China, Vietnam, Iran win UNESCO heritage honours
Also listed was the Bikini Atoll, a speck in the Pacific which was evacuated in 1946 while the US carried out nuclear bomb tests, the Paris-based organisation announced on its website on Sunday.
In Asia, Unesco listed the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, the holy monuments at Mount Songshang near Dengfeng in eastern China, and Sarazm, an ancient site in Tajikistan.
In the Middle East, Iran won a listing for the historic bazaar in Tabriz and a Sufi mystic shrine complex in Ardabil, as did Saudi Arabia for its former dynastic capital, the 15th-century Turaif district.
South Korea gained an entry for the 14th-century villages of Hahoe and Yangdong, nests of Confucian culture, as did India, with the 18-century astronomical observatory of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur.
Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands region, home to endangered leopards and primates were also added.
Earlier, it removed the Galapagos Islands from that list.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 2nd, 2010.
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