Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for Asia] 

Conservationists have reintroduced the gibbons as part of an ambitious project for the "re-wilding" of Angkor Wat, a vast "temple city" that was once surrounded by forests teeming with deer, monkeys, birds and big cats before the arrival of commercial hunters with guns, traps and an appetite for money.

The re-wilding is being led by Nick Marx, a conservationist who believes the project could become a model for other parts of Southeast Asia hit by the trade in endangered wildlife.

Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument on earth, was made a World Heritage Site to protect its sprawling network of temples. Now conservationists want to restore the surrounding forests of Angkor Archaeological Park to their former glory, Marx said.

"The area of forest is beautiful and mature. It's a unique site but it's devoid of wildlife now," he said. "We want to introduce different species that would be appropriate, such as a cross-selection of small carnivores, herbivores, primates and deer, to try to get a build-up of wildlife populations with sufficient genetic diversity."

Cambodia, like many countries in southeast Asia, has suffered from the illegal trade in wildlife. Large numbers of animals have been shot, trapped, butchered and skinned, or sold alive in one of the many Cambodian food markets.

Spiralling demand for traditional Chinese "medicine" has driven the trade to new heights.

"China has done a pretty good job of decimating its own wildlife and now it is moving into other countries," he said. "There is a certain amount of consumption within Cambodia, but most of the valuable items that can bring a high price such as pangolins and cat skins would be going out either to Vietnam or to China," he said. "With the opening of borders and trade, things are getting worse globally. That means we have to work harder to stop it."

Marx is director of a wildlife rescue service funded by Wildlife Alliance, a New York-based non-governmental organisation that specialises in protecting forests and wildlife. He runs Cambodia's Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team which tackles animal trafficking with undercover operations, armed raids on restaurants and markets, and a network of paid informants willing to provide tip-offs on illegal shipments of live animals and body parts.

"We are known throughout Cambodia. We are feared by wildlife traders. It would be foolish to say there is no risk. We're pissing people off and we are rescuing things like cobras, which often have their mouths stitched up and we have to unstitch them," he said.

Why cobras? "They cut their throats to drink their blood with wine and then eat the flesh. People eat everything, from spiders and grasshoppers up."

Many recovered animals are alive and the aim is to return them to the wild if possible.

"Almost everything we confiscate, about 90 per cent of it - provided it is in recent captivity and is fit and healthy, and of an age it can look after itself - is released back into a safe habitat," Marx said. "If they cannot take care of themselves, we look after them at a rescue centre."

Having established Cambodia's official task force to tackle wildlife crime, Marx said it was time to think about reintroducing species to areas where they once thrived such as Angkor Wat. "We were given permission to release animals back into Angkor last year and we released the first pair of pileated gibbons into this forest last December. This has gone really well. The pair had a baby in September. We've taken up another pair of gibbons and a trio of silver langurs, which are a kind of leaf-eating monkey, which we hope to release later."

Author: Steve Connor | Source: Independent via The New Zealand Herald [December 29, 2014]

The throne, made of rosewood and inlaid with gold and a floral pattern, was owned by philanthropist Li Chunping.

It took him three years to buy the throne from a descendant of a royal highness of the Qing Dynasty in Tianjin.

Li said the final price was lower than he expected and that the throne will have a higher value after two or three years.

A buyer from Beijing bought the throne after three rounds of bidding.

Source: China Org [January 13, 2015]

According to China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage, UNESCO has already made a preliminary review of the application. A series of official documents to protect the ancient site of rock paintings in Huashan Mountain were issued. So far, around 150 million yuan has been invested on the relevant work to preserve the site. Better management and enhanced conservation efforts have been launched.

The rock paintings of Huashan Mountain are located on the west bank of the Mingjiang River in the Yaoda town, Ningming county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. It is the biggest, most content-rich and best-preserved ancient rock carvings in China among all the discovered cultural relics to date. With a history of around 1800-2500 years, the sites were left from sacred activities of the ancient Luoyue people of the Zhuang ethnic groups in the drainage area of the Zuojiang River during the Warring States period (475-221BC) and Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220AD).

The whole painting stretches more than 200 meters in length and around 40 meters in height, with more than 1800 images in it, including people, horses, dogs, knives, swords and drums. Though a variety of archaeological theories have been made to explain the origin of the ancient artistic work, the exact reason for its creation still remains a mystery.

