Eric Abrahamsen on Digging for History

2008.08.06

The new Qianmen Dajie

All Photos by Eric Abrahamsen.

In early 2007, as part of Beijing's pre-Olympic beautification campaign, a strip of land east of Houhai was leveled and prepared for the construction of a new park. That particular strip of land followed the course of the old Yuhe, a small canal that existed during the Ming and early Qing dynasties. The plan was to recover some of the Beijing's historic charm by recreating this tree-lined waterway.

That plan changed after the ground was broken. Digging along the course of the canal, workers discovered the Ming-era canal they had expected to unearth, lined with medium-sized gray bricks akin to those in the old city walls. But surrounding this was another canal, deeper and wider, shored up with massive yellow slabs of stone which bespoke the Yuan dynasty. Construction halted while the Ministry of Culture decided what to do.

The old course of the Yuhe/Tonghuihe.

The question they faced is a question that plagues ancient cities around the world. In the campaign to bring the past to life, how far back do you go? As bits and pieces of Beijing's history are retrieved from the dustbin, developers find themselves making arbitrary choices. In the Yuan dynasty the Yuhe was the mighty Tonghuihe, a shipping canal filled with articulated barges bringing taxes and goods from southern China to the Mongol capital. During the Ming dynasty the Yuhe was as picturesque canal used largely by the royal family and the wealthy nobles who lived in the neighborhood. The Yuhe canal was filled in during the early Qing, and houses built on top of it – you could say that simply leaving the neighborhood alone constituted a continuation of Qing tradition, though that would leave little for city leaders to boast of.

The most high-profile instance of this is Qianmen Dajie: when it came time to flatten and rebuild this most chaotic, most vibrant of streets, city planners knew they wanted to reconstruct a "historical atmosphere" but didn't know which one. Qianmen Dajie has been a major commercial district for 600 years, and the planners' choice of architectural styles included Ming, Qing, Republican-era and modern. Qianmen Dajie was burned down in the 19th century by the foreign Eight Allied Armies, so there were few ancient structures to build upon – though that was hardly a consideration, since they planned to essentially raze the neighborhood before rebuilding it anyway. In the end, they settled on a Republican-era style (or a sort of vaudeville version of that style), as most appropriate: what few historical buildings remained were from that period, and the architecture – a blend of eastern and western styles – sends the right message in this day and age. Plus, the area was a notorious red-light district during the Qing dynasty, a association best left behind. All but a handful of buildings were flattened, and construction began on a new version of 1920s Beijing.

Wanning Bridge, part of the Yuan dynasty shipping lane.

The constant danger, of course, is that in reviving a bit of Beijing's past, a valuable part of its present may be erased – in some cases, a present which more faithfully embodies the spirit of the past than the cardboard pageantry which is put up in its place. Qianmen Dajie, at all times in its history, has been a thriving commercial district, and it continued to be so right up until its destruction – a dense warren of shops and restaurants, packed with humanity. When renovations are complete, the street will be lined with shops again, but this time they will be high-class international boutiques, and the shopfronts will be careful replications of a style that is no longer in style, rather than the cheaply-built, deeply unattractive – yet essentially honest – buildings that were there before.

The question of whether a neighborhood is "honest" or "genuine" is a dangerous one: who can say whether the mixture of utility, aesthetics, planning and organic evolution that went into creating that neighborhood is the "right" one? Though Beijing's superstructure has always been laid down by central decree – the Forbidden City, the city walls, the ring roads – its neighborhoods have traditionally attained their charm through the day-to-day activities of its people. The temple fairs, the market streets, all the hutongs named after wares sold or goods produced – these are the marks of history, the grooves left by the passage of thousands of souls. When the central government has attempted to coerce the formation of a neighborhood – the Yuan Dadu Bar Street, the Guangqumen "Media Street" where the buildings still stand empty – the results are typically dismal.

Destruction/construction along the course of the Yuhe.

The bit of canal east of Houhai has had a varied and colorful history, it is true. But there are no more laden barges to pass under its bridges, and no more Ming princes to stroll by its banks. The role it played in the Qing dynasty – an anonymous patch of dirt on which the poor built their houses – still seems most apropos for present-day Beijing. Rather than trying to dig up some idealized version of the city from an arbitrary point in the past, Beijing's planners might do better to simply encourage this organic growth. Preserving historic buildings is a worthy effort, but making a neighborhood appear as though it had been frozen in time is not – especially when the essential character of that neighborhood already exists so vibrantly in the lives of its residents. These neighborhoods may not look particularly historic, or even very attractive – the refined aesthetics of traditional Chinese culture are nowhere in evidence these days – but when the people decide they want beauty, they will demand beauty. Qianmen Dajie once looked as though it had been built yesterday, and might fall down tomorrow, but its spirit was 600 years old and going strong.

— 文/ Eric Abrahamsen