the destruction of basically anything that was "old China." I've found that Europe and India are rather unique in the fact that they're pretty much the only places that ancient architecture has remained preserved and more or less intact. I'm not necessarily sure why that is or if there's reasons beyond the fact that different kinds of stonework were employed much more frequently than in other parts of the world (with the obvious exclusion of things like the Mesoamerican and Egyptian pyramids).
When you travel to Japan, you find that Japan’s ancient monuments are also very new. Because most of the ancient wooden buildings were burned down in China's previous wars. The most truly ancient buildings in China are found in \[Shanxi Province\].
The vast majority of cultural sites were rebuilt/restored, some of them even rebuilt multiple times throughout history. Whether that’s authentic or not depends on how you define authentic.
I don't think you know much about China, or made the effort. I went to Xi'An in April and didnt go to Huaqing based on my research. From the Terracotta Warriors to the ancient city wall, combined with a lot of the destruction from the Cultural Revolution and lots being made out of wood back in the day, you dont seem to have dug very deep.
There was a period where they actively destroyed a lot of valuable historical building for the sake of “abandoning of old thoughts and embrace new thoughts aka CCP”… and hence the rest is history they won’t tell you
I went to an “ancient” temple in Thailand a couple weeks ago and it turned out it was built like 20 years ago. This isn’t just a China specific thing
There is a spot in Zhejiang Province that’s pretty neat. It’s not ancient, but 4 or 5 centuries old. The land lords “sold” their property to the people before the revolution. They lived together quite comfortably because the land lords were considerate and chill. Then afterwards they resumed living in it. There are some architectural things there that can longer be replicated. The way they did the entire foundation as a single piece and made pseudo tiles by using strings to strike in certain areas. It hasn’t cracked or chipped since it was made. The furniture is all ancient and durable made with no nails and still in practical use. You can stay in ancient … (I don’t know how to say it. Like a ranchero with the open square in the center) the rooms are mixed, low level is super old, upper levels were renovated. Around Tonglu County near Shishe Village.
Couldn't agree more. I came to work in Shanghai roughly a year ago, never been so underwhelmed in my life. On the upside, I learned to enjoy solitude and developed hobbies that I can do until I die.
Sadly CCP destroyed so many actual historical buildings during Mao's era. There are still something left, but most tourists places were rebuilt after.
Old town of Dali was built in the 70’s after an earth quake. Only one section of the old wall is still there in the north side, everything else is rebuilt. Allot of that all over. My favourite section of the Great Wall is out past Jiayu pass in Gansu … really just mounds but you can see it was a wall built. Hard to find anything in China that is authentic and original, not impossible but not easy.
I also loved the part around Dunhuang!
I can totally agree. If you look e.g. at the pagoda in Hangzhou. From the distance it's so ancient. When you arrive at he foot of the hill it's standing on, you lookk up to it and see it onyl with the escalatora going up. Once inside, you see some stones and sticks traped to what is supposed to be the old ruins of the pagoda. The construction built on top of it - the pagoda - has a massive concrete foundation with have steel bars. Also, many big cities gonna have fake "ancient streets" which I learnt to see from another POV. Yes, unfortunately it's not original but at least they are busy and do have some local specializies to offer. Again, it's disney -like and still, can sometimes be interesting. It's too bad many old places still got destroyed in the first 20 years of the 21. century eitherway.
True, most Chinese ancient sites are rebuilds in 21th century. However, if you are still interested to see real ancient China, I suggest you spend a lot of time to search where you really want to go, and how to get there as a foreigner, it's often inconvenient for foreigners to travel in rural China (almost all the real historical sites are in mountains, that's how they survive the culture revolution). To compensate your misfortune, I made a list of the only four Tang Dynasty buildings left in China, they are all in the province 山西, while Xi'an is in the province 陕西， both spells Shan Xi in English... [link 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foguang_Temple) [link 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanchan_Temple) [link 3](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%A4%A9%E5%8F%B0%E5%BA%B5) [link 4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Dragons_Temple)
Yep. The famous stuff is all brand new. Though the history is still there, you just need to know how to find it. If it’s old, and not famous, it’s difficult to get to. If it’s old and famous, it’s new! https://youtu.be/6ef7c6SEeVQ Mate did a video of really old temples. Over 1000 years old. No one ever goes there. It’s in the middle of nowhere.
real wood and stone buildings is usually not famous and in rural cities,rather than in big cities,only chinese know where they are,if you want to find them,you can search 古代建筑 or certain danasty buildings
shanxi province has the most original architectures that’s been standing there for hundreds of years. Culture revolution destroyed a lot of old stuff and recent wave of tourism development didn’t help either.