Source: China Daily [February 04, 2015]

A fire in the southwest of China has destroyed the 600-year-old Gongchen tower, part of an ancient city gate in Weishan county in Dali prefecture, Yunnan province.

The fire started at about 3 a.m. on Saturday. Firefighters struggled for nearly 2 hours to put out the flames. About 300 square meters of the architecture was burnt down. No causalities have been reported and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

The Gongchen tower was a city gate tower, which was built in 1390 during the Ming Dynasty. It was listed as a key cultural protection site in Yunnan province. Last month, a fire engulfed an ancient Miao village in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

In 2006, China nominated the village as a UNESCO World Heritage site. And in January last year, Dukezong Ancient Town, in the famous resort county Shangri-la in Yunnan province, was also burned down in a fire. The so called "Moonlight City" is one of the most renowned resorts in Shangri-la, known for its well-preserved ancient Tibetan dwellings.

Source: CCTV [January 04, 2015]

Well I've been spending a lot of time buying textbooks recently, which is always frustrating for me because textbooks suck a lot of my funds. One day my bank account is overflowing and the next it's maxed. I look in there and think, "Oh my God! Someone stole my money!" Then I remember, oh yeah, I'm a college student. I love to buy books, but it's a lot more fun to buy books when someone isn't telling you you have to buy them. I'm actually only taking ONE English class this semester, which is almost the opposite of last semester. I only took English classes last semester. You see, I'm taking more history classes now, which is nerve racking for me because I was really bad at history when I was a kid. But I'm more interested in history now. So wish me luck on that...

The English class I am taking is about sensation fiction and the authors in focus are Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I'm reading Armadale (Collins), Wyllard's Weird (Braddon), The Woman in White (Collins), The Moonstone (Collins), and Lady Audley's Secret (Braddon), which I read last semester for a different class. For my other classes I'm taking American History since the Civil War, Art History since 1400, Civilizations of Asia, and Nonprofit Organizational Management (woohoo, betcha want to hear about the book for that class).

Honestly though, I complain about buying books but English major's have a pretty sweet deal going. My boyfriend spends twice as much as I do on books. Even though he can sell most of them back it's still a chunk of change that is gone, and if he can't sell the book back he will probably never look at it again. With me, I keep most of my books and would probably have bought them at some point anyway. So being an English major is kind of fun! Sometimes...

Oh the papers will be coming soon...

Intensive care: The twins will require around-the-clock attention
Because they share the same body, it is not possible to separate dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins.
The birth of dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins - who develop after a fertilized egg cell fails to divide fully - is extremely rare, with most cases occurring in southwest Asia and Africa.
Sister act: Conjoined twins are extremely rare, occurring once in 100,000 births, while the dicephalic parapagus form of the condition is almost unheard of
However, there have been instances of dicephalic parapagus twins being born in the West.
In July 2009, Lisa Chamberlain, from Portsmouth, gave birth to twins Joshua and Jayden, who shared the same single body. Joshua was stillborn while his brother lived for 32 minutes before dying in his mother's arms.
And in the U.S. dicephalic parapagus twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel have become media celebrities, appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and featuring in television documentaries.
The sisters, now 21, from Minnesota, appear to share a perfectly normal single body, although in fact several of their internal organs are doubled up.
While each is able to eat and write separately and simultaneously, activities such as walking and driving a car must be co-ordinated.
Two-headed baby: Amazing conjoined twins born in China

Conjoined Twins, Abby & Brittany Hensel turn 16

source: dailymail

VIA Rare conjoined twins who share a single body born in China

Eight towers are connected among themselves by a series of high-rise bridges which, by analogy to skyscrapers, have been named “skybridges”.

VIA «Steven Holl Architects have connected buildings in a multipurpose hybrid»

So much so that battle plans would be drawn up to specifically give the castle at Zhangjiakou, in China's northern Hebei province, a wide berth.

Now archaeologists have begun a daunting project to restore the once-mighty site to something approaching it previous glory, in particular the dilapidated outer wall that repelled every attack which invading Mongolian armies could throw at it.

The restoration of the fortress - which was given the coveted title of 'Wucheng' or 'Martial City' after its construction in 1393 - will see building work completed in the original Ming Dynasty style of architecture, Cinese sources report.

