During my first stay as artist in residence in Fuzhou, autumn 2005, my Chinese friends drew my attention to a house called "German Garden". I was surprised by the European style of the architecture and was told about a district from the 19th Century in which foreigners lived and worked. The infrastructure of business premises, administration buildings, embassies, schools, churches, hospitals and suburban gardens testified to the social structure of their inhabitants and the importance to the city. Visiting the quarter, we only found a few houses and fragments of the former development still existing. The transformation of large areas of Chinese cities into tower blocks causes an immense loss of knowledge of architecture and traditions. Sites, which provide experience of perceptible history, are wiped out as if they never existed. Questions about the historical identity of our society will be soon answered only by selected sources intended for this purpose, such as maps, photos, books and museum exhibitions. My scroll entitled "German Garden" is an attempt to use the method of documenting to transform "archaeology of the presence" into a work of art. The practice of ink-rubbing taken from stone calligraphy has an old tradition in China. These days raising awareness matters -- for the sake of history itself and its material culture. History is a living process of remembrance, which shapes the traces of human thinking, emotion and acting that are perceptible as a contribution to our self-positioning in the world.