Time up for Old Beijing
Returning to the site of his old home is a painful experience for Zhang Wei. On the exact spot in the southern Beijing neighbourhood where his family’s ancient courtyard once stood – the house he and his mother were born in, where his grandmother married and died, and where his family had lived for more than 70 years – now stands a lottery ticket shop and a large, nondescript wholesale market.
The once-populous streets nearby have made way for a six-lane highway, karaoke parlour and office buildings. And as the 38-year-old sifts through a pile of old bricks in a recently demolished alleyway, or hutong, he can’t help but lament the end of so much history. ‘In the hutongs, everything had a story behind it; the stoops, the doors,’ he says. ‘Modern buildings are steel, glass, concrete. It’s cold, like living in a hotel. Hutongs vibrate with human life.’
Once a ubiquitous feature of Beijing, the thin alleyways and lanes crammed with courtyards are more than simply housing and thoroughfares; they are communities and unique areas of culture and life that have been a key feature of the city for almost eight centuries. Hutongs have been around since the Mongols, who ruled China for close to 100 years, and first built a city on the site of modern-day Beijing during the late 13th century. The name comes from the Mongolian term for
a water well, implicitly suggesting the communal atmosphere that would become a major characteristic of hutong living to this day.
Traditionally, each hutong had a different function. Some were home to the granaries for the imperial palace, others housed the feed for the city’s animals and others the money traders and lenders. Yet all buzzed with life and communal existence. With modernisation, however, these areas became more and more crowded, and their ancient structures were left unrenovated, with entire families living in single, crowded courtyards, often with no bathrooms, no heating and a lack of modern amenities.
The hutongs are under threat from economic forces, since many are in a poor state of repair and their prime real estate in the heart of the Chinese capital is coveted by developers. UNESCO estimates that more than 88 per cent of the city’s old residential quarter has already disappeared, most of it torn down during the past three decades, and more is scheduled to go in the next few years.
‘Most of the damage has been done since the 1980s, as the pace of China’s development increased exponentially,’ says He Shuzhong, founder of the China Heritage Protection Center, an NGO focused on the preservation of China’s tangible culture that has spent almost a decade trying to save areas of Beijing’s hutongs.
‘I know that some high-ranking government officials look at Beijing as the capital of China and want it to resemble a “world city”,’ he adds. ‘They want Beijing to look like the Right Bank in Paris. To them, all buildings in Beijing should be tall, shiny and new.’
Lack of investment
Several kilometres north of Zhang Wei’s old home, down a winding and cluttered hutong that is still standing despite the development all around it, 55-year-old Bai Shixiang sits and waits. ‘I used to be a merchant, but now they don’t let us sell on the streets, so the government just gives me a small pension,’ he says slowly, pausing occasionally to smoke a cigarette.
With no real source of income, Bai now shares a single, dilapidated room with a male relative in a centuries-old courtyard in the heart of Old Beijing. Their two beds lie at either end of the spartan, rather dingy, unheated room, which is furnished simply with a television, a small table and wardrobe, a few rusty chairs, and a pile of blankets to keep them warm when the cold winter months come around.
Bai’s family has lived in the same courtyard for as long as he can remember, yet little has been done by them or the authorities to preserve the ancient structures or improve them for modern living. The walls are cracked and the once-spacious inner courtyard has been squeezed by the addition of extensions, built during the 1970s, to accommodate extra residents. Old roof tiles are falling off, and in the background, high-rise buildings block out the sky.
‘Our courtyard used to be filled with flowers, birds, fish and crickets,’ Bai explains. ‘It was that kind of courtyard. The house wasn’t much, but the environment around it was magnificent.’
Despite the winter cold, the fact that the nearest toilet is 100 metres away down a neighbouring alley and the general disrepair and lack of investment, Bai can’t imagine what it would be like to live anywhere else. ‘We are used to living in the hutongs, even if it isn’t the most comfortable,’ he says. ‘We would prefer to stay here.’
Little warning
It’s unlikely they will have a choice, however. Bai says that his family has been expecting to hear that they must leave their long-time home for years. ‘Now we’re waiting for the compensation from the government, but if the demolition is put on hold, then we’ll continue to live here,’ he says.
