On my first trip to China in 2001, there was one small area of Beijing that drew me back into its clutches time and time again. No matter where I began my day, it was a near certainty that around sunset I would find myself just below the south gate into Tiananmen Square wandering the tiny back alleys of Qianmen. Back then, I didn't know much at all about psychogeography or space syntax theory or isovists or any of the amazing ideas of planners and architects regarding the manner in which the organization of a space can have such a profound impact on how one feels in it. All I knew was that once I was past Qianmen Gate and immersed shoulder to shoulder in the teeming masses, listening to screeching street hawkers trying to outdo the verbal advertising blasting out of shop fronts on loudspeakers, wandering tiny alleyways of hutong neighbourhoods with their incredible contrasts of light, colour, sound and aroma, I felt somehow as if I was at home but also in the heart of Asia. It was here that I found a tiny restaurant where the staff seemed so fascinated by the chutzpah of a sole white face willing to sit and point at a menu of unknowns, to eat falteringly with slippery plastic chopsticks, and to drink seemingly endless large bottles of icy Chinese beer on those hot August nights that they would hover over me in clouds of three or four, offering giggling tutorials in Chinese table manners and what I at least interpreted as some admiring and sympathetic glances. It was in this same neighbourhood where, tottering out of the restaurant on unsteady legs, I found a man standing with a small telescope pointed toward the full moon and a little sign that offered glimpses for a small handful of change. And it was here that I was propositioned for the first and only time by a Chinese prostitute--in my naivete I wondered how it was that this woman was willing to risk the automatic death sentence for prostitution. I loved the vibrant heart of this neighbourhood and always felt as though, if I were to live in Beijing, I would want to live here.
Now, seven years later, I read that the Qianmen streets I knew are no more. The blazing shopping avenue that used to ring my ears and fascinate my eyes is to be replaced by some kind of faux-Chinese SoHo, replete with Starbucks, Adidas, Apple, and many of the other brand names of the West. The hutongs in this area, like many others in Beijing, have been flattened to make way for the Olympic games, many of the residents driven to the outer suburbs. It's all very sad that in the name of showing a "world class" face, China is destroying some of its jewels--lovely neighbourhoods filled with overflowing courtyard houses, street life, mixed use like those of us in the sterile and sprawling west can only imagine. These parts of Beijing were for me the ones that really worked in a way that most of us living in North American cities should only envy.
And what when the Games are done? Will Qianmen slowly creep back towards the old ways? Will there be enough ghostly resonance of old Beijing in the new concrete escarpments to bring back any semblance of authentic life? Or will the streets remain empty, like a sad facsimile of a North American power centre in the off-season, only with a few carved dragons on the building facades to remind us that we're in China and not in Tucson or Edmonton?
Comments