Historic Chinese buildings bite the dust

Source : Business Times – 21 Jul 2009

Workers are scraping modern ceramic tiles off the walls of a 122-year-old courtyard house in Caishikou, in the south of Beijing’s downtown area.

This former residence of Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, is under renovation. In 1920, Mao lived here briefly.

‘We are restoring it to what it was like in the 1920s,’ says the project manager surnamed Liu. ‘The municipal government ordered the renovation and will sponsor it.’

The workers are still examining the condition of the building and the completion date is unknown. It will become a museum of Mao’s life there.

This former residence of Mao is probably one of the luckiest among the city’s 308 courtyard houses, or Siheyuan, where distinguished figures of modern Chinese history once lived.

A survey by the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in 2005 found that 189 of these buildings were not officially recognised by the state, municipal or district governments as heritage buildings and lacked official protection.

About 97 of them had been razed to make way for new roads and buildings, including the former residence of Cao Xueqin, author of A Dream of Red Mansions, a classic Chinese novel. It was demolished in the year 2000.

The other 92 buildings are residences or offices that are not under proper protection.

Among the 119 listed heritage buildings, only a few have been turned into well-protected public museums or received official protection.

No figures later than 2005 are available. But according to Kuang Guoliang, a retired political advisor engaged in the survey, only a few of those unattended listed buildings, often overcrowded with low-income residents, have received official protection since 2005.

A five-minute walk from Mao’s former residence, 40 households were packed in a courtyard where Lu Xun, widely regarded as the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th Century, once lived.

‘Lu Xun’s room has already been demolished,’ says a middle-aged man living there, who declined to be named.

Grass grows all over the tile roof of the home of Tan Sitong, a leading figure in the 1898 reform that tried to introduce constitutional monarchy into China.

The house’s central courtyard is occupied by shabby huts built over the years.

Xu Fangping, former chairman of the Chinese Society of Archaeology, says that most of the former residences of past significant people are not well protected because there is no law to ensure preservation.

‘Some lawmakers tend to think the residences of ‘good’ figures are worth protecting and those of famous but ‘bad’ ones, such as warlords and top officials of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912), aren’t,’ he says.

In 2004, Beijing passed a new overall city planning between 2004 and 2020. It requires the preservation of the whole of old Beijing. The old town’s features and layout will be retained.

Also, any new property development that fails to fit with the character of the old town is prohibited.

‘Since 2005, we have done several preservation projects in the former homes of influential people in modern Chinese history,’ says Wang Yuwei, an official with the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage.

In Wenhua Hutong, Xicheng District, the former house of Li Dazhao, one of the main founders of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was an overcrowded residence in 2005, but has since become a museum.

‘But it’s not feasible to relocate all the residents in all those old buildings and turn them into museums. The government cannot afford it and some of the residents are not willing to move,’ Mr Wang says.

Some people living in or near the old courtyards have no interest in preserving the old buildings because of the poor facilities.

‘The roof sometimes leaks when it rains and it even collapsed on a day of heavy rain,’ says the man who has lived in Lu Xun’s former residence for 10 years.

An elderly woman surnamed Li has been living in the courtyard house opposite Mao’s former residence for almost 70 years. The renovation project has saved her home, but she is not happy. ‘I want the house demolished,’ says the woman in her 90s. ‘I always hoped to move to an apartment building, even though I only have a few more years to live.’

The root problem is the conflict between development and preservation, says Mr Kuang. ‘It has been here for decades.’

Some people openly question the demolition of the old town.

‘The old Beijing accounts for less than 6 per cent of the whole city area. It is not an obstacle to the city’s development,’ says Wang Jun, who wrote a book named The Tale of the City in 2005 about Beijing urban planning since 1949.

His investigations found two thirds of the courtyard houses in the old town had been pulled down.

‘We have to think about this, why must we tear down the old part when we want something new? Why not build the new one somewhere else?’ he wrote in his blog. ‘With old and new parts, a city shows signs of growing. A standard brand new city is odd.’