The project will see the restoration of the Ming and Qing era commercial districts, the Great Wall Martial Museum, the Golden Harvest Academy and performance theatres as well as the opening of the Red Tourist Route, with all work planned to be complete in 2016. The restoration work will also include the ongoing protection of surviving structures.

The castle in Wanquan county - known in China as a 'living fossil of the Ming military system' - was built in 1393 but is relatively well-preserved, especially the interior city area which includes the residences of generals and wealthy merchants.

The fortress has huge historical, cultural and military significance and has key cultural relic status in China.

Author: Edward Chow | Source: Daily Mail Online [April 07, 2015]

An estimated 5.5 million tons of copper, one of the biggest deposits in the world, could provide a major export for a war-ravaged country desperately in need of jobs and cash. But the hoped-for bonanza also could endanger rare artifacts that survived the rule of the Taliban and offer a window into Afghanistan's rich pre-Islamic history.

"The copper mine and its extraction are very important. But more important is our national culture," said Abdul Qadir Timor, director of archaeology at Afghanistan's Culture Ministry. "Copper is a temporary source of income. Afghanistan might benefit for five or six years after mining begins, and then the resource comes to an end."

The government is determined to develop Afghanistan's estimated $3 trillion worth of minerals and petroleum, an untapped source of revenue that could transform the country. The withdrawal of U.S.-led combat forces at the end of 2014 and a parallel drop in foreign aid have left the government strapped for cash. It hopes to attract global firms to exploit oil, natural gas and minerals, ranging from gold and silver to the blue lapis lazuli for which the country has been known since ancient times.

Beijing's state-run China Metallurgical Group struck a $3 billion deal in 2008 to develop a mining town at Mes Aynak with power generators, road and rail links, and smelting facilities. Workers built a residential compound, but were pulled out two years ago because of security concerns. Nazifullah Salarzai, a spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said the government is determined to finish that project.

Archaeologists are scrambling to uncover a trove of artifacts at the site dating back nearly 2,000 years which shed light on a Buddhist civilization that stretched across India and China, reaching all the way to Japan.

"The more we look, the more we find," archaeologist Aziz Wafa said as he scanned hilltops pock-marked with bowl-shaped hollows where copper powder once was melted down and painted onto ceramics. Excavators have found silver platters, gold jewelry and a human skeleton as they have uncovered the contours of a long-lost town that once hosted elaborate homes, monasteries, workshops and smelters.

Behind Wafa is a cave in which three Buddhas are seated around a dome-shaped shrine known as a stupa. Two are headless; one was decapitated by looters who entered through a tunnel. The other head was removed by archaeologists and placed in storage along with thousands of other items.

Movable objects, including sculptures, coins and ceramics, are stored at the National Museum in Kabul. Larger objects, including stupas measuring eight meters (26 feet) across and statues of robed monks 7 meters (23 feet) tall remain at the sprawling site, which is closed off and protected by a special security force. The roads are lined with armed guards and the archaeologists have no telephone or Internet access.

Experts believe that proselytizing Buddhist monks from India settled here in the 2nd Century A.D. Like today's miners, they were enticed by the copper, which they fashioned into jewelry and other products to trade on the Silk Road linking China to Europe.

The site was discovered in 1942 and first explored in 1963, but the excavations ground to a halt for two decades during the Soviet invasion, the civil war and the brutal rule of the Taliban in the late 1990s. Osama bin Laden ran a training camp at Mes Aynak in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion.

Until the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, few knew that Afghanistan was once a wealthy, powerful Buddhist empire. It still does not feature on the local education curriculum, which ignores the country's pre-Islamic past. But at Mes Aynak the eroded remains of enormous feet testify to the colossal Buddhas that once towered over the valley.

Low world copper prices and a slowing Chinese economy have bought time for the archaeologists to uncover more artifacts, while the government seeks to find a way to unearth the copper without ruining relics.

The government has asked the U.N. cultural agency to survey mining sites and draw up plans to protect and preserve cultural heritage, said Masanori Nagaoka, UNESCO's head of cultural affairs in Afghanistan.

The request is rooted in hope for better days, when tourists might replace the tense guards scanning the valley.

The archaeological value of the site "will outlast the life cycle of the Aynak mine," an anti-corruption group called Integrity Watch Afghanistan said in a report. "The relics found could be a perpetual tourist attraction and would provide a new symbol of the historical foundation of the region and people."

