TAYLOR: Fronting the gate to the historic Forbidden City, this is Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square. This clock near Mao’s Mausoleum is counting down to Beijing’s date with destiny – the Olympic Games in August 2008. For many in this ancient city, the ticking clock is a ticking time bomb.
NING JINGLUN: They try to kick out the current courtyard owners so they can renovate and sell for high prices. There are countless people in Beijing whose houses were forcibly and illegally being torn down.
TAYLOR: Since Mao and the Communist Party seized power in Beijing more than fifty years ago, little in this city has been safe from the wrecking ball. A myriad of architectural and historical treasures are now gone, all in the name of socialist modernisation. Beijing is a city exploding outwards, expanding ever upwards but also imploding at its heart, where what’s left of the old city is now a developer’s dream.
Just a shade shy of seventy, Ning Jinglun is a proud Beijinger. For six centuries his family has lived in this city. For the past hundred years home has been a traditional courtyard house nestled in one of old Beijing’s ever diminishing alleyways, hutongs. Now Ning Jinglun’s house is threatened with demolition and the odds are against him.
NING JINGLUN: The demolition in Beijing involves not only the developers, but also the police, the local police station and the court. They all come together. It shows the legitimacy of their demolition – it is forcible.
TAYLOR: For Ning Jinglun the fight to save the century old family home has become a matter of family honour.
NING JINGLUN: During the Great Cultural Revolution, my family was searched and our properties were confiscated. My family members were criticised and denounced in public. My father died in front of me – he was beaten to death. My elder brother was also beaten to death. I was knocked unconscious at the gate.
TAYLOR: Courtyard homes are unique to Beijing, first built more than eight hundred years ago after the Mongolians invaded and founded the Yuan Dynasty. Near the historic Forbidden City, Ding Ai, her mother and niece, live in a traditional courtyard house.
DING AI: I think we can say the hutongs and the courtyards are the lifeline of Beijing. There is an old saying in Beijing – the hutongs and the courtyards came first and the royal court came later. They say because people lived here and created an atmosphere, the emperors then decided to establish the palaces.
TAYLOR: Two years ago nearly a thousand homes in her neighbourhood were demolished. The residents forced out to make way for a development project. Ding Ai was given an ultimatum – 30 days to move out. But she refused to budge and won a reprieve, for now.
DING AI: You will never know when your private house will face demolition in the future. In other words, the government will inform you, or one day there is an announcement posted on your wall saying your house will be pulled down – or they will draw a circle on your house and they’ll tear it down.
TAYLOR: But Ding Ai’s struggle isn’t over. The once stylish and spacious courtyard boasts its own great wall. It slices the house in two, but the other half is off limits. Government officials dispute her ownership and deny her access.
DING AI: I want to knock it down now because firstly this wall violates my interests and at the same time I feel it is a shameful thing in China that as private property owners our interests can’t be protected.
TAYLOR: The destruction of Beijing’s history and heritage has prompted the United Nations to join the debate.
GENEVIEVE DOMINIQUE: At UNESCO, a UN organisation we are willing to offer a platform of dialogue – even controversial dialogue.
TAYLOR: The UNESCO forum provides a rare opportunity to publicly criticise government and developers alike. Wang Jun is the author of a best seller, chronicling five decades of destruction of Beijing’s unique character. He believes old and new Beijing are involved in a fight to the death.
WANG JUN: It is obviously your cultural heritage, it was a creation from our ancestors. We as the Chinese must carry on it and pass it onto our next generations. Because the cultural heritage can’t be handled by one generation, we are the developers of our offspring. Without the hutongs and the courtyard houses Beijing won’t exist.
ED LANFRANKO: It is the responsibility of the Chinese government, the Chinese companies and the Chinese people to preserve their past because it’s a common legacy that belongs to all of humankind, not just the Chinese people.
TAYLOR: Ed Lanfranko is an American writer who lives in Beijing.
ED LANFRANKO: Sadly I think what’s happening to old Beijing today is a form of cultural genocide. That the past is being obliterated and it’s being sold out to build a new Beijing. I’m not against having this new Beijing but at the same time it should retain the efforts made by people in the past, it’s almost as if modern urban development in Beijing takes elements from Pol Pot, where we’re going back to a year zero.
