Beijing Bulldozes Dwellings for Olympics

AP on Yahoo ^ | 3/30/06 | John Roderick - ap

[NormsRevenge]

Beijing, one of the fabulous cities of antiquity, is experiencing late-life growing pains as it feverishly struggles to look more modern for the 2008 Olympics. The trip-hammers, cranes and concrete mixers are going full throttle to build what the city confidently promises to be the best stadiums, swimming pools, gymnasiums and playing fields to host the international games since their revival in 1896.

But the process of tidying up a city steeped in history but hurtling toward the future threatens to wipe out one of Beijing's unique architectural and social jewels, the hutong.

Narrow lanes which lead to the walled compounds blanketing much of the Chinese capital, the hutongs are masterpieces in the art of living. A chunk of Beijing's 15 million people occupy them.

Hutong (pronounced hoo-tong) is from the Mongolian word for well, named because it's believed the compounds were located near wells. They came into use during the era of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, who made Beijing his capital, and defined the city during the Ming dynasty about a hundred years later.

Often containing graceful gardens and moon gates, their occupants lived cheek by jowl, but the courtyard's high walls kept neighbors as distant or as close as they chose to be, one of the secrets of successful living in a crowded metropolis.

For years now, in anticipation of hosting the Olympics, Beijing has been bulldozing the hutongs to make way for the modern homes and new roads the city undeniably needs. Some of the hutongs were dilapidated and dirty, eyesores the city fathers didn't want Olympic visitors to see.

So the process continues, reducing the number of hutongs every year. Within a decade, it is predicted none will remain.

The destruction has gathered an air of inevitability, despite occasional protests by elderly occupants and the politically well-connected.

Last December, after five of the hutong compounds in the central, most picturesque part of the city had been torn down, eight distinguished advisers to the government publicly called for the preservation of the remaining 60.

This is not the first time the Communist regime has sacrificed a cultural treasure to the demands of modernity. The imposing city walls came tumbling down after the Communists came to power in 1949, freeing up space for urban expansion and doing away with a symbol of the old society.

As a new AP correspondent overawed by the splendor of the city, then known as Peiping, I strode the old wall in 1946, lost in day dreams of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, the 13th-century Venetian traveler and teller of wondrous tales who claimed to live next to it for 20 years.

The Beijing hutongs also exerted their magic spell on me when I spent 1947 in one of them, 16A Ta Tien Shui Jing, the Great Sweet Water Well lane.

I whiled away my days leisurely writing dispatches on an old portable typewriter, delivering them to the post office like a true American imperialist in my own private rickshaw, pulled by a tireless and uncomplaining coolie.

Listening to the sounds of whistles attached to the legs of doves wheeling in the air above my hutong, I decided to spend the rest of my life in Beijing.

That was before the Communists marched into the city to shatter the quiet with their program of regimentation, Marxist progress and hostility to Americans of any kind.

They had no time for dreams or indulgent Americans like me.

One of the Chinese I knew then, an ex-pilot in the Nationalist air force, decided to stay on after the Communists took over in 1949. An agricultural student, he wanted, as did many other idealistic young Chinese, to contribute to the "New China" Mao Zedong represented.

An accomplished university gymnast and all-round athlete, my friend ended up in a work camp in the countryside, swilling the pigs, as punishment because he incautiously admitted he knew me, now a hated American.

I lost track of him during the next tempestuous Chinese half-century. Then, in an irony of life, the Olympics reunited us. The year was 1993, and China was making a failed bid to stage the 2000 games. My friend, freed from persecution after Mao's death, was the coach of the Chinese national boxing team. When an AP correspondent in Beijing interviewed him, he asked if I was alive. Told I was, he broke the long silence with a letter.

We kept in contact by mail for several years. In one letter he told me his skill in boxing saved his life when thugs in the countryside tried to kill him.

Today he is married with two children and free, retired in Shanghai on a teacher's pension. Age and distance have kept us apart. But for him, and for me, the 2008 games will have a very special meaning.

___

EDITOR's NOTE: John Roderick reported for the AP from East Asia during the four tumultuous decades that followed World War II. In an occasional series, he remembers China's rocky past and examines the impact of those events as the country prepares to host the 2008 Olympics.

[cripplecreek]

Eminent domain on steroids.