Author: Lynne O'Donnell | Source: Associated Press [February 06, 2015]

"The perpetrators were hoping to find gold, silver, precious stones or ivory," says Senarath Dissanayake, director general of Sri Lanka's Department of Archaeology. Destructive treasure hunting is a major problem in the island country off the tip of India.

"Treasure hunting is based only on folklore about great riches. It has no scientific basis," Dissanayake says.

The culprits in Danagirigala went home empty-handed, as did the ones who damaged a stupa (Buddhist burial mound) in Danowita and in Nurwarakanda where treasure-hunters drilled into the chest, belly button and pedestal of a seated Buddha statue.

Over the past two decades, police have come across more than 4,000 cases of such vandalism. The situation was particularly bad in 2012 and 2013 with the floors of caves dug up, the houses of former chieftains torn down and monks' dwellings destroyed.

On average there was more than one such act every day.

"The trend is a consequence of the fact that people no longer have morals and ethics," Dissanayake says.

Archaeologists have little chance of stopping the would-be thieves. According to the archaeology director, the small island has more than 250,000 historic sites, "the highest density in the world" of heritage places.

Items have even been taken from the National Museum in the capital Colombo. A stolen metal sword hilt from the time of the Kingdom of Kandy (late 15th to early 19th century) was later recovered - although by then it had been cut into four pieces.

The head of the special unit tasked with preventing the destruction and theft of antiquities is Udeni Wickramasinghe.

"The problem is that many people cannot distinguish between fact-based history and mythical epics," she says. In the case of the Buddha with three holes drilled into it, this was because of a story that the Buddhist monks hid their valuables inside the statue. Wickramasinghe wrote her doctoral thesis on the excavations at the stupa in Neelagiri Maha Seya. Until 2009 this lay within an area controlled for several decades by LTTE rebels and so wasn't targeted by treasure hunters.

After the end of the civil war, Wickramasinghe and colleagues spent several years excavating around the huge, semi-circular burial mound.

"We found inscriptions, 20 pots, pearls, 150 mini-pagodas and a few semi-precious stones. Much of spiritual but nothing of great material value," she says.

Nevertheless, there are persistent urban legends about a police chief who took treasure from the jungle or a man who used a digger to excavate a stupa and bought a million-dollar car with the riches he found.

"People who are greedy forget their religion," says monk and former member of parliament Ellawala Medhananda.

To the perpetrators it doesn't matter whether a building dates from the fourth or fifth century or is particularly symbolically important, says Medhananda, author of numerous archaeological books.

"I am so sad that our rich national culture is being destroyed," he says. "Unique things are being lost."

Author: Doreen Fiedler | Source: DPA [March 10, 2015]

It is always a shock reaching Bamiyan, coming face to face with the two huge cavities in the cliff face. The upright tombs stare out over the valley, a splash of vegetation surrounded by wild mountains. The town straddles the Silk Road, close to the point where it used to enter Persia, dwarfed by two massive mountain ranges, the Koh-i-Baba and Hindu Kush. The void left by the two destroyed Buddha figures is appalling, it rouses an emotion almost more powerful than their once tranquil presence did for centuries.

To understand what happened you must go back to the beginning of 2001. The Taliban-led regime was on very poor terms with the international community and increasingly tempted by radical gestures. The decision to destroy the two monumental Buddha figures at Bamiyan was just part of the drive to destroy all the country’s pre-Islamic “icons”, an act of defiance to the outside world.

Demolition work at Bamiyan started at the beginning of March 2001 and lasted several weeks, the two figures – 58 and 38 metres tall – proved remarkably solid. Anti-aircraft guns had little effect, so the engineers placed anti-tank mines between their feet, then bored holes into their heads and packed them with dynamite. The world watched this symbolic violence in impotent horror.

Now almost 14 years on, reconstruction work has yet to start as archaeologists and UNESCO policy-makers argue.

The two cavities resemble open wounds, a blemish on the long history of Afghanistan, which experienced the fervour of Buddhism long before the arrival of Islam. For 15 centuries the two mystic colossi gazed down as the trading caravans and warring armies streamed past. Monks came from China to worship here. Others meditated in nearby caves.

The two Buddhas, draped in stucco robes, are testimony to a unique case of cross-breeding, which flourished in the early years of the first century AD, drawing on Buddhist influences from India and Greek aesthetics left behind by Alexander the Great. It gave rise to the kingdom of Gandhara and made a mark so deep that even the disciples of Allah, who reached here in the ninth century, made no attempt to disturb it.