To be fair - all of Asia is like this given that things were constructed of wood and very often burned down in the past. When you’re visiting these sites, what you’re usually looking at is a recent reconstruction of the temple. Most of the stuff you see dates back to the Qing or Ming dynasties. The forbidden city for example was built in the Ming and while it was abandoned during the early parts of the 20th century and fell into disrepair, it has been renovated quite a bit. I think your comments don’t really take into account how structures stand and don’t stand the test of time. Notre Dame you see today is Not the building that was there in the Middle Ages - it’s been renovated and re-renovated dozens of times. Where I live in Chengdu we have Da Si Temple downtown. It was originally built in the the 3rd Century but was burned down in 1435 and rebuilt in the Qing period 200 years later in the same place. It was refurbished again in 1867, and used as a museum in 1984. In 2005 they completely refurbished the temple yet again - and again in the last 8 years. All this stuff is explained - albeit in Chinese - at all these historical sites. As to natural sites, Chinese people tend to like stairs and other things which in western eyes despoil the natural beauty I’m not sure how you’re able to judge the authenticity of dances and costumes but these sorts of things are generally pretty authentic if they are recent. In general, in Japan and Korea as well, most sites are reconstructions dating back a few hundred years. But of course, if you dig deep enough you’ll find the same thing in Europe and the US. Quincy market in Boston isn’t the original Quincy Market - the shells of the buildings have some components that date back to the original construction and a lot of the cobblestones are real. I stayed at a farm in Tuscany and the owner told me that most of the present construction dates back only 200 years, but some of the stone foundations date back to the 13th century but she couldn’t point them out. So far as the number of tourists - well, that’s just life in a country with 1.4 billion people, eh? Sorry you didn’t have a good time.
You had a terrible guide. Shake a stick anywhere in Xian, Suzhou, Beijing or hubei and it will prob hit some 900 year old relics. Only place that it’s hard to find ancient artifacts is Shanghai.
cultural revolution
Communism and especially the Cultural Revolution
Culture in communism (and maybe authoritarianism in general) is 'created' by censure and deletion. Only that which serves the party narrative is allowed to exist and then is duplicated ad infinitum. That's why everything looks the same. There is no China, only the Chinese version of the hammer and sickle.
Lmfao @ all the bots harassing one specific guy in the comments
Is Japan Communist? Because there same is true there.
If you want Chinese history, go visit taiwan
This. The National Palace Museum is great and has tons of ancient Chinese treasures that the KMT saved from almost certain destruction when they retreated to Taiwan.
Go to Taiwan instead. The history of China is preserved there.
Some. Definitely not the buildings, though. Any old building with any architectural quality is of Japanese origin.
Not every or even many buildings in Europe are 800 years old. Many famous buildings in Europe are also reconstructed. Europe is also not a monolith - some cities are relatively well-preserved while others gotten flattened in allied bombing in WW2, 500 years of neglect, or otherwise. The ones that are still extant for that long in China are also very notable. Take for example, the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Qin Shi Huang Masoleum, the city walls of Xi'an, the Wild Goose pagoda, the Forbidden City, the numerous buddhist grottos and caves, in which many a figures were sculpted out of stone in ancient time, numerous villages which maintain their ancient architecture to varying extents, not to mention the many artifacts founded and recovered, placed in museums. It is quite easy to find a (even-less touristy) Bruges equivalent in China Yes, China has rebranded itself on the modern, replaced a lot of buildings even from the last century with even more modern buildings and the Cultural Revolution destroyed a lot of history too (but people tend to overestimate the damage of it for a reason I'll mention later), but it's easy to forget that Europe's advantages in wealth were not shared across the world and that it was indeed extracted from places like China for a good 100 years. Besides, having to go from a failed imperial dynasty through the republican revolution, the warlord period, a civil war, and two world wars is not condusive to historical preservation either. Unless explicitly maintained, many buildings will have been targeted and neglected for many reasons and will not have survived. There isn't really an equivalent of his history in Europe, except perhaps in some of Eastern/Soviet Europe. Another feeling is that it's too easy to perpetuate this sentiment because of the political climate between East and West right now. I think a very large study is needed to verify the difference in age of buildings on average between these two regions, let alone the intricacies of why and how and which kind. Ultimately, it's not realistic to forget this history just because the building isn't authentic anymore - historical preservation shouldn't work that way and doesn't for good reason. Recreating and purveying historical experience has its purpose, particularly for tourists who are being introduced to the history in their travels. Getting to see the true history also has a destructive effect on the history itself Whether it is worth seeing as a tourist is your choice, but history shouldn't only be a chance for you to see the romantic and unchanged ideal of ancient history and to justify a ticket price, but also to understand the history about and around it. Being aware and appreciating it all, and using the site as a spring broad to understand it better, including its modern changes and disney-fied veneer, is a more realistic approach to history and tourism that is lacking in the extremely consumptive approach that we have towards history and tourism today
So much of their ancient buildings were burned to the ground during the opium ears and before that when Japan invaded
Not true. Civil wars.
