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"in the qinghai haidong qutan temple renovation project, have the eaves been repaired like this?" in the early morning of september 29, a picture of an ancient building attracted the attention of netizens. the picture shows a corner of an ancient building. the left side still has antique square wood and gray tiles, while a section of the eaves on the right side has been painted in bright pink-orange and turquoise.

some netizens said that qutan temple is a national key cultural relics protection unit. it is the only remaining example of an official palace building built by palace craftsmen sent from the mainland in the early ming dynasty. who made the decision to paint it in the pink color of ancient korean buildings? the effect of green shyness?

it is understood that qutan temple is located at the entrance of maquangou 21 kilometers south of ledu district, haidong city, qinghai province. it faces the qutan river, with luohan mountain in the back, songhuading in the north, and beishan in the south. it was built in the ming dynasty. in the twenty-fifth year of hongwu (1392), it was a monastery of the gelug sect of tibetan buddhism. the temple is famous for its collection of precious cultural relics and giant colorful murals. in the twenty-sixth year of hongwu in the ming dynasty (1393), emperor taizu zhu yuanzhang of the ming dynasty named it "qutan temple" and appointed sandan luochui as the dugang of xining senggang si. in the early years of the ming dynasty, four emperors (ming taizu, ming chengzu, ming renzong, and ming xuanzong) issued seven edicts and sent eunuchs to lead craftsmen to build qutan temple, which took 36 years. among them, during the yongle period of the ming dynasty, ming chengzu ordered the expansion of qutan temple, and used administrative orders to expand the religious leadership status and economic privileges of the upper-level monks of the temple. ming renzong and ming xuanzong further expanded the political and economic privileges of the temple. qutan temple is a typical official-style building complex in the early ming dynasty. historically, qutan temple once belonged to the thirteen temples. qutan temple is one of the second batch of national key cultural relics protection units. it is the most complete and large-scale ming dynasty temple building in northwest china.

the questions raised by relevant netizens triggered a collision of different concepts on aesthetics and the protection of ancient buildings and cultural relics.

netizen "ancient architecture daily" said that no one objects to repairs. please do not confuse scientific repairs with this kind of aesthetically inferior and crude smearing. the new color painting destroys the original style of the building and does not contribute to the maintenance of cultural relics. it not only violates the principle of minimal intervention, but also covers precious historical information.

netizen "mobricking apprentice" said that "repair the old as before" is actually a very practical idea. if you are building a 300-year-old house, do you want to restore it to the way it was built 300 years ago? or do you want to preserve the traces of the past 300 years and only repair the parts that are no longer stable? if it is the former, then protecting ancient buildings will be meaningless; if it is the latter, no one dares to take the risk of failure.

netizen "tianfeng xiaoyu" said that the colorful paintings looked like this after they were built in the ming dynasty. however, after more than 600 years of wind and rain, the original colorful paintings peeled off and this is what you see now. just like bronze vessels, they were originally golden, but after thousands of years they developed a patina. in ancient times, who would eat or drink with a patina? the so-called "restoring the old as before" means restoring the original appearance.

netizen "xu yimo" believes that "restoring the old as before" should not be a simple and crude restoration of its original appearance. it should also be considered that the main hall of qutan temple has not been repaired or rebuilt in a systematic manner over the past six hundred years, and the traces left by history have themselves become part of the architectural environment. if we only pursue the restoration of their original colors, wouldn’t it mean that all the ancient buildings in various places will be torn down and rebuilt after research to find the optimal solution?

how does the local cultural relics department respond to netizens’ concerns and collision of opinions?

"this is not something we can build whatever we want." a staff member of the cultural relics bureau of ledu district, haidong city, qinghai province, where qutan temple is located, responded that the restoration project for cultural relics protection was approved by the state administration of cultural heritage. experts demonstrated that it was conducted strictly in accordance with a series of procedures and there were no procedural problems.

as for whether the building originally looked like this "red and green", the staff member said that he did not know, but netizens can refer to the cultural relic protection and renovation of the forbidden city, which also has this color. the staff member said that on the afternoon of the 29th, they had paid attention to relevant public opinions and there might be an official response by then.

he nan, reporter of dafeng news of chinese business daily