A section of the city rampart of the Spring and Autumn Period in Jiangsu Province

SACH's Tong said that the infrastructure construction is sometimes in contradiction to cultural relic protection, and so how to well conserve the cultural heritage while modernizing the country poses a major task for archaeologists.

In the past, he added, people paid less attention to this problem, and so some cultural heritages have been devastated, and some even disappeared. But in recent years, with enhanced awareness of cultural relic protection by the public and also the government, cultural heritage protection has been a big concern of the Central Government in relation to modernization.

A porcelain lid found at the site of the Tang and Song dynasties in Sichuan Province [Sang Qing]

Taking the Three Gorges Project for example, Tong said that before the construction, archaeologists did careful investigation and research. Almost all experts in cultural relic protection were assembled to the areas along the Three Gorges Project construction line, trying their best to rescue the cultural relics there.

As for the South-to-North Water Diversion, archaeologists reaped much during the archaeological investigation before the start of the construction. The construction area covers the hinterland of the Chinese civilization, such as Henan, Hubei and Shandong provinces, a region where past civilizations once prospered.

CASS's Xu echoed Tong's opinion, saying that in recent years, one of the big focuses of China's archaeologists is to carry out excavations that cooperate with construction projects. "The South-to-North Water Diversion Project extends through areas that contain sites of the Paleolithic Age (thousands of years ago) to the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, which is very important," said Xu, adding that without the big development most sites would not be found.