Old Beijing worries about the 2008 games Jim Yardley | The New York Times | July 11, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/11/news/beijing.php BEIJING A short walk from Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, a historic neighborhood known as Qianmen looks as if a bomb dropped on it. Ancient homes lie in rubble. Scavengers squat in alleyways and wait to ransack vacated buildings. The bomb that hit the neighborhood is the 2008 Olympic Games, an event that has turned much of the city into a noisy, disjointed construction zone. New subway lines and new roads are under construction, even a striking new downtown. On the city's northern rim, at least 25,000 laborers are building the Olympic stadiums and village. And yet amid such grand projects, it is modest Qianmen, once the domain of Qing Dynasty opera singers and classical scholars, that is prompting an uneasy question: Will the Olympic Games, which organizers promised would enhance the city's cultural heritage, instead help finish off what remains of old Beijing? Many streets and hundreds of courtyard homes have been demolished, but the entire neighborhood is not yet gone. Scholars, preservationists and residents are trying to save what is left and have generated enough publicity to turn the situation into a political debate. For now, though, demolition crews are still slowly moving forward. "Does this look like a scene from quaint Beijing or more like a war zone?" asked Pan Jinyu, a local resident, as he stood on a narrow street pockmarked by flattened houses. Not far away, a red and white propaganda banner fluttered over a razed building: "Build a New Beijing and Welcome the Olympics." For any Olympic host, the task of building stadiums and sprucing up the city often involves messy land disputes. Before the 1996 Games, Atlanta knocked down a public housing complex beside its Olympic village. Qianmen is not a site for Olympic events but is a piece of the citywide construction boom and slum clearance that has accelerated to prepare for the Games. For the past decade, many of the city's old neighborhoods have been steadily demolished and replaced by office towers and high-rise apartment buildings. Affordable housing has become such a serious problem in the city that many of the people of old Beijing have been forced to the outskirts of the city because they can no longer afford to live in their old neighborhoods. Qianmen had been one of the last intact neighborhoods, a place that teachers, shop owners, migrant workers and other working-class people called home. But with its central location, the neighborhood's land is enormously valuable. And because it has fallen into disrepair, many residents believe officials do not want an eyesore at the center of the city during the Olympic Games. "They are moving forward with this quickly because of the Olympics," Pan said. "This neighborhood is the face of Beijing to the world. They don't want foreigners to see this scarred, old face." Little is known about the specific plans for the project or who will benefit from it. Party officials and private developers often work in tandem in real estate deals in China, and so many deals are tinged with corruption that top leaders have led a campaign against illegal land seizures and evictions. A Beijing vice mayor, Liu Zhihua, was recently removed amid undisclosed accusations of corruption. Liu's responsibilities included the construction of the Olympic competition sites and final authority for demolitions. In Qianmen, the main street, Qianmen Avenue, is being converted for the Olympic Games into a pedestrian thoroughfare with restaurants and shops. But officials have been deliberately vague about their plans for the residential areas, despite persistent rumors that the neighborhood will be redeveloped with million-dollar courtyard homes. Officials have refused to discuss the plans or say which blocks may be demolished. Residents usually find out only when leaflets are posted on the outer walls of their homes, warning that a timeline has been set for certain lanes to be torn down. One municipal Web site is filled with postings from anxious residents asking whether their houses will be razed. On the east side of the neighborhood, part of Chongwen District, many houses are already gone. Wide paths of demolition, as if carved by tornadoes, mark where new roads are planned. "At nighttime, this becomes the most dangerous place in Beijing," said one resident, Zheng Zhongping. "The rats are so hungry they are chasing people. All the food they used to eat is gone. People board up their homes but thieves still break in." On one recent afternoon, scavengers pedaled carts along the narrow streets, carrying cardboard and scrap wood. Many are farmers from poorer provinces who follow demolition projects to make a living. Those who have stayed in the Chongwen side are mostly holdouts angry about the compensation. Feng Shuqin, 76, and her husband, Zheng Zhanlin, 75, have lived in their traditional courtyard home for 50 years. His father owned the property before the Communists took control in 1949, and the family still has the deed. The house could be a timeline of recent Chinese history: In 1958, facing a housing shortage, the government ordered private homes opened up and eight other families moved in. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards demanded the family's deed and took all the rent. By 1984, the government returned the deed but still kept the rent. Finally, the government ordered them this year to move and offered them 1,400,000 yuan, or $175,000. The family believes the land is worth 11 million yuan. The Zhengs and other residents note that the compensation standard is set at 2001 levels. Yet in the ensuing five years, property values in Beijing's real estate market have doubled or tripled in some areas. After months of holding out, the Zhengs finally moved out in June because, they said, their neighbors had left and government-hired demolition companies were harassing them. 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. Xie Chensheng, 85, a nationally known preservationist who signed the petition, said demolition was so rampant in the city that he and other scholars wrote a letter to President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in 2004 warning about the destruction of the ancient city. He said that Hu wrote a note in the margins of the letter that was later distributed to lower officials: "Take care to protect the old city and protect our cultural heritage. Everyone involved should give their support." The high-level intervention seemed to work. Xie said no new projects have since been approved, while city planners unveiled a new comprehensive plan in 2005 that included an emphasis on historic preservation. But Xie said the Qianmen project proceeded because it had already been approved. Local officials told residents that the redevelopment was necessary because the old homes were unsafe, a point later disputed by an academic study. But Xie said the Qianmen project proceeded because it had already been approved. Local officials told residents that the redevelopment was necessary because the old homes were unsafe, a point later disputed by an academic study. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/2pRQfA/bOaOAA/yQLSAA/uTGrlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -- This is ZESTGlobal. Post articles on international affairs to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTGlobal by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/join/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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