More focus on cultural relics as a 5-year survey is completed

A staff member from the Palace Museum in Beijing uploads the museum's cultural relics to the system. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China's cultural relics now have national ID cards. A report by the State Council on Friday shows that there are 108 million moveable cultural relics in State-owned institutions on the Chinese mainland, based on a five-year national study, the first since the founding of New China in 1949.

And 64,073,178 of them are in a national database, under 15 categories.

Each item has a unique code in the database, and more than 50 million pictures of them have been uploaded to the system.

The report shows 7 million cultural relics were discovered during the national survey.

The five main categories were coins and bank notes, books, paper files, pottery and ceramics.

The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) relics comprised a major part of the hoard, covering about one-third of the total, followed by the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

The survey also shows that about 40 percent of the cultural relics need restoration. And a conservator is typically responsible for about 2,290 cultural relics, showing the extent of the personnel deficit.

Liu Yuzhu, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, says conservation training will be boosted.

Nearly 30 departments under the State Council worked on the survey, which Guan Qiang, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, compared with a demographic census.

According to Guan, though museums were the main targets for the survey, universities, temples and even Chinese embassies were covered, necessitating the participation of departments in charge of education, religion and foreign affairs.