Last, last, last days of old Peking
Top society and culture news for April 20, 2017. Part of the daily The China Projectย news roundup "He fled from Bo Xilai; now he wants to make 300,000 electric cars in China."
The Los Angeles Timesย has published an articleย titled โIf there’s debris and destruction, it must be springtime in Beijing,โ which says that โthe government has embarked on a renovation project in Beijingโs centuries-old courtyard alleyways known as hรบtรฒng ่กๅโฆ Officials want to create an โorderly, civilized and beautiful street environmentโ in these remaining alleys by rooting out unlicensed buildings and reducing clutter.โ But many fear that the cleanup campaign will be done insensitively, and cause the capital to lose the slightly chaotic charm of its last remaining hutong.ย The article quotes Jeremiah Jenne, a historian and occasional blogger who leads walking toursย through hutongs in Beijing: โThe government itself is wrestling with the question of what the hutongs mean in Beijingโฆ Are they an eyesore or a tourist attraction?โ
A Weibo postย (in Chinese) from the Beijing government explains the current plans for the area around Nanmencang Hutong ๅ้จไป่กๅ, which is mainly to destroy all structures built without a permit and widen the alleyways. Here is a Weibo postingย (in Chinese) from February with several photos showing cleanup work that was done on the Dongsi Shiyi Tiao Hutong ๅไบฌไธๅๅไธๆก. The Weibo account of the bookstore Zhengyang Shuju ๆญฃ้ณไนฆๅฑ has photos of bricksย from Beijingโs old city walls turning up in the rubble after the destruction of illegally built structures: The city walls were mostly destroyed in 1955, and hutong residents made use of their rubble to build their own additions to their cramped hutong houses.
The Financial Timesย has published an articleย (paywall) on another big change in Beijingโs urban environment: โBeijing has announced plans to combat what it calls โurban diseasesโ by capping its population and shrinking its footprint, wreaking havoc on the small businesses and migrants that throng its bustling streets.โ
Beijing has, of course, been changing for decades. For more on previous cycles of destruction and no renovation, we can recommend these books:
- The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed,ย by Michael Meyer about the city in the two decades leading up to the 2008 Olympics.
- Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China, by David Kidd, which describes two years that the author spent in the capital before and after the 1948 Communist takeover of the city with his wife, the daughter of a prominent Beijing family.
- Chinaโs Road Pictures set to remake โRun Lola Runโย / China Film Insider
- Trafficked into wedlock: A Cambodian wife in rural Chinaย / ChinaFile
- Chinese parents are using Peppa Pig to prepare their toddlers for the Ivy Leagueย / Quartz
- Chinese park hobbles energetic street dancersย / SCMP
- Review: In โBorn in China,โ an antelope outshines a pandaย / NYT (paywall)
- Ultra-real Chinaย / LARB Blog