A view of the Tang Dynasty West Market in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province Photo: CFP

The Tang Dynasty West Market, located to the west of Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, used to be just ruins, but now it has been restored and developed into a complex with eight areas, including a shopping street, a museum, a hotel and residential apartment buildings.

The project is the brainchild of Xi'an Tang Dynasty West Market Culture Industry Co, a private enterprise.

An Jiayao, a well-known archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited to explore the ruins before they were developed.

Bridging past and future

Exploration of the market ruins has provided useful information about the Tang Dynasty (618-907), An said, such as the method used for construction of ditches and artworks made from bones.

Findings about the layout of the market have also proved valuable. Behind the shops were individual workshops where vendors made crafts before displaying them, according to An's exploration.

The West Market covered about 106 hectares in the Tang Dynasty, and was home to tradesmen from about 220 industries, including wine, clothes, medicine, antiques and jewelry.

It was one of the world's largest international trading centers at the time. Standing at the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, the restored market is hoping to benefit from plans to develop a new Silk Road Economic Belt, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping when he paid a state visit to Kazakhstan in early September.

Xi said the economic belt should be developed to promote cooperation between China and Central Asian countries, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xi also said that traditional friendship should be promoted among countries along the ancient Silk Road, which have a population of 3 billion, representing a potentially huge market, Xinhua reported.

The Silk Road economic belt will provide opportunities for Shaanxi Province, not only for economic development but also for cultural exchange, Liu Kewei, professor at the College of Urban and Environmental Science with Northwest University in Xi'an, was quoted as saying by Shaanxi Daily on October 21.

Zhang Baotong, a research fellow with the Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the restored West Market is using historical relics for tourism and cultural exchange, but this alone is not enough to ensure prosperity.

The Silk Road economic belt is not confined to tourism or culture, Zhang noted, but can also involve exchange of manufacturing and high-tech products from China with raw materials like petroleum and gas from Central and West Asian countries.

Rebuilding the market

Jiao Bo, communications officer with Xi'an Tang Dynasty West Market Culture Industry Co, told the Global Times that the CEO of the company, Lü Jianzhong, is obsessed with antiques and cultural industries, which explains why he switched from being a real estate developer to an investor in restoration.

Jiao said the company got the contract to restore the West Market in 2001 and that there had been no competitors in bidding for it, since few businessmen realized at the time how profitable the culture industry could be. Besides, it also involves a large amount of front-end investment.

Since 2001, the total investment has reached 8 billion yuan ($1.31 billion), according to Jiao, while the total number of visitors to the museum of the West Market has reached 1.2 million since the museum came into service in April, 2010.

Jiao declined to reveal how much the company had earned by receiving tourists and offering accommodation.

Rebuilding the market was also part of a campaign launched by Xi'an in 2005 to rejuvenate the city and restore its imperial heritage.

Xi'an is well-known for its historical sites and cultural relics. In order to protect them, the local government requires that the cultural relics department must be informed before any project is started.

The area of the West Market set for restoration has been explored and dug since 2006 by An and her team.

Stop faking it

A senior archaeologist in Xi'an who wished to remain anonymous told the Global Times that only a small part of the restored market area was explored for genuine archaeological purposes.

Though archaeologists are allowed to conduct explorations, they often have a limited amount of time because they are under pressure from real estate developers to finish quickly, said the archaeologist. This problem is not uncommon, he noted.

Restoration of the ruins should be proper restoration, he said, not just duplications of the original form.

Xi'an is not alone in duplicating ancient buildings. In recent years, it has become popular to build replicas of ancient buildings, either for city construction or for tourism development, in places such as Datong in North China's Shanxi Province and Kaifeng in Central China's Henan Province, the Xinmin Evening News reported in September 2012.

Most of these "old" buildings simply use characteristics of ancient buildings and still use modern architecture, Zhang Song, an expert with the Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, was quoted as saying by the Xinmin Evening News.

"It's hard to duplicate ancient buildings that have disappeared because the original environment doesn't exist any more and we can't just build ancient buildings based on modern people's imagination," Ruan Yisan, a well-known expert on the protection of ancient buildings at Tongji University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

These buildings are usually the result of cooperation between local governments and real estate developers and rarely turn out as well as planned, said Ruan, adding that the buildings can attract tourists for a short time, but their appeal won't last for long.

"It's a waste of taxpayers' money, and won't bring profit in the long-term," said Ruan. Some officials lack knowledge about culture or about what should be promoted for local economic development, he noted.

In Datong, the remains of ancient Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) walls were de-stroyed and the city began a program of building replicas of ancient buildings in 2008, China Business Journal reported in August. The program lasted for five years and has left the city with debts of about 10 billion yuan, the report said.

The city spent more than 10 billion yuan in the first year of the construction, and the total investment reached 100 billion yuan by the end of 2012, news portal caijing.com.cn reported on September 22.