HISTORICAL cycles that took a century to unfold in the West can becompressed into less than a decade in today’s China. And that’s as trueof Beijing’s preservation movement as it is of the nation’s ferociousbuilding boom.The explosion of construction activity that hastransformed Beijing into a modern metropolis over the past decade alsoturned many of its historical neighborhoods — known for their narrowalleyways, or hutongs — into rubble. As grass-roots preservationistsbegan sounding the alarm, the aging wood frames and tile roofs of theancient courtyard houses that give these neighborhoods their identitywere being supplanted so quickly by mighty towers that it was hard topinpoint where they once stood.Now, as they labor to protectwhat remains, Chinese preservationists are facing a new, equallyinsidious threat: gentrification. The few ancient courtyard houses thatsurvived destruction have become coveted status symbols for thecountry’s growing upper class and for wealthy foreign investors. Asmore and more money is poured into elaborate renovations, thephenomenon is not only draining these neighborhoods of their characterbut also threatening to erase an entire way of life. Meanwhilethe intense focus on the fate of the hutongs has eclipsed an equallypressing preservation issue, the demolition of Socialist-style housingfrom the 1950s and ’60s. The imminent threat is historical censorship:a vision of the past that is so thoroughly edited that it will soonhave little relation to the truth.The hutong neighborhoods dateto the 13th century, when Beijing’s chessboard grid was created by theMongol founders of the Yuan dynasty. The layout of the neighborhoods,with public life spilling into the hutong alleyways and private lifehidden behind brick walls in the courtyard houses, remained largelyunchanged in the first decade or so after the Communist takeover in1949. The wealthy hutong neighborhoods were mostly to the north, andthe denser, poorer neighborhoods were south of the Forbidden City. Startingin the 1960s, however, as Beijing’s population soared, a housingshortage developed. Suddenly three or four extended families were oftenpacked into a courtyard house that had once been occupied by a singlefamily. Starved for space, the new residents often filled thecourtyards with makeshift kitchens and sheds, transforming what hadbeen airy, light-filled spaces into a suffocating warren of rooms. Fewhad basic plumbing, and soon even the wealthier hutongs haddeteriorated into slums. Meanwhile, as the city expandedoutward in the 1950s and ’60s, the ancient stone walls that encircledold Beijing were demolished as part of a sweeping modernization.Factories and housing compounds began sprouting in the ancient center.A new ring of housing, the four- and five-story, Socialist-styleapartment compounds, began to envelop the city. The currentwave of demolitions was under way by the early 1990s as free-marketchanges gained momentum, and real estate speculators saw potentialprofit in redevelopment. It accelerated after Beijing’s bid to playhost to the Olympics was accepted in 2001 and the city began asubstantial slum-clearance program to prepare for foreign visitors.Inthe Qianmen area, for example, a once poor but thriving neighborhoodsouth of Tiananmen Square that was home to many of the city’s teahousesand theaters, hutongs have been replaced by shopping malls and officeblocks with ugly postmodern facades that already look dilapidated,although many are only a few years old. Here all that remainsof the past is one of the old Beijing city gates, its mountainous stoneform encased in scaffolding and surrounded by ribbons of elevatedfreeways. The bustling commercial strip that once traced the path ofthe wall has been widened into an eight-lane boulevard that can becrossed only by pedestrian bridges.The demolition of the hutongneighborhoods and the
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