On the morning of May 2, Xie Chensheng, a well-known expert in the field of cultural relics on the mainland, died at the age of 100.
Xie Chensheng, born in 1922, is a native of Wujin, Jiangsu Province, and his elder brother Xie Guozhen is a famous historian in mainland China, who studied and studied with Liang Qichao. Xie Chensheng was the former vice minister of culture, China's outstanding patriots and social activists Zheng Zhenduo's secretary, Xie Chensheng has been running for the protection of cultural relics all his life, in 1982, Xie Chensheng presided over the drafting of the "People's Republic of China Cultural Relics Protection Law", wrote the "China Encyclopedia • Cultural Relics Volume" preface, and for the first time put forward the definition of "cultural relics", can be called the leading figure in the mainland cultural relics industry, but also by the older generation of cultural relics workers as "the guardian of the motherland's cultural relics." ”
Xie Chensheng is the first generation of cultural scholars in the mainland, influenced by his eldest brother Xie Guozhen since childhood, has a strong interest in history, from 1946, began to serve as Zheng Zhenduo's secretary, contact with cultural relics protection work, and then he has been running for cultural relics protection work all his life. During the war, he compiled books such as the Catalogue of Japanese Cultural Relics Preserved After the Afternoon of the First Century, the Reference Atlas of Chinese History, the Collection of Famous Paintings of Yunhui Zhai, and the Collection of Famous Chinese Paintings Collected Outside the Territory, and went to Shanghai to clean up cultural relics. On November 1, 1949, after the establishment of the Ministry of Culture of the Central People's Government, Zheng Zhenduo was appointed director of the Cultural Relics Bureau, and Xie Chensheng also went to work in the Cultural Relics Bureau and began to draft cultural relics protection management and policies and regulations. At the end of 2019, a batch of correspondence between 1952 and 1958 was openly collected in the National Library of China, and the world was surprised to find that as early as the early 1950s, the cultural relics "secret acquisition" team led by Zheng Zhenduo rescued scattered cultural relics around the world, including "Han Xizai's Night Feast", which was rescued at that time, and Xie Chensheng was a witness to this history. In 2018, Yao Yuan wrote and Xie Chensheng dictated "Xie Chensheng Oral Narrative" unveiled more stories of the mainland's cultural relics protection cause, from the protection of the Beijing City Wall and the Xi'an City Wall in the 1950s to the struggle against the "bulldozer" in the 21st century, Xie Chensheng's oral recollection we can see a complete history of Chinese cultural relics protection.
"The country and the mountains have left a trace of victory, and my generation has come back." Xie Chensheng greatly appreciates these two poems of Meng Haoran, under xie Chensheng's insistence, we can see the cultural relics of ancient capitals such as Beijing and Nanjing today, and the Liangzhu ruins can become important cultural heritage, just as Xie Chensheng said before his birth: "To protect cultural relics is to protect the country." His lifelong struggle for the protection of cultural relics is the true portrayal of this sentence.
Source: Yangtze Evening News| Purple Cow News reporter Shen Zhao
Caption: Visual China
Editor: Xu Ling