Ancient town threatened by tourism
Print Edition
TOURISM growth is threatening the local customs and cultural heritage of the ancient town of Pingyao in north China’s Shanxi Province.
In the 17 years since the 2,700-year-old town was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, tourism has developed at a meteoric pace, with revenue from the sector growing from 12.5 million yuan (US$2million) in 1997 to 5.416 billion yuan last year.
Business opportunities have seen traditional dwellings along the town’s main street transformed into hostels, souvenir shops, eateries and bars.
Many visitors are complaining that the ancient town is losing its serenity and unique style.
Zhang Peng, an associate professor of architecture with Tongji University in Shanghai, said the future of a heritage site should be based on the collective willingness of all interest groups. However, in Pingyao, local residents often felt disenfranchised.
Every ancient town should find a development pattern in accordance with its own characteristics, and local governments should control commercial activities deemed to be against the traditional characteristics of the town, he said.
Hou Shijun, head of the Pingyao County tourism bureau, said: “Some businesses may indeed damage the traditional cultural heritage.
The government is currently working on the issue of market access, and we should not allow the ancient town to become a cultural hodgepodge.”
An unreasonable demographic structure is also a threat to Pingyao’s cultural heritage.
According to county deputy head Hu Jinliang, in 1997 the population of the town was 45,000 in a 2.25-square-kilometer area, a density about 16 times that of that of Beijing.
In response, the local government has moved many public institutions and enterprises out of town, with the purpose of transforming it from a community to a tourist site.
Local residents have also been leaving the area due to inconvenient transport and substandard living conditions.
Resident Gao Guihong said: “It is too humid in the house. There is no big supermarket, school or hospital in the town, and the air is also bad since we still use coal for heating.”
Gao, 45, said he was working two jobs to save enough money to move out of the county.
Ji Taiping, director of the county’s urban-rural planning bureau, said that since the number of local residents emotionally attached to traditional housing decreased and the number of tourists and newcomers grew, the ancient town had begun to slowly lose its vigor and vitality.
The current situation also threatens the protection of traditional structures as the influx of outsiders usually lacked any interest in protecting or restoring the houses, Ji said.
The local government should regulate the development of tourism and improve infrastructure and living conditions for local residents, he said.
The county has 3,797 traditional dwellings and other historical sites within its 6.4-kilometer-long walls. But only about 400 are well-preserved and the majority are dilapidated due to a lack of adequate protection, said county chief Cao Zhisheng.
The protection of the buildings in the ancient town should develop alongside improvements for local residents, Zhang said.
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