China has unveiled a sweeping national strategy to address a critical shortage of artifact restorers, moving to professionalize a field where "doctors" of ancient relics have long struggled for recognition and fair pay.

The new guideline, issued jointly by the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in December, aims to bridge the gap between China's massive inventory of 108 million State-owned relics and the small, aging pool of experts qualified to save them.

Metal relic restorer at Shandong Museum Ren Wei is one of the nation's 55,000 professionals in the cultural heritage and museum industry classified as being "highly skilled", according to 2022 figures from the National Cultural Heritage Administration. It listed 180,000 professionals in total.

For 42-year-old Ren, he's spent over a dozen years using his skills to save more than 3,000 endangered pieces, restoring them to their former grandeur.

The repair of metal relics such as gold, silver, bronze and iron objects is very challenging, as many of them are from millennia ago, becoming cracked, deformed and eroded over time, Ren said. They require meticulous procedures of restoration, such as cleaning, returning them to their original shape and tackling corrosion.

The guideline aims to expand career development pathways for skilled professionals in this field, enhance their income and social status, and strive to build a large, well-structured, highly skilled and tiered talent pool.

This will provide strong personnel support and technical expertise for the high-quality development of China's cultural heritage, according to the guideline.

An important category of vocational skills in this field is the techniques to protect and repair cultural relics.

"The guideline is a strong boost for cultural heritage conservation. As the field has matured, a policy to make it more regulated will significantly drive the overall development of the whole industry," said Pan Lu, 65, a veteran cultural relics protection specialist from the National Museum of China in Beijing.

Engaged in the profession for more than four decades, Pan has witnessed the growing importance of repairing cultural relics in China.

Pan said that since 2008, when the country began to open museums to the public for free, they have become increasingly popular among the public. That has driven museums to design better exhibitions to meet the public's cultural demands. When artifacts, an indispensable part of the displays, were moved out of the storehouses as exhibits, people found many of them needed to be repaired before being presented to the visitors.

However, there is a shortage of cultural relics repairers. "Given the fixed staffing limits at many institutes, particularly smaller museums, the focus often leans toward recruiting curators who can design popular exhibitions to draw crowds, rather than repair specialists," he said.

"Protection and restoration of artifacts are the basis for museum displays," Pan said. "Now more people are paying close attention to the cultural relics our museums display. If they have problems or are in bad condition when being exhibited, visitors will notice immediately and be disappointed by the lack of care."

By following the guideline, he said, museums are incentivized to hire more restorers.

However, the training of professionals in this area lacks systematic structure and coordination. At present, the training landscape is divided, with some people attending specialized private schools and others pursuing formal majors at universities, he said.

Once they enter institutes after graduation, they often learn techniques from senior tutors, and learn and polish their skills in practice. They sometimes can gain opportunities to attend short-term training courses offered by cultural heritage authorities at different levels and related institutes, but the effect of such training varies.

Zhang Wentao has worked for 15 years for a company in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, on archaeological exploration. His role involves inserting a Luoyang shovel (curved spade) into the ground and extracting soil samples to analyze the stratigraphic layers to judge the types of potential ruins.

Reflecting on his career, Zhang said it took him six years in archaeological exploration to become someone who can oversee a project. He learned from his tutors at the company and polished his skills continuously in practice, one project after another.

He said he had opportunities to attend training courses organized by his company and the government, which helped provide guidance for challenges he met in practice. But generally, he felt the courses highlighted theory more than practice and could offer limited insights for his improvement.

Ren said the training courses he participated in could broaden his horizons, but they could not help much in enhancing the practical skills most critical to his work. He hoped such training would allow more communication on hands-on experience with his peers and predecessors.

Pan said the training of professionals remains varied in the industry and lacks a systematic structure. "Many experts believe cultural heritage protection should be established as a distinct academic discipline, with its own standardized and comprehensive training pathways. I think the new document is driving the industry in that direction," he said.

The guideline aims to regulate the grading system in the industry with an eight-level ranking for professionals, which will be directly linked to the existing professional title framework — a key determinant of income.

According to Pan, the current grading system has not been fully implemented across the country. In regions where it has been adopted, it is still disconnected from income levels.

Therefore, professionals still need to seek traditional professional titles to gain more income, but the titles are gained through academic progress, often measured by published research.

That means, despite restorers gaining experience through their practical work, they can only gain more income through academic endeavors.

Ren said that as repairers are skilled in hands-on craft rather than academic writing, they are less competitive in the evaluation system compared to colleagues focused on academic studies or field archaeology.

"It's extremely difficult for cultural relics restorers to pursue professional titles," said Ren.

"Based on our daily work, our writings usually describe practical techniques and experiential knowledge, not the kind of innovative research that academic committees typically reward."

Under the new guideline, restorers no longer need to independently pursue professional titles. Instead, they will first be graded based on their skill levels, with these grades directly corresponding to established professional titles and corresponding salary scales.

Pan called for the release of detailed follow-up regulations to define how the work of these craftspeople should be better assessed.

"As such a policy has been released by the ministries, lower-level governments will work to implement it. We may meet many problems in implementation, but the whole process is one that pushes this whole industry forward," said Pan.

wangru1@chinadaily.com.cn