Liaoning’s religious murals left to rot
Print Edition
WITH Chinese Cultural Heritage Day falling yesterday, the difficulty of restoring religious wall paintings has become a national focus of attention.
Fengguo Temple in Yixian County, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, is one of only three temples that survive from the Liao period (916-1125), after which the province is named. There are 20 Buddhist murals in the main temple and much of the artwork has been worn away by time.
A restoration program was approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 2000, but nothing has been done since, said Wang Fei, head of heritage management in the county.
“The works have flaked and cracked after years of deterioration due to the temperature, moisture and dust in the air,” he said.
Wang’s department has examined the paintings many times, but most experts have shied away from taking on the restoration work, saying the scale of it is beyond their capacity. There are no organizations in Liaoning that are sufficiently qualified or willing to carry out the work.
The paintings are exemplars of high artistic values with rich historical connotations, and many such works in China suffer from degradation due to the natural environment and development of tourism.
There is also a huge gulf between the need for restoration and the talent pool in China. Worse still, some works have even been destroyed by botched attempts to save them.
In October, work carried out in Yunjie Temple in the city of Chaoyang, Liaoning, outraged critics and the public because of its cartoon quality, which was more akin to Disney than Buddha.
The work was not approved and was carried out by amateurs. As a result, the original is now beyond restoration.
Li Xiangdong, deputy head of cultural heritage in Liaoning, said the province has 128 national and more than 400 provincial cultural heritage sites, but only five qualified preservation and restoration organizations.
Li Shengneng, deputy head of the Shenyang Palace Museum, is well aware that restorations require considerable effort and are time consuming.
“Failure is intolerable in the restoration of historical artifacts, and leads to the disappearance of history,” Li said.
“It takes a long time for one to master the techniques,” he said.
“The old professionals are retiring and there are nowhere near enough young people to replace them.”
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