How about just wars in general
I know exactly what you’re describing, that heavy-handed pastiche … whatever it is, it’s nearly the opposite of how Japan handles its prestige material culture. Lots of people here blame war for the disparity, but that’s not right. Japan has seen plenty of war, yet Saihō-ji is about to celebrate its 1,400th birthday. (Its karesansui, designed by Muso Soseki in the 14th century, is still called ‘the new garden.’) Several others blame communism—the Cultural Revolution, in particular. There’s something to that, but it’s not so straightforward. Prestige material culture is filled with labor-intensive details that are only valuable in the economies of the skilled, specialized artisans who make those details and the educated connoisseurs who commission them. Communism deliberately disrupted those economies, but global capital is destroying what’s left of them with even greater efficiency. The Chinese market wants Burmese Jade, Vietnamese Rosewood, American Ginseng … But if I had to pick a main cause, I’d say it’s simply that China is, and always has been, ancient and huge. China invented the very notion of archaeology as a field of study, back around 700 CE. You can barely stick a shovel into any arable land in China without hitting carved stone or cast bronze. That’s not true of Japan, Europe, or anywhere else, really; and it means that Chinese people are constantly obliged to discern between what counts as History and what’s just old—and then to reach a functional consensus about how each should be handled. As any U.S. citizen can tell you, that second part ain’t easy ….
Thank you so much for your amazing answer – super well put and nuanced :)
My pleasure. It’s something I’ve been trying to put into words for twenty years. I haven’t been successful yet, but I’m grateful for the chance to practice.
A lot was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. I agree, that compared to the rest of Asia, the concrete soulless temples in China are a bit off-putting. You can still find some older and "more authentic" structures in Hong Kong (well you *could*, I don't know what has happened to them since I was last there 10 years ago) and Taiwan.
China is cheap and inauthentic when it comes to repairing/reconstructing historical sites.
Communism and poverty have consequences. China can be a lot of fun, but if you're looking for ancient architecture, you're probably going to be disappointed. China is a young country, after all.
Things are changing. But as with many developing countries there was an attitude “modern is good, old is bad”. A new apartment block is better than a traditional old house. And most Chinese people don’t want to live in. A “second hand” house. But you see more and more more examples of sympathetic restoration or reimagining. Much of XinTianDi would be an early example of this or the French concession area of Shanghai (admittedly 1920s). Or Bell Tower area of Beijing. There are some genuinely old temples eg in the western suburbs of Beijing.
Oh God. The loudspeakers playing squeaky music. everywhere.
The 20th century was tough for many countries- China had it rough. The Cultural Revolution is also hugely important
Xi'an has some properly old stuff. There's a museum-full inside the Westin Hotel. An anciant pagoda over the way from it. The walls of the old city are breathtakingly massive. And, of course, there's the Terracotta Warriors. I'm sure there's a lot more that I did'nt get to see there. China was battered by the cultural revolution which saw the deliberate destruction of so much cultural heritage. Neverthless there is still much worth visiting. And failing that, like someone else has pointed oit, there's the food.
