Groups of ancient Buddha statues have re-emerged in Chinese reservoirs in recent months.
These artifacts were first submerged when the Chinese communist regime started to build reservoirs and dams in the 1950s. Experts say this is another way that China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically erased traditional Chinese culture.
According to Chinese media reports earlier this month, a group of Song Dynasty (960–1279) cliff carvings of Buddhas emerged on the cliffs along the Yutan Reservoir in Dazu District in Chongqing, in the upper stream of the Yangtze River, considered a cradle of Chinese civilization.
The carvings are distributed on a cliff about 10 feet high and 20 feet wide. From left to right, there are six niches with a total of 27 Buddha statues.
Deng Qibing, a research curator at the Dazu Rock Carving Research Institute, said that since the beginning of spring, the rainfall in Dazu District has been lower than normal, and the water level in the Yutan Reservoir has continued to drop, allowing the statues to be revealed. Yutan Reservoir was built in 1959 and was expanded in June 2007.
This came following the re-emergence of two other groups of ancient Buddha statues in previous months along China’s Yangtze and Yellow Rivers—the cradles of Chinese civilization.
Emerging in June, also due to a drop in water levels, were more than 20 carved Buddha statues, which are part of Foji Temple that was submerged with the creation of Shufangba Reservoir in Anyue, Sichuan Province in 1974. The heads of the Buddha statues were known to emerge almost every year in the dry season but since the 2020s, the statues have fully emerged for a few months on multiple occasions.
In May, low water levels at Duofeng Reservoir in Qi County, Hebi City, in Henan Province saw the buddha statues in Qianzui Grottoes emerge from the water. The other cradle of Chinese civilization, the Yellow River, runs through Henan Province. The statues in the Qianzui Grottoes are believed to have been carved out during the Eastern Wei (534—550 AD). For thousands of years, they had been on the cliffs, until the middle of the 20th century when the Chinese communist regime under Mao Zedong built the Duofeng reservoir and flooded them.
The staff of the Qi County Cultural Reservation and Tourism Administration said that because the Buddha statues were submerged for many years, they have been corroded, and many of the heads and hands of the Buddha statues have disappeared.
Flooding Historical Sites is CCP’s Common Practice
Since Mao’s era, the communist dictator and ruled China until his death in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has carried out large-scale water conservancy projects and built many reservoirs, following Mao’s slogan “battling with heaven is endless joy, fighting with the earth is endless joy, and struggling with humanity is endless joy.” At the time, cultural preservation was contrary to the policies of the revolutionary state.
Many of these reservoirs were built near China’s famous historical sites and sacred religious sites, such as the Wudang Mountains, Wang He, a U.S.-based China affairs observer, noted.
“Many historical sites and ancient statues, including the Buddha statues in Anyue, Sichuan, which were very famous, were submerged in water in the reservoirs. This is a very common phenomenon across the country,” Wang He told the Epoch Times on July 9.
He also noted that many of China’s water conservancy projects did not play any significant role in generating hydroelectricity, and had many negative environmental impacts. And not much thought was given to the ancient Buddha statues and historical sites that “just disappeared like that and were buried in the water.”
Wang Weiluo, a renowned Chinese hydrologist based in Germany, concurred that submerging artifacts and historical sites in the construction of reservoirs, with no efforts to preserve or record their state, is a common practice in communist China.
As for how many cultural relics and historical sites were submerged, “there are no data,” he told The Epoch Times on July 9.
He cited the construction of the Xin’anjiang Reservoir, also known as Qiandao Lake, as an example. There, construction started in 1957 and was completed in 1960. “They submerged the entire county town, and many ancient buildings in it are now underwater,” Wang Weiluo said.
Wang Weiluo used the CCP’s controversial Three Gorges dam project as an example, which flooded many highly valuable historical sites during its construction from 1994 to 2012, in addition to causing global environment concerns.
Numerous ancient temples, villages, and towns, along with countless artifacts, were submerged and have disappeared forever, as the Three Gorges dam project not only built a massive reservoir but also changed the course of some parts of the Yangtze River.
“When the Three Gorges Project was launched, there was a period of time to rescue cultural relics. There were too many cultural relics and historical sites there, and it would take a long time to save them. The CCP did not have the patience for it, so most of the cultural relics and historical sites were submerged underwater without being relocated or excavated,” he said.
The CCP’s current approach is “even more brutal,” Wang Weiluo said. “Before the completion of the reservoir dam, all buildings within it are blown up with explosives and then the reservoir is cleared, saying that this is to prevent changes in water quality. Therefore, it’s difficult to find a complete Buddha statue or group of Buddha statues in the newly built reservoir,” he explained.
No Attempts at Preservation
The CCP’s treatment of cultural relics in the construction of a reservoir is very different from normal countries’ preservation approach, which would include relocating the cultural sites and relics, setting up special reservation zones, or rearranging the location of the modern construction projects to avoid losses to the invaluable historical sites.
Wang Weiluo compared the CCP’s practice with the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt in the 1960s.
When the Abu Simbel Temple was about to be submerged in the build of the Aswan Dam, “Egypt said that it had no money to relocate the temple. Then, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) organized the rescue and relocation of the temple, using funds from developed countries. The cost was very high and the project was mainly completed by a German company,” he said. The German construction company HOCHTIEF was instrumental in the relocation of the Abu Simbel temples.
Wang He said that submerging historical sites and artifacts in its hydraulic engineering projects is another type of “cultural revolution” that the CCP has carried out, denying Chinese people’s access and knowledge of their precious historical relics and sites.
“This is a huge loss, sabotaging the continuation of traditional Chinese culture. It is actually impossible to count. It is just that nowadays it appears in the news from time to time that some places have dried up or the water level has dropped, and some sculptures and historical sites have re-emerged. Only then we get to know a little how brilliant and glorious the ancient Chinese culture was,” Wang He lamented.
The Cultural Revolution was the massive political movement launched by the CCP in mainland China from 1966 to 1976 to systematically erase traditional Chinese culture and values, and to destroy anything deemed non-revolutionary, western, and democratic. During the Cultural Revolution, countless temples were torn down, Buddha statues were smashed, and cultural relics were destroyed.
Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya contributed to this report.