I tesori archeologici della Cina

When this city began its gargantuan construction job for the 2008 Olympics, an early complication involved dead eunuchs. Workers had discovered a eunuch mausoleum buried under the site of the skeet shooting venue on the city’s western fringe. And the eunuchs had company.
Along the city’s northern rim, surveyors examined the sites for the main Olympic stadiums and discovered archaeological remains tracing back 2,000 years to the Han Dynasty. In all, archaeologists excavated 700 ancient burial sites and recovered 1,538 artifacts, including porcelain urns and jade jewelry, while collecting more than 6,000 ancient coins.
The subterranean Olympic cache would be considered remarkable in many countries, but in a China convulsing with demolition and construction, it amounted to just another work site.
Building the new China usually entails digging up the old China. Construction zones across the country are uncovering so many antiquities that it might be considered a golden era for archaeology — except that sites and antiquities are often simply demolished by bulldozers or looted.
“There are two enemies of antiquity protection,” said Xu Pingfang, president of the China Archaeological Society. “Construction is one. Thieves are the others. They know what they want, and they destroy the rest.”
The Olympic site seems to be an example of how China’s antiquities protection system should work. Construction supervisors and archaeologists have collaborated for four years, conducting excavations and restoring three Taoist temples — including one near the National Stadium, the main Olympic venue, that undoubtedly will become a familiar sight to television viewers during the summer Games.
But elsewhere in China, archaeologists are often in a losing race against bulldozers. In late January, a work crew in the ancient capital city of Nanjing unearthed and destroyed the burial sites of 10 noblemen from six dynasties. Bulldozers had crushed the burial crypts, and looters had combed through the site by the time a team of local archaeologists arrived.
Such stories are common. Last year, local antiquities officials in Luoyang in western Henan Province described how unceasing urban development was steadily encroaching on a protected zone of ruins dating to the Tang Dynasty, 618 to 906. Meanwhile, a local newspaper reported that a major redevelopment project, including an industrial park, was being planned atop the ruins of an ancient palace.
China, of course, is not the first ancient civilization to struggle with balancing modernization and cultural preservation. Controversies still arise in European countries when construction plans intrude on ancient sites, and the United States, a much younger country, has a decidedly spotty record on protecting historical sites.
“This is something that modernization brings with it,” said Lothar von Falkenhausen, a professor of archaeology and art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose specialties include Chinese archaeology. “The West went through this 200 years ago.”
Dr. von Falkenhausen said archaeology had emerged as a discipline in many Western countries partly as a response to rapid industrialization — a trend that is evident in China, too. Until the middle of the last century, archaeology in China was mostly confined to one excavation site at the ancient city of Anyang and some foreign-led projects that often amounted to brazen plundering. Universities did not offer archaeology as a degree program until the early 1950s, when a curriculum was introduced at Peking University.
Mr. Xu, a member of that first graduating class, says archaeology is now offered at most of China’s leading universities, while a network of government antiquity bureaus has been established throughout the provinces and major cities. Chinese law also requires that real estate developers receive approval from the local antiquity bureau before proceeding with work.
“In theory, the rules are there to rescue things as they come out,” Dr. von Falkenhausen said.
But, in reality, developers and local officials often sidestep the rules, partly because surveys and excavations can be time-consuming and create costly construction delays. Chinese archaeologists, as a group considered well trained, are greatly outnumbered, and Dr. von Falkenhausen said many of the local antiquities bureaus tried to perform a sort of archaeological triage by rescuing antiquities before they were stolen or destroyed.
Public support for preservation is hard to gauge, and Mr. Xu said archaeologists often must convince local officials that an ancient site has value and should not simply be steamrolled. In the most important sites, archaeologists try to leave the relics undisturbed; the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shihuang outside Xian, by the famous site of the terra cotta warriors, is being left untouched until technology advances enough to ensure a safe excavation.
Unquestionably, archaeological projects are under way all over China. In 2005, the National Antiquities Bureau approved excavations at 600 sites, including 17 where ancient chariots were recovered. Each year, as a tool of public education, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage publishes a glossy book detailing the 10 major archaeological finds of the year.
As important as what is being unearthed, Chinese archaeology has also contributed to a rethinking of Chinese history and the belief that the Han Chinese people originated solely from the Yellow River region in central China.
Discoveries over the past two decades have proved that an advanced civilization had also developed farther to the south, near the Yangtze River, suggesting a far more complicated national history. In 2005, a sophisticated piece of bronze found in southern Zhejiang Province dated back roughly 10,000 years.
Beijing itself is a microcosm of the tension between new and old. Almost the entire ancient city has been destroyed during the past six decades, a process accelerated in recent years as developers and city officials have rushed to prepare the city for the Olympics. Entire neighborhoods of ancient lanes and courtyard houses have been flattened as developers have raced to finish projects before the Games.
But at the actual sites of the Olympic venues, the most prestigious and highest profile construction project in China, organizers have been careful to work with preservationists.
Song Dachuan, a scholar at the Cultural Relics Research Institute, said that farmers and tradesmen most likely once lived in the main Olympic zone and that the unearthed antiquities were not considered of great historic value. The more valuable finds came from the skeet shooting site, where an ornate, intact jade belt was discovered with many other relics at the eunuch mausoleum.The fact that the eunuchs were wealthier and had finer belongings reflected in part their standing in the imperial court. “It was also because they didn’t have any children,” Mr. Song said.

Articolo tratto da NewYorkTimes.com