Cnetizens: Why the thousand-year-old stone statues at the Northern Song Mausoleums arenât covered with glass enclosures.
The director of the Cultural Relics Bureau replies: "Theyâve stood here largely intact for over a millennium. Why add extra barriers?"
Visitors worry wind, rain and sunlight in the farmland will wear them down. The director explains:
Glass covers speed up decayâitâs like locking the statues in a sauna. Trapped heat and moisture create sharp temperature shifts. Salt crystals inside the stone expand and crack the carvings far faster than open-air exposure.
These statues blend naturally with the farmland landscape. Glass barriers would destroy the sense of scale and historical atmosphere.
When first built, the mausoleum complex was a restricted royal compound ringed by walls, palaces and pine treesâno farmland at all. After the Song fell, protection systems collapsed. Wars and weather destroyed buildings. Local residents gradually dismantled the abandoned structures, reusing timber and bricks in nearby villages.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, villagers turned the empty grounds into farmland, leaving stone figures scattered amid crops.
Few people damaged the statues for three reasons: each weighs several tons and is impossible to move; folk belief held that anyone who damaged the guardian statues would be cursed with misfortune; every later dynasty passed laws punishing those who vandalized former imperial mausoleums.
Once an exclusive imperial burial ground, now ordinary farmlandâthis shift tells the story of history. Glass covers would only be unnecessary. As an old Chinese poem puts it: ć§ćśçč°˘ĺ ĺçďźéŁĺ
ĽĺŻťĺ¸¸çžĺ§ĺŽś
The swallows that were wont to grace the halls of Wang and Xie,
Now seek the humble roofs of common men.
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