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 | Thursday, April 20, 2000, updated at 14:55(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Firm Punished for Ruining RelicsThe municipal government of Guangzhou imposed a severe penalty on Shantou Road and Bridge Engineering Co Ltd for destroying a cultural relic and archaeological site in Luogang, a suburban town of East Guangzhou, China Daily reports on April 20.Shantou Road and Bridge Engineering Co Ltd was the contractor for the 22nd and 24th sections of Guangzhou Beier-huan Expressway, one of Guangzhou's key infrastructure projects. The illegal activity was ordered to stop immediately by the municipal government. The Shantou contractor submitted a written apology to Guangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute yesterday, which is responsible for the archaeological work on the site. Guangzhou Beierhuan Expressway Co Ltd, the very company tendering the bid to the contractor, criticized and fined the staff in charge of the section co-ordination work of the expressway project. They also paid for all the archaeological work expense, amounting to 2.83 million yuan (US$341,000). The sections of the expressway project go through Luogang, where archaeologists had found cultural relics before the expressway project was initiated and they had been working on the archaeological site. However, the contractor, under pressure to finish the expressway project and against the warnings of Guangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, refilled 10 caves, which was part of the archaeological site, on February 17 and 18. The bold move not only aroused the attention of the municipal government as well as the local media, but also archaeologists nationwide. "We hope the punishment can, to some extent, cover the loss due to the misdeed of Shantou Road and Bridge Engineering Co Ltd, teach other project contractors a good lesson, and hone the awareness of the public of cultural relics protection," said Chen Wanpeng, deputy secretary-general of the municipal government. Thanks to the municipal government's immediate action, the archaeological work on the site has come to a smooth end, said Chen Yuhuan, deputy director of Guangzhou Culture Bureau. The archaeological site, covering an area of more than 7,000 square metres, is rich with cultural relics and ruins of Guangzhou ancestors' architecture that can be dated back to as early as the pre-Qin Dynasty period, the first discovery of its kind in Guangzhou, Chen said.
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