The recent news about a counterfeit Terracotta Warriors exhibition in a Xi'an suburb has shocked many. One can imagine fake perfumes and watches, but how to sell a bogus version of a world-famous landmark?

Obviously there are tourists with no habit of reading up on the sights they are going to visit, but rather, rely on whoever shows up at the exits of railway stations and offers his or her service as a guide. It never occurred to me these guides would take you to a place that pretends to be the real Terracotta Warriors pit, which, by the way, should have been easily recognizable.

There were signs that such venues were operating legally, though, which raised my suspicion about their nature.

Fifteen years ago, I was touring Lijiang of Yunnan province with an Australian professor of tourism development. We were taken to a place with many totem poles and other relics that seemed to be thousands of years old. We were awed by the primitive beauty of the site. "Such a place deserves world attention," we told each other.

Halfway through the tour, we looked at each other and suddenly realized it was a theme park. Had the objects been real, the place would have been on many lists, at least known to an expert like him.

There is nothing wrong with a theme park that models itself on an ancient site. But visitors should be informed in advance. The problem in many cases is, the operators deliberately blur the line to mislead the public. I don't know about the fake Terracotta Warriors exhibition, but I suspect somewhere in the fine print is a line about the nature of imitation or substitutes.

It takes a discerning eye to detect the difference, which is murky and keeps shifting. If a historical building was razed and totally rebuilt, does it still have historical value? The honest way is to put down the year it was rebuilt.

What if it was partially rebuilt and expanded? Many old villages and towns were in so much decay that it often took a drastic overhaul to ready it for public access. When tastefully done, outsiders may not be able to tell the original remnants from the new construction, which is done in the old style.

Then there are the statues and structures that would have existed in a parallel universe. They are the equivalent of fictional feature films that are made to dramatize a version of history, usually a melodramatic one, and they are often lumped together with the equivalent of documentaries. This is true even in some museums, where exhibits are by default imitations and the rare original pieces are marked inconspicuously.

Next time you're taken to a room where an emperor of an ancient dynasty had supposedly slept, just treat it with a grain of salt. It could mean he spent a night there if all the sources and legends were reliable and nobody did anything to the room in the intervening years.

Contact the writer at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn