Tearing down old neighborhoods in Beijing

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

This article from the Times today states that there are many older Chinese neighborhoods that are being torn down, especially because of new economic and cultural development that is taking place for the Olympics. I heard of this originally last summer when I took another class on China at UCLA. The presenter mentioned that the government in China was taking care for there not to be visible poverty in Beijing and in other large cities where much of this development is happening. The article also mentioned that several international retailers such as Starbucks and Apple Co. was going to move in. I think that this recalls the other thread on globalization. Are we essentially destroying real local culture and watering it down for the tourists? Is this just the desired effect of globalization of culture and the spread of capitalism?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-china-old-beijing,1,2357464.story

[Anonymous]

I wish that this topic had come up earlier, I could have posted a direct link. In NPR's Chung Du diary they addressed this issue (www.npr.org/chinadiary). Very similar tactics are used to oust homeowners and propertyowners to what we've seen used in the US in the past. People are offered buyouts worth only the value of their property or home, but not both. Those who take the buyouts cannot afford to buy a new home anywhere in the city, let alone in the buildings going up in their old neighborhood. Those who don't take the buyout are threatened, beaten, and their homes and belongings destroyed etc. When they go to the government for assistance the local corrupt governments support the big companies who are doing the buyouts. In one case a property owner traveled to the regional governement headquarters and was thrown in prison for this trouble.[Edit by="mvhudnall on Jun 27, 6:38:28 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

"The Disappearance of Beijing's Hutongs:"

Thanks for the posting! The problemyour posting addresses is one that faces many cities around the world: how to balance preservation with development.

There are two books I would recomend on the subject:

---"Hutongs of Beijing" published by the Beijing Arts and Photography Publishing House, (1993) ISBN 7-80501-160-5/J.156, Weng Li, chief editor. This a very interesting collection of black-and-white photos and bilingual captions. The book is an oversized paperback about a 100 pages. On page 69 there is a description of how the Hutongs came into being and how they were named"...after bridges, wells, or trees in the Hutongs".

---"Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China", by Ian Johnson (2004). In 2001 he was the Beijing correspondent of the Wall Street Journal and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Falun Gong. "...In 'Wild Grass' he recounts the stories of three ordinary people who find themselves fighting oppression and government corruption, risking imprisonment and even death. A young architecture student, a bereaved daughter, and a peasant legal clerk are the unlikely heroes of these stories..."

The second of his three stories "Dream of a Vanished Capital" is about Mr. Feng, Mr. Luo, and Fang Ke. Feng and Luo are trying to protect historical places in Beijing and help the displaced people secure just compensation. They have written a book about their lawsuit by 23,000 displaced people who have received little or no compensation. "Demolition of the Capital, No Law- No Heaven".
Another person involved with their efforts was Fang Ke "...a young doctoral student at Beijing's elite Tsinghua University who had gathered material throughout the mid-to-late 1990's on Beijing's real esatate market. What his meticulous research made clear was the depth of government corruption and its destruction of the old city..." .[pp 101-106 discusses the background of the Hutongs] Fang's book describes the lost of the homes of Cao Xueqin, author of the famous book Dream of the Red Chamber, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei, well-known historical figures. Fang's book also dicusses how other Chinese and foreign cities have approached the problems of preservation and development. [I think Fang Ke's book is in Chinese and I have not seen it] [There is another general book about Chinese architecture entitled "Chinese Architecture- A Pictorial History" by Liang Ssu-ch'eng published by Dover ISBN 0-486-43999-2(pbk.)
The three stories are very well written and will make you feel part of the reform movement in China. [www.pantheonbook.com ISBN 0-375-42186-6

[Anonymous]

China is undergoing super-rapid industrialization. My teenage years were marred by just this kind of development. When I was in elementary school, my family owned a mill and a bakery. We had a horse with a sled for the winter and a wagon in the summer for bread delivery to the outlying farms. It was essentially an 18th century lifestyle. Every fall the farmers would bring the grain harvest to our mill on one particular day. The first time I remember, there was a line of horse-drawn wagons for half a mile; among it one tractor. When we accepted the last harvest in 1968, the line was still half a mile long, but it was all tractors and only one horse-drawn wagon. The following year we moved to the city. There in medieval Lucerne, beautiful old palaces and mansions were replaced with shopping centers. It was very painful to see an old world disappearing rapidly. An old restaurant with wooden paneled walls dating back 500 years was gutted and turned into a Mc Donald’s. It is hard to describe the pain of loosing a way of life. There was one street on the outskirts that was lined with gas stations and car-dealerships. I hated that street.
Then I moved to Los Angeles. The few square-miles of construction that had bothered me in Switzerland, paled in the face of a city that had grown 2500 square-miles in 50 years. Now here is the reason why I am writing all this: When I returned to my home-country for a longer stay in the early 90's I was amazed by how much, of what I thought was a long lost world, had actually survived. I looked out the train window and noticed herds of sheep grazing in areas where before there was industrial clutter. Farmhouses and catholic village churches had been restored with careful historical accuracy, often to a degree that buildings which had disappeared before my time had reincarnated. In fact there seemed to be a revival of the 18th century, not just in my village, but throughout Europe. London, which used to be a pile of black rubble stood in a splendor never seen since the beginning of the 19th century. Prague, which I visited last summer, was again a baroque metropolis not much different from the days of Mozart. I saw Prague in he 70's. It was grey, sad and depressing. The communist regime had robbed it of all its charm. What I am trying to say, I guess, is that the developments in China seem to follow typical patterns of industrialization, that the losses to cultural heritage are tremendous, but at the same time, culture seems to have a way of surviving and rebounding. I am presently in Milwaukee. I saw Milwaukee ten years ago. Downtown Milwaukee looked run down. Now it’s reemerging as a vibrant city. New York City, currently, is setting new standards, culturally and environmentally. The more I learn about China, the more I understand that after all China is not that different from the western world. I am positive that China’s culture will be thriving in the next decades.
I know my comments don’t speak to the issues of how ownership of property changes in China. I am sure that there is a lot of corruption going on. One of our texts gives a great example of how state officials operate, and how small individuals have to navigate using all their wits (reminded me a lot of Italy): “Chinese Civilization, A Sourcebook”, Edited by Buckley Ebrey. See page 488 “An Urbanized Peasant”.

