Keeping the past in sight for the future

Huang Junwei, owner of a diaolou, a multistory watchtower-style residential building, located in Zhongshan's Torch High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, says that the guardrails on one roof of the diaolou had become detached exposing steel bars. The structure was crumbling, posing a danger to passersby.

"Later, the zone's cultural relics management department applied for the repair funds from the city's annual maintenance subsidy to help fix the diaolou, protect the relic and remove the safety hazard," he says.

According to Liu, the establishment of the annual maintenance subsidy fund indicated that Zhongshan has shifted the protection concept of immovable cultural relics from "emphasizing the repairs and restoration of cultural relics and neglecting daily maintenance" to "mainly focusing on daily maintenance and minimizing repairs as much as possible".

After the Sun Yat-sen memorial pavilion in Haoyong village in Nanlang subdistrict was repaired with the city's annual maintenance subsidy fund, it has now become a favored destination for villagers to chat after meals or while waiting for buses, Liu says.

"Many villagers gave a thumbs-up to the repairs and maintenance of the village's cultural relics," he says, adding that previously he used to be scolded by the elderly in the village for failing to protect the hamlet's relics when he arrived on inspection tours.

Liu says with the aid of the city's annual maintenance subsidy fund, his center had completed repairs and maintenance for more than 100 immovable cultural relics under its jurisdiction, as of the end of June.

According to Wu Rongchao, director of the cultural heritage department with the Zhongshan Bureau of Culture, Broadcast, Television and Tourism, the city achieved full coverage of the annual maintenance system for immovable cultural relics in the entire city. And the system was awarded as one of the top 10 cases of high-quality development of cultural relics in the country in 2023.

The city's cultural relics are not only abundant in quantity, but also diverse in type, covering all major categories, such as ancient cultural sites, tombs, architecture, stone carvings, temples, important historical sites and representative buildings of modern times, he says.

Zhongshan has a total of 568 immovable cultural relics that have been recognized and made public, including three national key cultural relics and 24 provincial cultural relics, according to Wu.

"Relevant departments have, so far, completed a total of 184 daily repair and maintenance projects for the city's immovable cultural relics," Wu says.