Ancient Chinese villages 'rotting away' for lack of money
Rural residents are struggling to find the cash to renovate their ancestral homes, many of which are wooden structures dating to the Ming dynasty
A shortage of funding is jeopardising efforts to preserve historical villages on the mainland that are in danger of rotting away, Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily reported.
Many are made of wooden structures and date back as far as the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
They have survived industrialisation and urbanisation because they are in remote areas, but poorer rural residents find it harder to raise the cash to renovate their ancestral homes which are slowly falling into disrepair.
The government earmarks about 3 million yuan (HK$3.8 million) to each village on its protected list, but the cost of preserving one home can exceed this.
"It's more difficult than protecting the Forbidden City," said Lou Qingxi, an architecture professor at Tsinghua University, referring to the former imperial palace in the centre of Beijing.
One village under threat is Anyi near Nanchang in Jiangxi. Liang Hongsheng, from Jiangxi Normal University, said the village, one of the province's oldest, might disappear because many of its wooden houses had already rotted.