A look at China's UNESCO Heritage Sites

CGTN Europe spoke to Qian Gao, Assistant Professor in Heritage and Museum at Durham University.

Transcript

00:00Tian Gao is assistant professor in heritage and museum at Durham University.

00:06UNESCO heritage site, well, it's a big thing.

00:08You can consider it as a title, an international recognition of those sites that is considered to have outstanding universal value.

00:17So when the heritage sites, when the historical sites are considered to be UNESCO World Heritage Sites,

00:25they all equally have what we call outstanding universal value,

00:31which means they have such value, they have such significance, so important, so substantial,

00:38they go beyond the national border.

00:40So they should be cherished, they should be valued, they should be appreciated not just by its own national citizen,

00:46they should be cherished by the humanity in general altogether.

00:51So that's what we can best describe the so-called UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

00:58And in China, we try to put the best of the best,

01:01and we also try to make sure the sites we can, how to say, promote it to have the UNESCO World Heritage Recognition,

01:10can represent more sort of a multifaceted and profound and also comprehensive representation of the so-called Chinese civilization.

01:20So we try to, how to say, have a bit of everything,

01:24and also make sure they are the best of the best of all the important sites that can represent our culture and also our history.

01:31If you could choose just one UNESCO Heritage Site in China, which would it be and why?

01:38Well, that would be a very biased answer from my side,

01:42because since my PhD, I've been working on the subject of UNESCO World Heritage Sites,

01:47and I've been working on this rock art site, which is located at the border between China and Vietnam,

01:53which is called Huashan Rock Art Area,

01:55which was the first rock art cultural landscape that was ever in China inscribed at the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

02:03I would shoot that one.

02:04That was very special to me.

02:05And also currently I'm working with some colleagues on the Great Wall.

02:10Well, everybody knows about the Great Wall,

02:12but we are trying to, how to say, enhance understanding of the Great Wall.

02:16It's not just, you know, the structure, not just the wall.

02:18It's also about the landscape.

02:20It's also about a continuous sort of a construction tradition that has lasted for more than 2,000 years

02:27and is still continuously reshaping a certain landscape,

02:31a certain sort of a understanding of this kind of borderland structure,

02:38borderland sort of a tradition that exists from 2,000 years ago until today.

02:42So I would choose those two as a very special and very different type of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in China

02:49as my personal favorite.