Hutong residents such as Bai typically have little warning, and no legal platform for recourse, when their homes are scheduled for demolition. Overnight, a graffitied mark simply appears on the side of their property, the character chai (拆), written by an unknown hand, and they know they have probably a year
or less to move out.
‘According to the current laws, there should be a hearing process where individuals directly affected by the demolition retain the power to express their opposition to the construction plans,’ says Wang Youyin, a Beijing lawyer who specialises in demolition cases. ‘But in reality, since there are no committees to sit in on the hearings, the opportunity to protest is lost, and those affected rarely have an actual venue in which to express their opposition to the destruction of their homes.’
For young residents this might be okay, but for those who have lived their whole lives in the hutongs it’s a difficult reality to bear. ‘I arrived here right after Chairman Mao liberated Beijing [in 1949],’ says 83-year-old Tu Zhengpei as she sits outside on the street in an armchair. ‘Life then was tougher than it is now. Now, everyone has food, but back then, everyone was using ration stamps to eat.’
Tu moved into the hutongs with her husband after he got a job working for the national bus company. Sixty years later, they still live in the same small room, although their world has contracted to the distance between their home, the communal toilets and the nearby shop.
‘Living here you know all of your neighbours,’ she says. ‘Both my oldest and youngest sons now live in high-rise buildings, and no-one knows anyone else in them. That’s no good. In the hutongs, all the neighbours look after one another.’
Regular demolition
Attempts have been made to preserve the remaining hutong alleyways as tangible cultural heritage. But demolitions still regularly occur within the 25 inner-city protected areas that have been in place since 1998. According to Zhang Jie, a professor of urban planning at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, the number of hutongs in the city has dropped from more than 8,000 at their peak to 2,250 in 1990 and now just 1,200.
One historical area of hutongs just south of Tiananmen Square was bulldozed in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games and turned into a touristy ‘traditional’ shopping area that now contains international stores such as H&M, McDonalds, Starbucks and Swatch, but very few Chinese brands, and no Chinese residents. All of the old residents were moved on, despite a media outcry.
When Zhang Wei’s large family courtyard was torn down to be replaced by a wholesale market and lottery ticket shop back in 2000, there was less fuss and little that local residents could do. ‘A year in advance, the government informed us that our houses were scheduled for demolition,’ he says. ‘Six months later, the construction company came to evaluate the house and decide compensation. In these six months, we had to find a new place to live – the government doesn’t provide any support in finding a new home.’
Zhang and his family ended up moving far to the west of Beijing, into a suburban apartment compound filled with identical towers and little social interaction. They live on the ground floor so that it at least feels a little like they’re still in Old Beijing, with the sounds of the street coming through the walls and a garden outside that they can pretend is theirs.
‘At the time, getting ¥500,000 (£50,000) for your old house seemed like winning the lottery – everyone wanted to move,’ he says. ‘As people were moving, they were throwing out all of their household appliances as well – they would just buy new ones for their new houses. What’s really sad is that they also abandoned their pets, their cats and dogs – you see all of these wild animals in the remaining hutongs now and many of them used to be people’s pets that were abandoned when their owners moved.’
Many of those who moved soon realised that life was different in modern Beijing. ‘There was a sense of family in the hutong that is lost in the new buildings,’ says Zhang. ‘When times were hard and you ran out of coal you could go and borrow a piece from the neighbours. [It was the] same with cooking supplies such as soy sauce or black vinegar.’
Uncertain future
Residents and conservationists alike are now fighting harder than ever to preserve what remains of hutong life and culture. A large area around the ancient Drum and Bell towers, which has been an integral part of Beijing life for 800 years, and was named a Historical and Cultural Protected Area in 2002, was scheduled to be demolished as part of a ¥5billion project. It was due to be turned into a theme-park-like ‘Beijing Time Culture City’, complete with shopping plazas and underground parking, until media pressure reduced the size and scale of the project.
