China plans to preserve cultural relics along Yellow River

CAIRO – 19 July 2022: The Chinese authorities issued a plan to preserve cultural relics along the Yellow River, pledging ppl to establish a database of cultural resources along the "Mother River" of the Chinese nation by 2025, the National Cultural Heritage Administration said in a statement today.

According to the plan, a special survey of cultural heritage will be conducted, to know the number, types, distribution and characteristics of cultural monuments along the river, noting that a list of major cultural relics will be published after the survey, according to Xinhua.

The cultural relics identified during the survey will be combined with the distinctive culture related to the Yellow River, to form a display system under nine themes, including the origin of mankind, the history of civilization and revolutionary traditions, according to the plan.

On the other hand, it is noteworthy that at the end of 2020, a group of Chinese experts and archaeologists discovered more than 100 tombs dating back 2,200 years near a section of the Yellow River in Luoyang City, in central China’s Henan Province, according to Chinese archaeologists.

Based on the shape of these tombs and the materials used in their construction, archaeologists at the Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology in Luoyang believe that these tombs date back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD).

Archaeologists say that these tombs were originally located on a platform on the south bank of a section of the Yellow River in Lijiang Village, Luoyang City. In the summer of 2020, the flooding of the river led to the erosion of the platform and part of the river bank, which led to the appearance of tombs after the water level fell.

Given the complex conditions at the tombs’ site, archaeologists are still working on survey plans to carry out further excavations, according to the Chinese Xinhua Agency.