Deputy to the National People’s Congress Su Bomin proposed there should be a dedicated college course for cultural relic protection at the Two Sessions, China's main legislative meetings.
China’s Dunhuang Research Academy has signed cooperation agreements with international institutions with advanced restoration technology since the late 1980s. There have been achievements. But Su Bomin, head of the academy, who has spent nearly 20 years protecting the relics at Dunhuang in West China's Gansu Province, said it was hard for him to apply for research funds because there is no specific college major on cultural relic protection.
Su told news portal The Paper that protecting cultural relics requires modern technology. In cooperation with advanced institutions around the world, their research teams have studied new skills, which is needed to tackle tough problems in the process of restoring relics.
Yet there are still problems in the restoration of artifacts, and the lack of a college major in this field is the main impediment to attracting more funding for his research, Su said. He argued that cultural relic protection is an interdisciplinary subject involving the basic sciences, including chemistry, physics, biology and geology, as well as civil construction, material analyses and metallurgical engineering.
Protecting cultural heritage has become an important national strategy in many countries, but Su said he felt sad that most Chinese people just regard cultural relic protection as simple work to repair objects.
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