ChinaFile Recommends
09.08.17High Cost of China's Push for Unesco Heritage Sites
Financial Times
China is ranked second only to Italy in terms of number of world heritage sites. But it's come at a cost.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.23.17Demolishing Dalian: China’s ‘Russian’ City Is Erasing Its Heritage—in Pictures
Guardian
Founded by the Russians, Dalian boasts a wealth of architectural history. But now its treasured buildings are marked for demolition—and the government is being sued. One student went to capture the area before it disappears
ChinaFile Recommends
07.02.15Fears Raised as "A Third" of China Great Wall Vanishes
CNN
About 30%, of the ancient fortification built in the Ming Dynasty era has disappeared due to natural erosion and human damage, according to the Beijing Times.
Earthbound China
03.02.15
Village Acupuncture
On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.20.14After Winding Odyssey, Tibetan Texts Find Home
China Digital Times
An American scholar of Tibet has collected thousands of Tibetan language books and donated them to Chengdu’s Southwest University for Nationalities.
Earthbound China
04.11.13
Moving House: Preserving Huizhou’s Vernacular Architecture
In 1996, art historian Nancy Berliner, working with the Peabody Essex Museum, purchased a vacant Qing dynasty merchant’s house from the Huizhou region of China and, piece by piece, moved it to the United States to be meticulously reconstructed at...
Earthbound China
04.11.13
There Goes the Neighborhood
When, in 1996, art historian Nancy Berliner purchased a late Qing dynasty merchants’ house from Huangcun, a village in Anhui province, it was just one ordinary house among thousands like it in the picturesque Huizhou region of China. It took...
Caixin Media
12.28.12
Uncertain Future for Architectural Treasures
Nestled between mountains and a winding river in a scenic corner of Shanxi province is Zhongyang County, the home of an exquisite Confucian temple built during the Ming dynasty.The colorful wooden temple graced this idyllic valley for hundreds of...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.12Pursuing Preservation Without Disney-ficiation
Atlantic
One of China’s last intact walled cities is undergoing something of an identity crisis. Pingyao, in China’s Shanxi province, has endured for 2,700 years, escaping the destruction of the Cultural Revolution because the city was too poor and too...
The NYRB China Archive
06.01.11China’s Glorious New Past
from New York Review of Books
I first went to Datong in 1984 and was immediately taken by this gritty city in China’s northern Shanxi Province. Along with half a dozen classmates from Peking University, I traveled eight hours on an overnight train, arriving in a place that felt...
Sinica Podcast
09.10.10
Showdown in Shenzhen
from Sinica Podcast
On September 6, Shenzhen celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its founding as a special economic zone (SEZ). And while the city feted itself at the highest levels of power, its celebrations were marred by an unexpected development: in a speech...