The uncertainty over the long-term future of the hutongs is partly responsible for the continuing disrepair of the remaining hutong buildings. Residents are unwilling to invest in their properties when they’re unsure if they will still be living in them in a year’s time.
A few hundred metres from the Bell Tower, a small courtyard stands on the edge of a large construction site. ‘Everyone says different things, different timelines, but I don’t think this place will last long before it’s demolished,’ says Du Yanxia.
Unlike the majority of hutong residents, Du has only been living down her small alleyway for the past 15 years, having moved from the countryside to help her daughter raise a young child. But she still loves the place. ‘Everything is so convenient in the hutongs – everything you could ever need is just around you,’ she says.
The cramped room Du occupies in her family’s courtyard, filled with the smell of home-cooked food and half-sewn hats and slippers that she will sell on the street, has clearly seen little money invested in it in a long time. This isn’t surprising given that the sounds of heavy machinery can be heard from their small courtyard.
Du’s family has already found a house in the countryside to move to after the expected destruction of their hutong home is carried out. ‘All these old houses – they won’t last in the new Beijing,’ she says. ‘Also, they are talking about building a road through here.’
Disappearing culture
Sitting in a cafe within the hutongs, Zhang Jinqi, co-founder of the online forum Memory of China and a long-term hutong resident, worries about the cultural impact. ‘Hutongs are the basic element in Beijing culture,’ he says. ‘A single hutong disappearing means one part of the traditional culture has disappeared. If one day all the hutongs have disappeared, Beijing’s culture will also disappear.
‘I had a friend from New York who lived in a hutong for three years,’ he continues. ‘He loved the life, and when he saw the government damaging the hutongs he said to the governor: “You can’t continue to damage them or you’ll make big historical mistakes.” The governor replied: “Your government also made some mistakes. I have the right to make the same mistakes.”’
It’s this kind of mindset, coupled with the rapid modernisation of the country, that many fear will soon destroy most aspects of traditional Chinese culture and living. ‘Last weekend, while I was in the hutongs, I heard a three-year-old ask a question that left me speechless,’ says Zhang Wei, as he walks around his old neighbourhood. ‘He asked, “Will these houses be torn down?” And I had nothing to say. I feel sorry for today’s children because none of them will get to grow up in a hutong like I did.’
November 2011
The once-populous streets nearby have made way for a six-lane highway, karaoke parlour and office buildings. And as the 38-year-old sifts through a pile of old bricks in a recently demolished alleyway, or hutong, he can’t help but lament the end of so much history. ‘In the hutongs, everything had a story behind it; the stoops, the doors,’ he says. ‘Modern buildings are steel, glass, concrete. It’s cold, like living in a hotel. Hutongs vibrate with human life.’
Once a ubiquitous feature of Beijing, the thin alleyways and lanes crammed with courtyards are more than simply housing and thoroughfares; they are communities and unique areas of culture and life that have been a key feature of the city for almost eight centuries. Hutongs have been around since the Mongols, who ruled China for close to 100 years, and first built a city on the site of modern-day Beijing during the late 13th century. The name comes from the Mongolian term for
a water well, implicitly suggesting the communal atmosphere that would become a major characteristic of hutong living to this day.
Traditionally, each hutong had a different function. Some were home to the granaries for the imperial palace, others housed the feed for the city’s animals and others the money traders and lenders. Yet all buzzed with life and communal existence. With modernisation, however, these areas became more and more crowded, and their ancient structures were left unrenovated, with entire families living in single, crowded courtyards, often with no bathrooms, no heating and a lack of modern amenities.
The hutongs are under threat from economic forces, since many are in a poor state of repair and their prime real estate in the heart of the Chinese capital is coveted by developers. UNESCO estimates that more than 88 per cent of the city’s old residential quarter has already disappeared, most of it torn down during the past three decades, and more is scheduled to go in the next few years.
‘Most of the damage has been done since the 1980s, as the pace of China’s development increased exponentially,’ says He Shuzhong, founder of the China Heritage Protection Center, an NGO focused on the preservation of China’s tangible culture that has spent almost a decade trying to save areas of Beijing’s hutongs.
