Construction along Qianmen Dongdajie Road in Beijing in July 2008.Nicolai Ouroussoff writes:
BEIJING — Historical cycles that took a century to unfold in the West can be compressed into less than a decade in today’s China. And that’s as true of Beijing’s preservation movement as it is of the building boom that has transformed Beijing and turned many of its historical neighborhoods — known for their narrow alleyways, or hutongs — into rubble.
BEIJING — Historical cycles that took a century to unfold in the West can be compressed into less than a decade in today’s China. And that’s as true of Beijing’s preservation movement as it is of the building boom that has transformed Beijing and turned many of its historical neighborhoods — known for their narrow alleyways, or hutongs — into rubble.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
A home built during the Qing dynasty was partly razed to make way for the new Transportation Ministry building.As grass-roots preservationists began sounding the alarm, the aging wood frames and tile roofs of the ancient courtyard houses that give these neighborhoods their identity were being supplanted so quickly by mighty towers that it was hard to pinpoint where they once stood.
Photo: Forrest Anderson, via Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images
A newly renovated hutong house near Nanluogu Xiang in Beijing.Now, as they labor to protect what remains, Chinese preservationists are facing a new threat: gentrification. The few ancient courtyard houses that survived have become coveted status symbols for the wealthy. As money is poured into elaborate renovations, gentrification threatens to erase an entire way of life.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Meanwhile, the intense focus on the fate of the hutongs has eclipsed an equally pressing preservation issue, the demolition of Socialist-style housing from the 1950s and ’60s. The imminent threat is historical censorship: a vision of the past that is so thoroughly edited that it will soon have little relation to the truth.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
The hutong neighborhoods date to the 13th century, when Beijing’s chessboard grid was created. The layout of the neighborhoods, with public life spilling into alleyways and private life hidden behind brick walls, remained largely unchanged in the first decade or so after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Starting in the 1960s, however, as Beijing’s population soared, three or four extended families were often packed into a courtyard house that had once been occupied by a single family.
Starved for space, the new residents often filled the courtyards with makeshift kitchens and sheds, transforming what had been airy, light-filled spaces into a suffocating warren of rooms. Few had basic plumbing, and soon even the wealthier hutongs had deteriorated into slums.
Starved for space, the new residents often filled the courtyards with makeshift kitchens and sheds, transforming what had been airy, light-filled spaces into a suffocating warren of rooms. Few had basic plumbing, and soon even the wealthier hutongs had deteriorated into slums.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Meanwhile, as the city expanded outward in the 1950s and 60s, the ancient stone walls that encircled old Beijing were demolished as part of a sweeping modernization. Factories and housing compounds began sprouting in the ancient center. A ring of four- and five-story, Socialist-style apartment compounds began to envelop the city.
The current wave of demolitions got under way in the early 1990s and accelerated after Beijing’s bid to host the Olympics was accepted in 2001.
The current wave of demolitions got under way in the early 1990s and accelerated after Beijing’s bid to host the Olympics was accepted in 2001.
Photo: Christina Hu/Reuters
In the Qianmen area, which was once home to many of the city’s teahouses and theaters, hutongs have been replaced by shopping malls and office blocks with ugly postmodern facades.
Here, all that remains of the past is one of the old Beijing city gates. The bustling commercial strip has been widened into an eight-lane boulevard that can be crossed only by pedestrian bridges.
Here, all that remains of the past is one of the old Beijing city gates. The bustling commercial strip has been widened into an eight-lane boulevard that can be crossed only by pedestrian bridges.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Today, a well-off couple may live with a single child in a courtyard home that once housed more than a dozen people. Streets that once teemed with life are as silent as churchyards — and as banal as some American subdivisions.
Nanluogu Xiang in the Dongcheng district, once a thriving neighborhood of mismatched courtyard houses and shopfronts, is now lined with T-shirt shops and cafes catering to tourists.
Nanluogu Xiang in the Dongcheng district, once a thriving neighborhood of mismatched courtyard houses and shopfronts, is now lined with T-shirt shops and cafes catering to tourists.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
The Communist-era housing complexes also had a rich hierarchy of public and private zones. Over the years, tenants set up tables and hot plates just outside their small private rooms, giving the corridors some of the messy feel of the crowded old hutongs. The importance of these structures, then, has more to do with their social texture than with their formal value as architecture.
Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
The Qianmen hutong area at twilight.It is clear that the Chinese government needs to take a deep breath and ponder what it is sacrificing from the nation’s recent and ancient past. It could develop a sweeping strategy that could serve as a model not only for Beijing, but also for the rest of the world.
Time, it seems, is the one thing Beijing hasn’t got.
Time, it seems, is the one thing Beijing hasn’t got.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
@Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/23/arts/20080723_HUTONG_SLIDESHOW_index.html
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