Table 1 Comparison of two legal documents from the late Qing Dynasty and early ROC era

Article 6 Items for Investigation

• Remains such as stone steles, stone sutra pillars, stone chimes, statues, stone carvings, ancient paintings, and cliff inscriptions since Zhou and Qin Dynasties;

• Stone ancient objects (often stolen or smuggled in recent years);

• Murals from renowned artists, exquisite carvings and statues in ancient temples, and other precious artistic calligraphy;

• Ancestral tombs of historic figures and imperial mausoleums of ancient emperors;

• Ancestral temples of renowned historic figures or other ancient sites;

• Antiquities and finds from excavations;

• Mausoleums of emperors of all previous dynasties, tombs of historic figures, documented and reported to the ministry by local officials from the Qing Dynasty;

• Ancient city walls and fortresses, ramparts and caves, towers and temples, pavilions and pagodas, embankments, dikes and bridges, lakes, ponds, wells, and springs. Any remains related to historic figures should be preserved;

• Stone steles, tablets or plaques, statues, mural paintings and cliff carvings from all dynasties. Many of such ancient sites have survived and are of cultural and artistic values;

• Natural landscape of the past and ancient trees;

• Metal, stone, bamboo, and wooden objects, pottery and porcelain, textiles, and other historic objects, old calligraphy and carvings, artworks from historic figures. They are both artistic remains and valuable for historical research.

Article 5 Items for Preservation

Steles and tablets, sutra pillars, statues;

• Ancient metal and stone objects, calligraphy and artworks, pottery and porcelain, or fine prints of books from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, stone rubbings, and template of tablets;

• Ancient mausoleums of emperors, ancestral temples and tombs of historic figures;

• Ancient temples, murals from renowned artists, wells, intricate carvings and statues;

• Other ancient sites that are not mausoleums, ancestral temples or tombs

All of the above should be temporarily stored and maintained. Regulations should be refined and promoted after comprehensive planning to ascertain the situation. Other departments’ previous specific preservation measures for ancient objects can be continued but should be reported to this ministry in order to leave records for future reviews.