‘I know that some high-ranking government officials look at Beijing as the capital of China and want it to resemble a “world city”,’ he adds. ‘They want Beijing to look like the Right Bank in Paris. To them, all buildings in Beijing should be tall, shiny and new.’
Lack of investment
Several kilometres north of Zhang Wei’s old home, down a winding and cluttered hutong that is still standing despite the development all around it, 55-year-old Bai Shixiang sits and waits. ‘I used to be a merchant, but now they don’t let us sell on the streets, so the government just gives me a small pension,’ he says slowly, pausing occasionally to smoke a cigarette.
With no real source of income, Bai now shares a single, dilapidated room with a male relative in a centuries-old courtyard in the heart of Old Beijing. Their two beds lie at either end of the spartan, rather dingy, unheated room, which is furnished simply with a television, a small table and wardrobe, a few rusty chairs, and a pile of blankets to keep them warm when the cold winter months come around.
Bai’s family has lived in the same courtyard for as long as he can remember, yet little has been done by them or the authorities to preserve the ancient structures or improve them for modern living. The walls are cracked and the once-spacious inner courtyard has been squeezed by the addition of extensions, built during the 1970s, to accommodate extra residents. Old roof tiles are falling off, and in the background, high-rise buildings block out the sky.
‘Our courtyard used to be filled with flowers, birds, fish and crickets,’ Bai explains. ‘It was that kind of courtyard. The house wasn’t much, but the environment around it was magnificent.’
Despite the winter cold, the fact that the nearest toilet is 100 metres away down a neighbouring alley and the general disrepair and lack of investment, Bai can’t imagine what it would be like to live anywhere else. ‘We are used to living in the hutongs, even if it isn’t the most comfortable,’ he says. ‘We would prefer to stay here.’
Little warning
It’s unlikely they will have a choice, however. Bai says that his family has been expecting to hear that they must leave their long-time home for years. ‘Now we’re waiting for the compensation from the government, but if the demolition is put on hold, then we’ll continue to live here,’ he says.
Hutong residents such as Bai typically have little warning, and no legal platform for recourse, when their homes are scheduled for demolition. Overnight, a graffitied mark simply appears on the side of their property, the character chai (拆), written by an unknown hand, and they know they have probably a year
or less to move out.
‘According to the current laws, there should be a hearing process where individuals directly affected by the demolition retain the power to express their opposition to the construction plans,’ says Wang Youyin, a Beijing lawyer who specialises in demolition cases. ‘But in reality, since there are no committees to sit in on the hearings, the opportunity to protest is lost, and those affected rarely have an actual venue in which to express their opposition to the destruction of their homes.’
For young residents this might be okay, but for those who have lived their whole lives in the hutongs it’s a difficult reality to bear. ‘I arrived here right after Chairman Mao liberated Beijing [in 1949],’ says 83-year-old Tu Zhengpei as she sits outside on the street in an armchair. ‘Life then was tougher than it is now. Now, everyone has food, but back then, everyone was using ration stamps to eat.’
Tu moved into the hutongs with her husband after he got a job working for the national bus company. Sixty years later, they still live in the same small room, although their world has contracted to the distance between their home, the communal toilets and the nearby shop.
‘Living here you know all of your neighbours,’ she says. ‘Both my oldest and youngest sons now live in high-rise buildings, and no-one knows anyone else in them. That’s no good. In the hutongs, all the neighbours look after one another.’
Regular demolition
Attempts have been made to preserve the remaining hutong alleyways as tangible cultural heritage. But demolitions still regularly occur within the 25 inner-city protected areas that have been in place since 1998. According to Zhang Jie, a professor of urban planning at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, the number of hutongs in the city has dropped from more than 8,000 at their peak to 2,250 in 1990 and now just 1,200.
One historical area of hutongs just south of Tiananmen Square was bulldozed in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games and turned into a touristy ‘traditional’ shopping area that now contains international stores such as H&M, McDonalds, Starbucks and Swatch, but very few Chinese brands, and no Chinese residents. All of the old residents were moved on, despite a media outcry.
