160 cultural relics damaged in Beijing storm

About 160 unmovable cultural relics in Beijing were damaged during a storm last Saturday, when the heaviest rains in 60 years left 37 dead, the Beijing cultural heritage bureau said Wednesday.

An initial investigation showed that the 160 cultural relics, mostly located among 210,000 square meters of the city's suburbs, saw varying degrees of damage. Direct economic losses totaled more than 800 million yuan (125 million U.S. dollars).

Cultural relics at the district-level in Fangshan, Fengtai and Shijingshan districts sustained more serious damage, and more than 80 cultural relics in Fangshan district faced threats such as collapse and saturation, the bureau said.

Major unmovable cultural relics in Beijing, including six world cultural heritages, did not suffer much in the storm, and no large-scale collapses have been found among the stretches of the Great Wall located in Beijing, it said.