Most of the villages in the Yangtze River Delta were once as beautiful as any on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

That was before the wave of modernization crashed on the delta, sweeping away valued parts of its past.

As it sailed into the 21st century, the delta found itself transformed into China's richest region. Only recently have local people come to realize what they lost. And they have decided they cannot afford to lose more.

A group of about 200 conservationists from around the world yesterday called for the protection of traditional, or so-called vernacular architecture in the delta's rural communities. They were gathered at a forum in Wuxi, a 2,200-year-old riverfront city in the delta.

"Many areas have taken the central government's call for the building of a new countryside to mean they should build new houses and villages. Traditional architecture is being dismantled at a terrifying speed and villages around the nation are all starting to look the same," Shan Jixiang, minister of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said at the Wuxi Forum, which the administration hosted.

He noted that traditional architecture in rural areas was the focus of a national survey on cultural heritage that kicked off at the beginning of this year. The survey is the third of its kind since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Some of rural architecture styles are to be listed as immovable cultural heritage.

The same forces eating away at traditional rural architecture are also a threat in other parts of the globe.

"Due to the homogenization of culture and of global socio-economic transformation, vernacular structures all around the world are extremely vulnerable," Valeria Prieto, secretary-general of the International Committee of Vernacular Architecture under the International Council on Monuments and Sites, said.

"Vernacular architecture is the world's most fragile and endangered cultural heritage," she said.

In China, vernacular architecture in rural areas is "the last battlefield left for preserving really intact cultural heritage, especially since so much cultural heritage in cities has been damaged by rampant construction," said Shan.

Only after much of its cultural heritage had been damaged did Wuxi come to understand the importance of its past, said Yang Weize, the local Party secretary.

He pledged that his city "will always maintain the characteristic of a waterfront town" by preserving its riverside alleys, old villages and neighbourhoods built by famous entrepreneurs like the Rong family in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Vernacular architecture is the third kind of cultural heritage to be placed on the administration's list of conservation priorities.

(China Daily April 12, 2007)