[Anonymous]

Since no-one else is posting in this strand right now, I have to post right behind myself. I felt a little guilt about my last post being too much frought with personal experiences and I felt I needed to back-up my statements with some real facts.
Serendipity was with me yesterday, I as I dropped by a Wisconsin Coffehouse (Alterra, better than Starbucks).
I came across an article by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In its business section they were talking in detail about how the Wisconsin waters became polluted by the sixties and how the situation has been remedied. But here is the jackpot! The article went on to descibe how the know-how of industrial waterrestoration is being sold to none other than the Chinese government. Here are some of the key excerpts from the article:

(If you don't want to read the entire selection, make sure to read the last paragraph: It contains a real Midwesterner's assessment of China's concept of the 5-year plan)

Hoping Ideas Flow to China; Delegation to Look at Fox River Cleanup for Strategies Back Home
Posted on: Monday, 14 July 2008, 15:00 CDT
By JOHN SCHMID

Building on the expertise gained from the ongoing cleanup of the Fox River, the New North, an 18-county economic development agency based near Green Bay, is targeting China in its strategy to gain a toehold in the global market to clean and manage water.
The organization invited a delegation of Chinese government researchers, academics and environmentalists to tour the Fox River region and other sites in Wisconsin beginning Friday, to help them wrestle with the water pollution wrought by China's industrialization.
"What China is doing to its rivers and lakes is what we did just a few decades ago," said Paul Wozniak, a historian of the Fox River's industrial degradation and ongoing remediation.
…
But New North strategists feel they can appeal directly to China's needs by drawing on their experience with a river once infamous for the heaps of rotting dead fish that washed up along its polluted shores.
…
The Chinese delegation is preparing for the trip just as the Milwaukee 7 -- a seven-county economic-strategy consortium in southeastern Wisconsin -- holds a regional water summit today. …

The Chinese entourage numbers at least 25 and could grow if Beijing's foreign ministry approves more travel visas, New North planners said.
Among the visitors will be the deputy engineer of the government authority of the Yangtze River, the longest river in China, and the officials from nation's River and Coastal Environmental Research Center. Also visiting will be researchers from universities in Beijing, Nanjing and Guangdong.

A Madison group of Chinese students and faculty initiated contact with the New North a year ago. Their efforts led to the weeklong China-U.S. Water Symposium.
…

"We had water pollution as severe as they now have in China," Wozniak said. Decades of sewage from paper mills and metal-plating factories began to leave dead fish on the shores of the Fox as early as the 1920s.
"In the '60s, it was seen as one of the nation's most polluted rivers," he said.
Remediation on the Fox has been slow and steady, but many measures have improved and populations of walleye, musky and sturgeon have reappeared, Wozniak said. The real impetus came with the U.S. Clean Water Act in 1972, which imposed water sewage treatment regulations. Citizen groups sprang up to monitor the river's main polluters.
There is little doubt that China has become a growth market for water engineering and other environmental projects.
Of the 412 monitoring sites along China's seven biggest rivers, 58% fall into the most highly polluted categories under China's system of grading water, said Steve Melching, an engineering professor at Marquette University who helped organize the New North event.
China taking small steps
Shanghai alone produces more than 4 million tons of industrial waste every day, and only 65% of the substances are properly processed before flowing into rivers, he said. More than 40 species of fish are said to have disappeared from local rivers in recent years because of pollution, according to Melching's research.
In June, a new version of China's Clean Water Act took effect, even though it amounts to a small regulatory step in a nation swimming in dirty rivers.
The Chinese understand the theory behind water purification but have a poor track record of carrying out their ideas, Melching said.
"They are good at making plans. They make five-year plans every five years," Melching said.

Copyright 2008, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)
(c) 2008 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 14 2008

[Anonymous]

It's not so much as tearing down a hotspot area but a country itself. In an article by By EDWARD WONG from the NY Times published on : July 24, 2008 finds much skepticism on the government unbelievable tactics once again. Take for examples these remarks and reflect as a poor parent living on the bare minimum:
• officials have ordered the news media to stop reporting
• the state also acts like a multinational corporation offering money to people with grievances in hopes of defusing protests.
• Assumptions that people,” ultimately put profit before principle.”
• “The people sue the government, and the government doesn’t care.”
• there are hints of a cover-up.
• hints of negligence or corruption from local officials
• signs of effective intimidation tactics

Now, what does this tear down? You decide? 🙁

Let's make a difference in educating those most needed....our future generations.

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