Ancient Yiyao porcelain kilns of Song and Yuan dynasties were excavated illegally after CCTV (China Central Television) did a story on them this past September.
"Mr. Reporter, every day people come to dig up the ancient kilns around the mountains near our village. The mountains have been seriously damaged due to their constant digging," one Yiyao villager of Dongqiao Town, Minqing County told the Fuzhou Daily via the paper's hotline.
A Fuzhou Daily reporter went to Yiyao Village of Minqing County immediately after learning of the illegal excavations. Along the mountain road he found many signs of digging around the ancient kilns: broken pieces of porcelain were strewn around the mountainsides; while some parts of the road were covered with porcelain shards; vegetation in some places was seriously damaged; shallow holes could be seen everywhere around the mountainside, a product of unsuccessful excavations.
Villager Lin Side told the reporter that Yiyao Village and nearby Qingyao Village have numerous ancient porcelain kilns but no local villagers disturb them. After CCTV broadcast a documentary called: Entering Fuzhou and Disclosing Mysteries of Yiyao this September, many illegal excavators arrived. "They came and dug almost everyday, sometimes five to six and sometimes two to three. They came from Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhejiang and Guangdong. They dug around the mountainside with picks and hoes, and took away unbroken pottery while abandoning the broken ones here and there, Lin said.
According to another villager, previously some people came to excavate the ancient kilns but they were not so well organized as the present diggers. "Some of them brought professional tools to do explorations and very good excavating tools. Even worse, they don't refill the holes they have dug but simply leave many shards of porcelain piled up along the road. I go to the mountains to pick oranges everyday and my motorcycle tires have been ripped up by these shards several times.
Lin Yaoguang, curator of the Minqing Museum, explained that Minqing County has long been dubbed as the "porcelain capital". Over one hundred ancient kilns are located around twenty mountains in Yiyao, Qingyao, Da'an and Anrenxi of Dongqiao Town, extending for more than ten kilometers.
These ancient kiln sites were designated as cultural relic sites; they have been under provincial protection since 1991. Many porcelain articles in excellent condition still lie inside these kilns. They tempt many smugglers of cultural relics.
Lin said that excavating cultural relics is illegal. Villagers and local village cadres reported this problem to the cultural relic protection department as well as other related departments inside the local government. Authorities have already come to investigate this problem. However, protection of these kilns has proved to be very difficult due to the large area they occupy. Currently authorities are preparing to organize Qingyao and Yiyao villagers into protection groups so that they may inspect the region regularly and inspect the kilns daily, then leaving the police handle the illegal excavators.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Ming'ai, November 27, 2007)
