Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - YU-CHENG, Yao: China's Archive Buildings: Past and Present
China’s Archive Buildings 219 is in a semibarrel vault structure built completely of stone and brick, without beams and pillars. Its five huge doors are also made of stone. Its surrounding walls are up to six metres thick. The wooden chests used for storing the imperial records and manuscripts are covered with brass plates and placed on the platform in the room. Such a structure is fire-proof and its interiors are maintained at a relatively stable temperature. So the archival materials are in safe conditions. For instance, when the extern temperature is 35 degrees centigrade in summer it is only 24 degrees inside; and in winter the inside is at 8 degrees centigrade with the outside at -14 degrees. The archival materials which have been preserved in this imperial archive building for 4 to 5 hundred years still remain in perfect condition. This is a brilliant masterpiece in the history of archives construction in China. Now, this ancient archive building is open to the public as an exhibition to provide people with a chance to learn history. Almost at the same time, in 1566, an individual constructed his own archive building in Ningbo, a port city in south-east China. Its owner was a top officer of that time. This building still exists. In 1934, another important archive building was put up in Nanjing. It was designed with modem architectural techniques and in traditional Chinese architectural style. Since 1949, it has been made use of as the Second National Historical Archives and is now being extended. In 1956, the government of the People’s Republic of China set up The Central Archive Building in Beijing, with a floor space of 40.000 square metres and air- conditioning. In recent years, China has been adopting an open policy to the world. Along with the development of our national economy, China’s science and technology are progressing steadily, and archives construction is further promoted. Now, there are 2924 archives in our country. Each province has its own provincial archive building. In some provinces such as Jiangsu, Zehjiang and Guangdong, more than 50% of counties have built their local new archive building, the rest are planning to do so. In order to further develop China’s archive buildings and guarantee their design and construction quality, China’s National Archives Bureau organized a technical team to draw up the Design Standard for Archive Building in 1983.1 am a member of this team. In China, archive buildings are classified into three grades: grade I are state archives, grade II, provincial archives, and grade III, county archives. All these archives are government organizations. As we know an archive building is intended to serve three main purposes: 1) to conserve archives 2) to classify and if necessary to restore them and 3) to provide services for users.
