Beijing - Olympic effect

[Harvey]

Anyone in Beijing care to comment on this?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/11/news/beijing.php

[gato]

Preservationists and scholars are still trying to save Qianmen from destruction. The neighborhood flourished during the Qing Dynasty, when it was filled with opera halls and boarding houses where scholars from outlying provinces would prepare for the national civil service examination.

A group of scholars has filed a petition with the National People's Congress, or the national Legislature, warning that demolishing Qianmen would be more devastating to the cultural heritage of Beijing than when Mao knocked down the ancient city wall.

These places probably would have been demolished a long time ago if it hadn't been the government wanting to preserve (until now). Very few big cities in the world have one-story houses in the middle of the city like Beijing does. Beijing has had its development backwards for a long time. While high-rise condos sprouted in the suburbs, very little residential development happened in the city center. Yet the jobs are still in the center and not the suburbs, thus we see the molasses-like traffic everyday crawling on the highways.

As for historic value, not all buildings in which something historic may have happened are worthy of preserving. Preservation should be done selective rather than en masse; otherwise, you'd be preserving at the expense of the needs of the future. The experts say that the houses are important because they used to be opera houses and boarding houses for imperial examtakers. Maybe the opera houses should be saved if they are beautiful, but boarding houses? Does that all the buildings used by the millions of high school students taking college entrance exams every year in China today should be preserved five hundred years from now because they have a historic value? If historic value is the sole reason for preserving a building, I would say that it needs to be have the utmost importance, as in some places that millions of people would want to visit, which the culture can't live without. If you think about it, everything has some historic value. Everyone is part of history.

You should also look at the architecture value of the buildings themselves. Are they beautiful? Do you have any functional value? Are they comfortable to live in? In this case, I would say most of these builidngs are neither beautiful nor functional nor comfortable. Most people who live there just now are old people and a few foreigners who find the experience exotic. You'd find very few working people in their 20s to 40s living there. Most residents have moved out to the suburban high-rise condos long time ago. If the high-rises had been built downtown, maybe they would have stayed instead, though it wouldn't be cheap.

Compensation for the former residents is a big problem. The Zheng family, mentioned in the article, received a little over a million yuan from the government for their house, but they claim that it's worth 11 million. They are probably right since it's a big house in the middle of downtown Beijing. This is a problem everywhere in China, though. Many farmers received only a pittance when their land was taken to build those high-rises. Many of the 20,000 or so "signficant mass disturbances" that happen every year in China are caused by under-compensation when the government takes land away.

[roddy]

Broadly agree with Gato. What's unfortunate is that what preservation is being done is being done badly.

There's been talk of moving some government departments out of the city center (to Sibera, preferably) to relieve pressure both on office and residential space. Unlikely to happen I think.

Not sure it's really an Olympic thing though - it might be happening quicker because of the Olympics and thus in a less thought through manner, but the general idea would still be the same - knock down the old, build the new.

[bhchao]

As for historic value, not all buildings in which something historic may have happened are worthy of preserving. Preservation should be done selective rather than en masse; otherwise, you'd be preserving at the expense of the needs of the future

Good point. In fact this is a big debate in NYC pitting NIMBYs against developers who want taller buildings in traditionally residential neighborhoods.

The Landmark Preservation Commission in NYC has done a fairly good job in selecting which buildings should be awarded landmark status and which buildings should not.

I agree that not all buildings of historic value are worthy of preserving. The former Waldorf Astoria hotel used to occupy the same spot where the Empire State building is located. The beloved icon that now stands on 34th and 5th would not be there today had the former Waldorf not been demolished.

[wushijiao]

Sometimes it’s enchanting and relaxing to walk around the hutong’s, eat some 小吃, and get a feel for how life used to be in Beijing in the old days. But as great as that is, I would still agree that most of the old buildings and hutong’s really don’t deserve to be preserved.

I’d compare it, perhaps, to small town America. When I was a kid, you could go to some small towns, walk down Main Street, go to Nickel ‘n Dime shop, the old-fashioned barber shop…etc. Everybody knew your name. There was a small town, friendly atmosphere. That has been destroyed by Wal-Marts and the fact the young people generally have left to go to big cities. In other words, a way of life has died out.

A way of life is also dying out with the destruction of the hutong’s. And yet, one has to ask, could this slow-paced way of life been maintained after the process of modernization of Beijing was completed? I don’t think so, unfortunately.

I think much of the discontent against the destruction of the hutong’s, especially from foreigners, comes from our disillusionment with the way Beijing seems to be destroying its unique cultural and architectural heritage in misguided pursuit of anything “new”. My Canadian friend, who had a tendency for crass but accurate generalizations, once said, “You’ve been to one Chinese city you’ve been to them all.” To a large degree, I agree with this. The hutong’s in Beijing or the shikumen’s in Shanghai will be torn down, and giant masses of grey concrete with bathroom tiles all over it will be put up, with names like, “Manhattan Milan City Life”. They’ll have the same aesthetic look, same stores, same everything. Chinese cities, minus the few museums and random temples, all now look equally “blah”.

I think this process is as ridiculous as it is sad, but it still doesn’t necessarily confirm the wisdom of preserving one storey hutong’s in the middle of growing financial metropolis. I think there should be some sort of movement to create new architecture that continues the architectural heritage of a specific city or China in general.

[gato]

My Canadian friend, who had a tendency for crass but accurate generalizations, once said, “You’ve been to one Chinese city you’ve been to them all.”

At least a couple of possible responses to that:

(1) Give it a few hundred years, and they may have their individuality yet. Europe wasn't built in a day.

(2) Maybe he should be visiting the Chinese countryside instead. Some wit lamented that modern cities, i.e. London, New York, Paris, and so forth, all look the same. If you look at them from a distance, yes, that may be true.

Do you think HK is a good model for Chinese cities? I like it, but some parts of it look like one shopping mall after another, with some parks to break up the scenery. Your Canadian friend probably won't that, either.

[wushijiao]

Do you think HK is a good model for Chinese cities? I like it, but some parts of it look like one shopping mall after another, with some parks to break up the scenery. Your Canadian friend probably won't that, either.

HK, at least to me, looks completely unlike most Mainland cities. Part of that may be the British-style street signs and the store signs that hang out over the street. But other than that, I’m not really sure if HK is a good model for the Mainland or not. I’ve read that a lot of HK real estate firms have started joint ventures with Mainland ones, with the result being in better building quality and after sales service…etc.

I also read a long time ago that some whole neighborhoods of cities, as far as the urban planning, are basically Photoshoped from other cities. Cut. Paste. Build. The article mentioned that this was the case for a lot of Shenzhen.

[Language Guy]

I think it's a great idea to move government operations in order to relieve population density strain.

Several countries of the world have moved their entire federal capitals to different cities, both to relieve density strain but also to encourage the habitation of more sparse areas. (See: Brazil)

Although ideally capitals should be located more or less in the center of the governed country, so as to evenly distribute both economic and political power(although that need becomes less and less in the information age). But I also think Siberia is an interesting idea...