Government office buildings in Jingdezhen City, known as China's porcelain capital in the eastern province of Jiangxi, were removed from the historic kiln site they were situated on the last day of 2002.
The original 60,000-square meter site of the office buildings contained royal kilns from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Thousands of ancient kiln wares have been found in this area over the past 20 years.
Although the royal kiln site was put under the city's protection in 1983, the co-existence of the government office buildings, local residents' houses and stores with ancient kilns caused problems for protection work.
Consequently, the government decided to pull down all buildings which have not been classified as historic relics in the protected area, and a historical park for the royal kilns will be built in the future instead.
Jingdezhen has a porcelain-making history of more than 1,700 years and it is one of China's biggest producers and exporters of daily-use porcelain products.
Meanwhile, the city has five historic and cultural zones under state protection with more than 500 cultural relics.
(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2003)
