Story here. The Olympics begin in, what? Less than a week now? And it’s not just the air pollution that Beijing is worried about.
Excerpt: “A mysterious notice appeared beside the shops on July 17, typed on white paper and signed by no one. It read, ‘In keeping with the government’s request to rectify the Olympic environment, a wall will need to be built around No. 93 South Tianqiao Road.’ The next morning, several bricklayers showed up with a police escort.”
Baffling.
Could somebody be using the cleanup as a tool for personal revenge?
I doubt it’s for personal revenge, but rather a true quest for “modernization,” which I’m not necessarily against myself, but the historic past ought to be preserved. For years now, the old hutong, the traditional winding neighborhoods, have been torn down to make way for modern buildings and high-rises, and the process seems to have accelerated once Beijing won the Olympics.
A quarter of Beijing residents still live in hutong, and their way of life is in danger. These neighborhoods generally run east to west and interconnect to form extensive warrens of ramshackle homes and historic courtyards. The more historic homes are marked with white plaques and protected, but the neighborhoods around them keep falling under the wrecking ball. They’re a delight to wander through and truly deserving of Unesco World Heritage status, but the government seems embarrassed by them. 
Great photo!
The hutong are one of several reasons why I prefer Beijing over Shanghai. It will be sad to see them gone.
Makes me think about Hong Kong and Singapore. A good city where you can still get a feel for what those two must have looked and felt like before their own modernization is Penang, Malaysia. It’s rather multicultural, a good mix of Chinese, Malay, Hindu and Muslim, but overall it’s a “Chinese” city in its look and feel. Before other of Thailand’s borders opened up and our insurrection in southern Thailand broke out some years ago, it was not uncommon for many farangs (Westerners) in Thailand to take the train down to Penang every three months, as regular as clockwork, to renew their “tourist” visas at the Thai consulate there. Some had been living and working here for 10 or 20 years on “temporary” tourist visas, and they grew sick of Penang and the long trip down. I’ve never had to do visa runs myself, and so we went there just to see the place and thoroughly enjoyed the place. You feel like Tintin in The Blue Lotus, being whisked past the old Chinese shophouses in a pedicab! (Although if I remember, Tintin used a more traditional rickshaw.)
It turns out the wife was familiar with this picture, as it was in the news here. Said the old lady who owned it refused to sell or move but finally had to.
They showed some of the walled off neighborhoods on Japanese TV over the weekend. There were beautiful walls and then poor buildings and people behind them.
Interesting to see that Potemkin is alive and well.
The hutong was one of the most fascinating things about Beijing. Talk about getting lost in tiny little alleyways! The hutong neighborhoods were butted right up against the Forbidden City. I’m forever grateful to have seen them in 2001 where as far as I could tell, it was very real and authentic.
You know, I’ve heard a lot about this, and I really can’t see how this is different than, say, cleaning up Time’s Square for the tourists.
There are plenty of things to raise eyebrows at, but I think this one is a bit overblown and would not be news if it was happening in any other country.
If New York were to build a 10-foot wall across street, which lead to undesirable neighborhoods, blocking access from the main roads so that tourists couldn’t easily access them, as the Chinese are doing, then I could see your point.
Let me rephrase that. No doubt there is some bad stuff going on and this is far more invasive than your average urban renewal project.
But what is happening is not completely out of the realm of what you’d find in other places. When they cleaned up Times Square they certainly did force out undesirable business, displace poor people, lay down heavy security, alter the character of a historic area and generally replace a somewhat seedy but interesting and indigenous culture with a cleaned up version. All for the sake of image and tourism. Not the same degree as China, but the same realm.
Slum clearing and other casualties of urban renewal are issues that affect many nations, including our own. I don’t see anyone complaining about India’s occasional visits to the slum with bulldozers- and they don’t even have a good excuse like “we want to look good on TV.” They best they can say is “Yeah, we like to give poor people a hard time.” Why aren’t they on the news?
Once again, still not great, but not Teh Pure Ev1l either. I’m all for pointing out problems, but I do think news coverage has gotten a bit sensationalist and losing perspective. I remember one article about how China was putting up billboards with pretty nature scenes on them to make things look prettier. Well, yeah? And? If LA put up billboards of pretty ocean and desert views everyone would think it was great, why is it suddenly a sign of evil when China does it?
Let me rephrase that.
But what is happening is not completely out of the realm of what you’d find in other places. When they cleaned up Times Square they certainly did force out undesirable business, displace poor people, lay down heavy security, alter the character of a historic area and generally replace a somewhat seedy but interesting and indigenous culture with a cleaned up version. All for the sake of image and tourism. Not the same degree as what is happening here, but the same realm.
Slum clearing and other casualties of urban renewal are issues that affect many nations, including our own. I don’t see anyone complaining about India’s occasional visits to the slum with bulldozers- and they don’t even have a good excuse like “we want to look good on TV.” They best they can say is “Yeah, we like to give poor people a hard time.” Why aren’t they on the news?
I’m all for pointing out problems, but I do think news coverage has gotten a bit sensationalist and losing perspective. I remember one article about how China was putting up billboards with pretty nature scenes on them to make things look prettier. Well, yeah? And? If LA put up billboards of pretty ocean and desert views everyone would think it was great, why is it suddenly a sign of evil when China does it?
You know, when I first read the thread title (before reading the actual thread,) what I immediately thought was, “Shoot, you should see all the shit I hide before company comes over.”
I just returned from Beijing. One of the tourist attractions is now a guided tour of the hutong. Our guide told us that we are indeed fortunate to see the area now before it is completely gone. FWIW my impression was that the area was old, but not full of abject poverty. We had a tour of one home, and had our lunch in another. The residents seemed proud of their homes, and told us (through our guide’s interpretation) of their homes’ history. The meal was better than most of the restaurants we visited.
There were a number of spaces that seemed to be newly walled-off or in other ways blocked from view, and I wondered if those were simply a means to hide something that could not be completely cleaned up or renovated in time. Sort of like those rooms in my house where we toss all the stuff we don’t have time to deal with properly when company’s coming!
I read the title as “Beijing Hides Some Menses…”: that time of the month, comrades? Don’t be an anti-social element; make the Great Leap Sideways to the red rag gulag for our Four Day Plan!
Oh NO! The red scare! :eek:
Indeed. I don’t consider what’s going on “slum clearance” at all, but rather a misguided effort to “prove” to the world how modern and up to date China is by putting up high-rises and mini-malls where once existed what most governments would be applying for World Heritage status for. Poverty is not an issue in many of the hutong, although there are some poorer neighborhoods. And even then, tearing down the poorer ones and just telling the residents to “go somewhere else” is not very helpful. I’m not even against high-rises and mini-malls, I often find myself in both, but what’s at stake here is a heritage issue. The government is ashamed of what it should be showing off with pride.
Last year in Beijing, the wife and I came across this one hutong near the Forbidden City that actually seemed to have been gentrified. These were definitely wealthy residents. Sort of like when you go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and see upscale condos done out in adobe style; well, this was the same thing, only done out in hutong style and IN an old hutong. The effect was a little odd, but if that’s what it takes to keep the neighborhoods around, I’m all for it.
And BBC Television has just been showing what it calls a “rare protest” in the past day or two by some of these home-owners who have been forced to move. In Beijing, you have to be really and truly pissed off to protest against the government in the heart of the city before foreign news media.