When Zhang Wei’s large family courtyard was torn down to be replaced by a wholesale market and lottery ticket shop back in 2000, there was less fuss and little that local residents could do. ‘A year in advance, the government informed us that our houses were scheduled for demolition,’ he says. ‘Six months later, the construction company came to evaluate the house and decide compensation. In these six months, we had to find a new place to live – the government doesn’t provide any support in finding a new home.’
Zhang and his family ended up moving far to the west of Beijing, into a suburban apartment compound filled with identical towers and little social interaction. They live on the ground floor so that it at least feels a little like they’re still in Old Beijing, with the sounds of the street coming through the walls and a garden outside that they can pretend is theirs.
‘At the time, getting ¥500,000 (£50,000) for your old house seemed like winning the lottery – everyone wanted to move,’ he says. ‘As people were moving, they were throwing out all of their household appliances as well – they would just buy new ones for their new houses. What’s really sad is that they also abandoned their pets, their cats and dogs – you see all of these wild animals in the remaining hutongs now and many of them used to be people’s pets that were abandoned when their owners moved.’
Many of those who moved soon realised that life was different in modern Beijing. ‘There was a sense of family in the hutong that is lost in the new buildings,’ says Zhang. ‘When times were hard and you ran out of coal you could go and borrow a piece from the neighbours. [It was the] same with cooking supplies such as soy sauce or black vinegar.’
Uncertain future
Residents and conservationists alike are now fighting harder than ever to preserve what remains of hutong life and culture. A large area around the ancient Drum and Bell towers, which has been an integral part of Beijing life for 800 years, and was named a Historical and Cultural Protected Area in 2002, was scheduled to be demolished as part of a ¥5billion project. It was due to be turned into a theme-park-like ‘Beijing Time Culture City’, complete with shopping plazas and underground parking, until media pressure reduced the size and scale of the project.
The uncertainty over the long-term future of the hutongs is partly responsible for the continuing disrepair of the remaining hutong buildings. Residents are unwilling to invest in their properties when they’re unsure if they will still be living in them in a year’s time.
A few hundred metres from the Bell Tower, a small courtyard stands on the edge of a large construction site. ‘Everyone says different things, different timelines, but I don’t think this place will last long before it’s demolished,’ says Du Yanxia.
Unlike the majority of hutong residents, Du has only been living down her small alleyway for the past 15 years, having moved from the countryside to help her daughter raise a young child. But she still loves the place. ‘Everything is so convenient in the hutongs – everything you could ever need is just around you,’ she says.
The cramped room Du occupies in her family’s courtyard, filled with the smell of home-cooked food and half-sewn hats and slippers that she will sell on the street, has clearly seen little money invested in it in a long time. This isn’t surprising given that the sounds of heavy machinery can be heard from their small courtyard.
Du’s family has already found a house in the countryside to move to after the expected destruction of their hutong home is carried out. ‘All these old houses – they won’t last in the new Beijing,’ she says. ‘Also, they are talking about building a road through here.’
Disappearing culture
Sitting in a cafe within the hutongs, Zhang Jinqi, co-founder of the online forum Memory of China and a long-term hutong resident, worries about the cultural impact. ‘Hutongs are the basic element in Beijing culture,’ he says. ‘A single hutong disappearing means one part of the traditional culture has disappeared. If one day all the hutongs have disappeared, Beijing’s culture will also disappear.
‘I had a friend from New York who lived in a hutong for three years,’ he continues. ‘He loved the life, and when he saw the government damaging the hutongs he said to the governor: “You can’t continue to damage them or you’ll make big historical mistakes.” The governor replied: “Your government also made some mistakes. I have the right to make the same mistakes.”’
It’s this kind of mindset, coupled with the rapid modernisation of the country, that many fear will soon destroy most aspects of traditional Chinese culture and living. ‘Last weekend, while I was in the hutongs, I heard a three-year-old ask a question that left me speechless,’ says Zhang Wei, as he walks around his old neighbourhood. ‘He asked, “Will these houses be torn down?” And I had nothing to say. I feel sorry for today’s children because none of them will get to grow up in a hutong like I did.’
November 2011
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