Perhaps no one has ever done this in the process of restoring and embellishing monuments, it only applies to civil works. This causes extreme disgust.
The national historical site of Duom Temple is located on the slope of an ancient limestone mountain in Dong Dat Commune (Phu Luong District, Thai Nguyen). It is a place to worship the famous general Duong Tu Minh, a talented general under the Ly Dynasty, who had great contributions in keeping the northern border of Dai Viet peaceful in the 12th century. The temple was built more than 800 years ago with only bamboo and thatch, and later, local people contributed their money and labor to build construction items such as the ceremonial gate, Trung Temple, Ba Palace, bell tower, etc. In 1993, the temple was recognized as a national historical site.
Duom Temple Festival is a major festival in the region, attracting thousands of locals and tourists to participate in the rituals every year. This place also contains many legendary and spiritual stories that have been passed down to the present day, including many mysteries.
Citing some of the above information shows that any intervention on relics, especially national relics, requires a serious, scientific and extremely cautious attitude, and cannot apply construction measures like normal projects.
Realizing that many items of the national relic site of Duom Temple have seriously degraded and are not uniform in architectural style (because they have undergone nine restorations), the local government and relevant agencies have requested permission to establish a project to restore and embellish the relic, and at the same time called for socialized investment capital. Initially, the investor has followed the correct procedures, inviting experts and researchers to conduct field surveys and give opinions on the project to restore and embellish the Duom Temple relic. Immediately, a business has asked to contribute to the restoration of the relic up to more than 20 billion VND.
Degraded relics need to be surveyed, evaluated, and a project developed and submitted to the competent authority for agreement and approval of the restoration and embellishment project so that the relics become more and more spacious and solid, meeting the cultural and spiritual needs of the people and tourists, but everything must be done in accordance with the law and with the permission of the competent authority. But here, it is going the opposite way.
With money attached to the project, but without the approval and agreement of the ministries and branches, the local authorities rushed to carry out the construction by bringing excavators, bulldozers, and cranes into the inner temple area to demolish the relics that were somewhat stained by time.
On the afternoon of March 18, when we arrived at Duom Temple, we saw an excavator sitting on the ground of Trung Temple, which had just been demolished, continuously throwing its bucket down to continue breaking. Dust flew up like a fog, the sound was so loud it pierced our brains, bricks and stones were broken into pieces. We had the impression that they were working at a construction site somewhere, not at a spiritual and religious relic.
From the main gate of Highway 3 up to Trung Temple, there is a pile of bricks, stones, and broken concrete lying haphazardly. Excavators keep throwing buckets deep into the ground, scooping up a lot of bricks, stones, and steel. At the temple next door, people still come in to practice praying rituals. There are no protective measures such as corrugated iron around. Outside, there are no barriers to prevent bricks and stones from falling onto Highway 3. Looking at the national relic of Duom Temple, it is no different from a construction site being demolished by modern machinery and equipment, causing serious damage to the cultural space and spiritual beliefs that have lasted for nearly a thousand years. The construction method of demolition, not dismantling, a technical term in the field of relic restoration and embellishment, makes many people here angry.
Not to mention the act of restoring and embellishing relics without permission, seriously violating the Law on Cultural Heritage, the relevant authorities are indifferent, lacking measures to prevent and strictly handle according to regulations, but just the act of using modern, heavy machinery to demolish the ceremonial gate, Trung temple... shows that the construction unit and the supervisory unit have no knowledge of restoring and embellishing relics.
A relic conservation expert said: "In a worship space that has existed for hundreds of years, it is also a sacred cultural space, converging there with a sublime meaning, a place where the gods reside. Therefore, any touching must be carefully calculated, preferably by manual means, not by using excavators or scrapers to demolish or chisel. It is anti-cultural." Right below Trung Temple, a heavy crane truck did not know how to climb up. Locals said they used a crane weighing tens of tons to lift the vehicle over the treetops and bring it in.
In fact, for a project to restore and embellish a relic, people need to dismantle each item manually, without using machinery, in order to minimize the scene of desolation and preserve the components that can be reused. But in this project, people seem to ignore those things. On March 18, the Department of Cultural Heritage (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) had to issue an urgent document requesting the locality to inspect and prevent...
To put it bluntly, the construction method of the project to restore and embellish the national relic of Duom Temple is unacceptable because it is unscientific, contrary to tradition, and causes public outrage. Therefore, it is necessary to strictly handle the construction unit and local authorities, and at the same time require the investor to strictly comply with the legal regulations on cultural heritage.
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