“Urban heritage conservation in the ideal scenario will be that the historical cities as a whole can be protected, and that the new development could be outside the historic core. But in many parts of Asia where land is scarce, for example Japan and Korea, modern development has already taken place on top of the historic city. Parts of it have already been demolished and destroyed with new buildings on it. So in that case, the monuments have survived, but the overall historic fabric of the city is already gone. So in a case like this, one can try to recount the heritage value of the city by taking a few monuments, or taking an ensemble, like a cluster of houses or non-monumental buildings, vernacular buildings or shop-houses complexes, and try to preserve those things as well. So if you are putting together a string of pearls, sometimes it’s a single pearl of monument, sometimes it’s an ensemble, but you try to string them together, in order to recount the story. So the string becomes the linkage, but then you have to work very hard on the question of interpretation, because if these beautiful monuments are surrounded by high-rise buildings, there’s no longer any context, so this is why one has to work on like a site interpretation center with photos, historic maps to recount what it was and what the context was before. And so in any case, heritage is not just to preserve the good, the object. It’s in order to recount the history of the past. “

Yang's second visit to Wuhan for the 6th Crossover Forum (by Liu Jianlin)

“Even those river banks along the Yangtze and Han River are beautifully arranged as public spaces now, for jogging and for walking around and for sports activities, the relationship between the river bank public space and the historic role of those banks is no longer apparent. So by having small kiosks as an interpretation center by showing photos, we will help people understand what the place was like before. In China there is a tendency to make one big huge museum, but I think if you want the regular people understand rather than having one humongous museum, it will be nice to have several along the way. Every one kilometer you can have one kiosk, then next to it maybe a teahouse, and further another kilometer. It may be an ordinary place where people can come in and go out easily, without having the formality of major museums. This is the way of recounting through a string of pearls. It requires public education. UNESCO has a world heritage KIT which is more like a standard kit explaining what world heritage is, what it aims to do, the nature-cultural links, etc. But there every heritage site should prepare its own ten-to-fifteen pages how you recount your story and give that contribution to the world heritage education kit. ”

Sunshine in Wuhan (by Liu Jianlin)