Today the site has recovered a certain serenity. Children play volleyball below the cliffs and archaeologists work unhindered. Whereas a low-intensity war is still rumbling on elsewhere in Afghanistan, the central Hazarajat region and its capital Bamiyan (population circa 60,000) has been relatively spared. Most of the inhabitants are Shia Muslims and they had little sympathy with the Sunni Taliban from the Pashtun south. In the 1990s there was fierce fighting between the two sides. In Bamiyan there is a fairly enlightened view of Islam, and few women wear burqas. They proudly explain that 40% of girls in the province are in education, the highest proportion in Afghanistan.

So the outrage perpetrated by the Taliban came as a huge shock, a blow against a tolerant community that sees itself as unusual in the country as a whole. “The statues symbolised Bamiyan,” says mullah Sayed Ahmed-Hussein Hanif. Bamiyan had adopted and integrated the statues, making them a part of local legend. They had become an allegory for unhappy love, a foreshadow of Romeo and Juliet set in the Hindu Kush. He was Salsal, prince of Bamiyan; she was Shamana, a princess from another kingdom. Their love affair was impossible so, rather than live apart, they turned into stone, beside each other for all eternity.

“Local people had completely forgotten they were figures of the Buddha,” says Hamid Jalya, head of historical monuments in Bamiyan province. The Taliban and their dynamite reminded them of the original story. Ever since, people here have been unsure what to do about them.

An incident in 2013 demonstrated the sensitivity of the subject. A decade ago UNESCO authorised archaeologists and engineers to consolidate the two niches, with props and grouting. But nothing else. Almost two years ago someone noticed that, on the site of the small Buddha, a team from the German branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos) was beginning to rebuild the feet. This was contrary to UNESCO policy, based on the 1964 Venice charter for the conservation and restoration of monuments and sites, which requires the use of “original material”. If work on the Bamiyan remains disregarded this rule, then the site would be struck off the World Heritage list. The Afghan authorities ordered the Icomos team to down tools, leaving the remains even less sightly than they were before.

The incident highlights the lack of a clear consensus on the future of Bamiyan both internally and among the international community. “Bamiyan seems emblematic of the way international aid has treated Afghanistan,” says Philippe Marquis, former head of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (Dafa). There has been endless dithering, underhand rivalry, pointless discord and mistakes.

The Buddhas are a powerful symbol – of confessional tolerance, Buddhism in a Muslim country and the remains of the Silk Road – with scope for considerable political kudos, so academic quarrels have been diverted to serve strategic aims. The Afghans have watched this spectacle with growing amazement: Germany and its experience of post-war reconstruction; France and its archaeological exploits in Afghanistan; Japan and Korea, with their interest in the origins of Buddhism; UNESCO and its byzantine bureaucracy. The various parties have sometimes cooperated with one another, but more frequently waged secret wars. “All these endless discussions among experts are pitiful, yielding no positive results,” says Zamaryalai Tarzi, a Franco-Afghan archaeologist who has been in charge of the French dig at the foot of the Bamiyan cliff for many years.

Behind the squabbling there is, however, a very real controversy as to how best to honour the fallen Buddhas. How should we go about making sense of an obscurantist crime the better to vanquish it? Or, in other terms, how should we mourn the martyrs? There are two opposing schools of thought: complete reconstruction or keeping the status quo. For now, the latter camp have the upper hand. “The two niches should be left empty, like two pages in Afghan history, so that subsequent generations can see how ignorance once prevailed in our country,” Tarzi asserts. Many other sites have adopted this approach, in particular the Genbaku dome in Hiroshima and the former summer palace in Beijing.

There is also a practical side: any attempt at reconstruction would be extremely complex. The original material, as required by the Venice charter, would be a major obstacle. The 2001 demolition left a heap of scattered fragments. Barely a third of the smaller Buddha has been saved, consisting of a pile of rock behind a wire fence. Furthermore, some of what does remain is from more recent additions. Over the centuries, long before the coming of the Taliban, the two figures were damaged and defaced. In the 1970s Indian archaeologists rebuilt the feet of the smaller Buddha using new material. Given this, how can the Venice charter rules be applied?

