Be Sincere in Preservation of Cultural Artefacts

　　Those who abide by Chinese laws should not be treated with discrimination. Whoever takes the trouble and expense to move an old house overseas for reassembling surely cherishes the architecture.

　　As a matter of fact, when it comes to illegal acts of vandalism, such as cutting off a Buddha's head and smuggling it across the border, it is greed and wanton disregard for laws and decency that are at work, by corrupt Chinese and foreign nationals alike.

　　There is a fundamental difference between someone who bribes a local to steal a piece of an artefact and someone who legally buys something of cultural value and exports it. The role of the government is to spell out what can and cannot be bought for overseas destinations and to guard those irreplaceable items that are an integral part of our cultural inheritance.

　　I'm not implying the Anhui house should be allowed to be moved to Sweden. I believe our existing laws probably have made it quite clear. But if it is within the realm of protection, local authorities should not have waited until it got into the headlines to act.

　　Two decades ago, I accompanied a few curators from China on a tour of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. While walking through the properly air-conditioned and ventilated vault, one of them sighed: "In our museum, this kind of stuff just lies in the backyard with no shelter from rain or wind."

　　Psychologically, this is not a unique issue for China. In the animated film "Toy Story 2," Woody the toy cowboy falls out of favor with his owner. But a museum in Japan wants to display him and other quintessentially American toys to Japanese kids. Woody resisted the idea of moving at first, but then embraced the prospect of new popularity and possible immortality in a foreign museum.

　　My conjecture is, if a Chinese government agency had paid for the Anhui house and designated it as an exhibit for Chinese civilization in Sweden, there might have been no controversy.

　　by Raymond Zhou