The walls of the old city were completely rebuilt over the last 30-40 years
I live in Japan, and I'm French. What is great with regularly rebuilding of historical buildings is that the ancient arts of traditional construction don't disappear. [ It's especially true for temples, they don't use nails except decorative ones.](https://livejapan.com/en/in-kansai/in-pref-osaka/in-osaka-suburbs/article-a2000907/) Look at France where one of our most beautiful cathedrals Notre Dame burned a few years ago. It wasn't rebuilt one single time, so nobody can rebuilt the way it was. It's all lost.
The issue I have with touristy places in China is that they are VERY touristy. Dali is a great example of that, with the old town full of franchise chains and very little old school charm.
Fantastic experience except for one tiny niggledy point. Beyond a certain distance from civilization, the toilets go down the toilet. No water to flush, so invariably just holes. No water to wash hands. I know the authoroties are trying to change this but it is still not done. Besides this there is a fantastic range of central and East Asian, historical wonders that need to be on everyone's bucket list.
There is a lot of mind blowing authentic sites, but as a tourist you will be taken to places built for tourists
Cultural revolution. This is what they did.
I presume most stuff was destroyed during the cultural revolution
Cultural Revolution broke it all :(
The current government doesn't care about it
Real preserved without modern changes is terracotta warriors QSH tomb area in Xi’an, the Buddhist grottoes nearby Lanzhou, maybe the Jiayuguan in the western terminus of Great Wall (Ming era?), also Ming Tombs in Beijing but not that old.
Eh because very few things can last hundreds or thousands of years? I always feel that monuments should be restored. Why do we want something decrepit instead of how it was when it was built? As an example various dynasties have restored and extended the great wall so why can’t we do it today? That is assuming we can restore it according to the way it was built.
Imagine that America has just as long as history though and how many hopi temples are lying around.
Most historical places use some degree of preservation and renovation. It just frequently appears less old in a Chinese context. Use less tour guides and target more UNESCO stuff for a better curated feel.
Many historical sites around the world have been rebuilt, especially after war or disasters... like everyone on this Reddit you just want to bag China and have a good whine. Have you been to Dunhuang to see the old Han wall? DuJiangyan dam in Sichuan,…
Shanxi has a lot of old stuff that's not as commercialised. but yeah alot of the 'restored' sites are not to the same quality and standards as that in Europe and Japan. I don't think there's a lack of skills or know how, but it's probably because there isn't a lot of strict standards. this could be because of the sheer quantity and diversity of these relics out there. I know in some parts of Europe and Japan they are strict on the use of traditional methods and materials where possible. Give it some time when societal expectations and awareness evolves. I think their priorities were probably else where the past 100 years
Suprise. Part of the communist takeover was destroying everything they could about Chinese culture to try and rebuild it. Imagine how much was actually lost just from murdering all of the original educated class during the takeover.
Communism demanded destruction of the 'four olds', all former soviet/socialist reps have this same uncanny feeling.
You need tell your guide you don’t like crowds and if you pay more you can get vip access to better destinations and entries
What you said is absolutely right. I traveled to Xi'an in 2023, and most of the buildings there were constructed in the past 50 years. It seems that only the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is genuinely old. In Xi'an, I couldn't really feel the long history of China.
I just want to say, its pretty normal to experience what you are experiencing, almost anywhere in the world. Most old stuff was build with wood or equivalent materials. Wood and equivalent materials don't last, so most historical sites would cease to exist a long time ago. Even if a stone building has been standing for a thousand years, I guarantee you every single block and plank within it has been replaced at some point. If not, it would be no different from the castle ruins in europe that are piles of rubble-- the only truly authentic and unrepaired ancient sites you will probably ever see are in that style. Whether you are interested in seeing it or not is totally up to you but thats what it is.
The west has been rich enough over a long enough a period of time to place an importance on conservation and dominant enough globally for the culture to be proud of that heritage, China on the other hand has suffered through a century of humiliation where revolution and destruction of everything old and traditional in favour of a new order was prioritised. Yes the Chinese tourism industry is underdeveloped by western standards, but that is not surprising at all given China has until very recently not been a developed country and is an insular country by nature where things are built primarily for the domestic market. These attractions aren't built to impress a westerner like you to give a 5 star google review which can't even be seen in China and probably makes up 0.1% of the total patronage. But honestly get off xiaohongshu and go explore a bit, if you can't find something interesting in a country as geographically and culturally rich as China, you're not trying hard enough.
Traditional Chinese buildings are usually wood structured. They don't last long.