[Invincibly Ignorant]

We have eminent domain here, why should it surprise us
if it should happen in China?

[pikachu]

China is where they have the Guy Standing in front of the Army tank event, right? Maybe they switched to bulldozers.

[cyborg]

ho-hum...no one cares. Bush sure doesn't. He kisses their butt anytime he can. Followed by Walmart.

[Jack Black]

The Olympics seem to be a sort of disaster for a lot of places that have them. You build all this stuff and then what do you do with it? The Winter ones aren't as bad, ski slopes and even ice rinks have uses. But the much bigger size of the summer games, you end up with a dozen big stadiums and two dozen smaller ones for volleyball, and fencing and boxing and tae kwan do. Maybe Bejing needs this stuff? I'd always vote against the Olympics in my city. The stadiums in Munich, from 72, look kind of abandoned and forlorn.

[Unmarked Package]

"China is where they have the Guy Standing in front of the Army tank event, right? Maybe they switched to bulldozers."

I think when China condemns and bulldozes a property under eminent domain, the notice of eviction is delivered to the surviving family members.

[inkling]

I would love to see the summer Olympics here in Phoenix. Only because it would be entertaining to see the outdoor events while it was 118 degrees. :-)

[When do we get liberated?]

Yeah, but without emminent domain, Simcity would be nearly impossible........

[Unmarked Package]

"I would love to see the summer Olympics here in Phoenix. Only because it would be entertaining to see the outdoor events while it was 118 degrees. :-)"

I'm for remaining faithful to the spirit of the original Greek games, but having the marathon runners perish from exhaustion at the end of the race is going a bit too far.

[truth_seeker]

"I would love to see the summer Olympics here in Phoenix. Only because it would be entertaining to see the outdoor events while it was 118 degrees. :-)"

I'd like to attend the Summer Olympics in Phoenix---in January.

Was in Phoenix January 2005. Very comfortable outside, night and day.

[Teacher317]

The hutongs are rather cool. Inside the bustling city, you take a turn into a hidden alley, and you find a long maze of narrow paths, a wealth of tiny shops and eateries, and quite a few shocked natives who wonder how you figured out how to walk away from the busy commercial streets.

Their destruction has been taking place long before the Olympics. Now it's just faster, and for a higher-profile purpose. There are plenty of Chinese and foreigners who are yelling about it, and I hope that the majority of the remainder will be protected somehow... but the pace of construction in Beijing is insane, and there's no guarantee that the neighborhoods that survive won't be ruined by tourists trampling over to see and "experience" the rarity. =^/

Since New York is the only city even remotely like Beijing, imagine if Hillary wanted to take out a few of the old neighborhoods that still retain their unique character, all to make room for liberal lobbyist firms.

[Eagle9]

Slide Show:

10 Wonders of the New China

_________________________________________________________

 

Central Chinese Television CCTV, Beijing

OMA/Ole Scheeren and Rem Koolhaas. Under construction, scheduled for completion in 2008

The design of the new Central Chinese Television (CCTV) headquarters defies the popular conception of a skyscraper -- and it broke Beijing's building codes and required approval by a special review panel. The standard systems for engineering gravity and lateral loads in buildings didn't apply to the CCTV building, which is formed by two leaning towers, each bent 90 degrees at the top and bottom to form a continuous loop.

The engineer's solution is to create a structural "tube" of diagonal supports. The irregular pattern of this "diagrid" system reflects the distribution of forces across the tube's surface. Designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren and engineered by Ove Arup, the new CCTV tower rethinks what a skyscraper can be.

___________________________________________________________

From BusinessWeekOnline China's New Architectural Wonders

[Alberta's Child]

Most Olympic events are financial disasters. I think Montreal is still paying off the debt they incurred from the 1976 summer games.

For the most part, the exceptions in recent decades have been Olympics hosted in U.S. cities as well as those that were held in places that did a good job of catering to American visitors -- like Calgary, Lillehammer, Nagano, and Sydney. One of the dirty little secrets about the Olympics is that only Asian, North American, and Anglo-Saxon countries outside these areas are fit to host the Olympics -- mainly because these are the only places where large portions of the host country's population can actually afford to attend the events.

[printhead]

Eminent domain on the world officially commences after the closing ceremonies.

[Tailgunner Joe]