The rescue, conservation, and restoration of heritage sites in the ethnic minority areas ravaged by the Wenchuan earthquake

Abstract

Stockaded villages of the Qiang nationality that are made up of watchtowers and watch-houses are an important part of its cultural heritage. The earliest documentary records of its blockhouse-styled construction can be found in Biography of the Ethnic Minority Groups in Southwest China of History of Eastern Han. In 2006, watchtowers and stockaded villages of the Qiang nationality was placed in the preparatory declaration list of world cultural heritage in China and became a minority architectural heritage that is of potential value for world cultural heritage. The Wenchuan earthquake, which happened on May 12th, 2008, caused severe damage to settlements of the Qiangs in the upper reaches of Min River, including the “Tangping Qiang village,” which plays a prominent role in Qiang stockaded villages. In conserving this important architectural heritage, we observe the idea “everything for heritage value”. We discuss and draw up a series of salvage conservation countermeasures and research for antiseimatic key technology during post-earthquake reconstruction period of Tibetan and Qiang settlement engineering projects, including six engineering principles on priority of structure rescue, heritage value, former address maintenance, traditional way of use, protection against and mitigation of earthquake disasters, and spot cleaning and separating. We draw up three rules in engineering strategy, namely: (1) we should follow ultimate orientation of heritage value protection in rescue, maintenance, and protection engineering; (2) degrees of priority of engineering measures should be differentiated according to the situation of the disaster and residential situations of stockaded villages and; (3) we should keep local smiths and conventional art as the base, and modern technology as a supplement in rescue, maintenance, and protection engineering.