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BAILU TOWN, Sichuan: China will rebuild a
100-year-old Catholic seminary that was destroyed in the powerful
earthquake in May on its original site in the southwestern Sichuan
province.
“Experts on ancient buildings
from Beijing and Chengdu have started drawing up a reconstruction
plan. Original building material will be used as much as possible to
restore the seminary,” an official of the Sichuan provincial
bureau of cultural relics protection told Xinhua on Saturday.
The cost and time for the
reconstruction was not known yet.
The Bailu Upper Academy, the
first Catholic seminary in southwest China, was built in 1908 in the
Bailu town, Pengzhou city of Sichuan. Most of the seminary was
destroyed within eight seconds after the May 12 earthquake struck.
Rubble and broken pillars were
all that was left. The seminary was previously a three-story
building covering 18,000 square meters, but only 2 percent of the
building survived the quake, said residents.
They have now set up tents around
the seminary and live in the ruins, as their homes were destroyed.
The local government earmarked an
open field to store bricks, tiles, fences and other parts of the
seminary, and appointed a local Catholic named Tang Min earlier this
week to look after the remains around the clock.
Before Tang Min, the remains were
guarded by soldiers who were there for disaster-relief work.
“Not a single brick could be
stolen, because they are all cultural relics,” said Tang.
Hundreds of churches, temples and
mosques have been toppled in Sichuan by the earthquake, and their
reconstruction would take a long time, said Yu Xiaoheng, deputy
director of the Sichuan provincial bureau of religion.
A total of 83 of all the 128
state-level cultural heritages suffered damages in the quake,
including World Cultural Heritage Dujiangyan.
The State Administration of
Cultural Heritage has ordered subordinate bureaus across the country
to offer a hand in salvage and protection of culture relics in
quake-hit regions.
-- XINHUA
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