The final objection is that it may be a mistake to focus so much attention on the two Buddhas, given that the Bamiyan valley boasts many other exceptional sites, as yet little known. The ruins of the Shahr-e-Gholghola fortress, and probably monastery, perched on a hillock across the valley from the Buddhas, and the fortified town of Shahr-i-Zohak are both at risk, worn down by weather and earthquakes. “The priority is to save all the endangered sites around Bamiyan,” says Amir Fouladi, of the Aga Khan Trust. “There is no urgency about rebuilding the Buddhas.” The economic development of Bamiyan, due to gather speed with the projected launch of the Hajigak iron ore mines, makes it all the more important to adopt an overall strategy.

Meanwhile, the advocates of reconstruction have not wasted their time. Although the current mood is hardly in their favour, the small structure resting on the remains of the small Buddha’s feet suggests that the German branch of Icomos has not given up hope. Its president, Michael Petzet, a professor at the Technical University of Munich, has made many statements in favour of at least rebuilding the smaller of the two figures. The local representative of Icomos Germany, Bert Praxenthaler, sees the controversy about the small Buddha’s feet as salutary in that it “stirred debate about what should be done with the Buddhas”. “We must be ready the day a decision is taken,” he adds. He is referring to the possibility that an ad hoc UNESCO group may give the go-ahead for “partial re-assembly of the fragments”. His organisation sees this as an opportunity to demonstrate the quality of its restoration work in combining old and new materials.

Local residents are in favour. The idea of leaving the larger niche empty but rebuilding the smaller Buddha appeals to them, particularly as they take little interest in quarrels about original material. They are more concerned about boosting tourism in a relatively isolated area in desperate need of revenue. But there is symbolic value too. “By rebuilding a Buddha we could regain possession of our history and send a message to the whole world in favour of reconciliation between religions,” says Shukrya Neda, who campaigns for a local NGO. “By leaving the other niche empty we leave a testimony to the damage done by the Taliban.” Kabul has officially approved this approach, but some in Bamiyan feel its support is rather timid, for ethnic reasons. The Hazara population of Bamiyan distrust the Pashtun leaders in Kabul. “The government doesn’t want Bamiyan to develop its identity and economy,” says Riza Ibrahim, head of the city’s tourist board. “It’s discrimination.”

UNESCO has tried to steer a cautious middle course on the issue of reconstruction. Its ad hoc expert committee has warned against rushing to make a decision. “It is neither for nor against reconstruction,” says Masanori Nagaoka, head of UNESCO’s culture unit in Kabul. The committee has ruled that before considering partial reassembly of the small Buddha, a thorough technical and scientific study would be required. All of which favours keeping the status quo. Will the reconstruction lobby finally succeed in resurrecting Shamana (the small Buddha)? Perhaps, by dint of patience, but everyone seems to have overlooked an essential detail: the legendary prince and princess wanted to stay together forever. If Shamana rises again, but without Salsal, it would break their oath.

Author: Frédéric Bobin | Source: Guardian Weekly [January 10, 2015]

The Thang Long-Hanoi Heritage Preservation Centre and the Vietnam Archaeology Institute started excavating the Kinh Thien Palace site in February, 2014.

In recent years researchers have suggested restoring the palace, but they did not have enough information on the building's original architecture and measurements. Most of it was destroyed by the French in 1886. They left behind only the floor and a staircase bordered by two stone dragons.

Scientists said that if they received enough support from concerned agencies, the rebuilding could be started within five years, once enough information on the palace's architecture was gathered. Under the recently approved project, scientists will do more research, design a 3D building plan and submit it to the authority by 2016.

According to Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu (Complete Annals of Dai Viet), construction on Kinh Thien Palace began in 1428 under the reign of King Le Thai To and was completed under the reign of King Le Thanh Tong.

The palace is among the most important buildings in the citadel complex and was often used for Le kings' big diplomatic or political events.

After Oct 10, 1954, when anti-French resistance troops took over the city, the site was used as an office for the Ministry of Defence. In 2014 the Ministry gave part of the site to the city's administration.

The Kinh Thien Palace relic is an essential part of the citadel. Doan Mon (South Gate) and Hanoi Flag Pole are positioned in front of the palace. Behind the palace is the Hau Lau Building and Cua Bac (North Gate). The eastern and western sides of the palace are also bordered with walls and smaller gates.

The stone dragons at the palace's staircase are considered a special piece of architectural heritage, representing sculpture art of the Early Le period.

Source: Bernama [March 16, 2015]