TAYLOR: But many of Beijing’s old areas are more like slums. Run down, dirty and overcrowded. Mao’s egalitarian policies of the 50s and 60s led to the state seizing thousands of courtyard houses, haphazard building and the influx of a wave of new residents. It’s catch 22 – officials argue many demolitions are necessary because homes are old and dangerous.
As you can see all these courtyard houses have been built in. Where perhaps 50 or 100 years ago just one family would be living in a courtyard house, now there’s about ten and in the space of two square kilometres of courtyard houses and hutong around this landmark, the Bell Tower, about 60,000 people live.
Life at the top couldn’t be more different. There are hundreds of developers vying for projects in the city. Zhang Xin is a new face of contemporary Beijing. Her real estate and construction company, SOHO, is at the forefront of development in the capital.
ZHANG XIN: It’s funny that how little we, the Beijingers, feel nostalgic about old Beijing and therefore maybe that’s why this current Beijing Municipal Government makes so little effort of preserving our culture.
TAYLOR: Zhang Xin is planning a high-rise development just to the south of Tiananmen Square. Thousands of people who live there in crowded courtyard houses are set to be given their marching orders by the Municipal Government.
ZHANG XIN: And they say oh, they are just hoping, this will be their best moment in life that someone is coming to redevelop it, therefore they will have the means of moving out. They’re dying to move out because if you walk in you will see this is horribly, you know horrible shanty town, you know people just dying to move out.
TAYLOR: Nothing could be further from the minds of Ding Ai and Ning Jinglun yet when it comes to the law, they’re virtually powerless.
In China there’s no democracy, no freedom of speech, no rule of law and no impartial and independent courts. Ding Ai and Ning Jinglun are desperate to save their houses but they have no right to publicly protest.
DING AI: I want to protest, I want to voice my opinion. In China this is not allowed, it is impossible. I know a person whose house was forcibly pulled down. He was angry, and jumped into a river. He tried to commit suicide to protest. Although he didn’t die, after he was rescued he was sentenced and locked up in gaol.
TAYLOR: So in this ancient city, an ancient recourse to imperial abuses of power. Just like in centuries past, people present petitions to authorities in Beijing seeking justice.
NING JINGLUN: I want to fight. I want to fight for my rights. My attitude is it’s a call for resistance – it’s a cry. I make a cry for help – whether I can get it or not is another story.
TAYLOR: Up to three times a week, Ning Jinglun and Ding Ai gather with others outside the Beijing Municipal Government to plead for intervention. It’s sensitive ground and it’s only possible to film surreptitiously.
NING JINGLUN: There is a new guy called Zhang Qishan. His house was forcibly pulled down two years ago. His old man was 72 years old and he mysteriously passed away on May 2nd. He was beaten to death on a flyover. The police issued an autopsy report saying he died naturally.
TAYLOR: Today Ning Jinglun lives with his wife, their daughter and granddaughter. He knows what it’s like to take on the authorities. His battle with bureaucracy dates back to 1958, when he was just a teenager and the state confiscated 20 rooms from his family’s courtyard house.
NING JINGLUN: I argued with them at the courtyard. They abused me as the parasite of the capitalist class, the exploiting class – the class that should be repressed, monitored and eliminated – and lots of other revolting words. I was 16. In a fury I bashed the person from the housing department, but I didn’t hit the policeman. The police ran away.
TAYLOR: Ning was arrested and banished to the country. It would be another 20 years before he reclaimed just three rooms in the family house. Despite his advancing years, Ning is no longer prepared to let the authorities ride roughshod. He’s shaping up for the fight of his life, just like his father, a former head of the Peking Martial Arts team who died an enemy of the state.
NING JINGLUN: In this courtyard on August 24, 1966, my father used a sword given by the Prince Regent to chop five people – the Red Guards. I’m the type of person who can easily get excited although I am 67. If they unreasonably and forcibly destroy my home, I will take my father’s way. I will be even more ferocious. These developers – do they still have Mao as their backing? It is not nonsense, this is my character. I would rather stand up and die than kneel down and survive.
TAYLOR: Today money speaks louder than Mao, Beijing is an old city that keeps getting younger by the day. A city where image has triumphed over heritage and with the Olympic Games looming, Beijing’s going for gold. The every glorious past seems to have no place in the future.
NING JINGLUN: They try to kick out the current courtyard owners so they can renovate and sell for high prices. There are countless people in Beijing whose houses were forcibly and illegally being torn down.
TAYLOR: Since Mao and the Communist Party seized power in Beijing more than fifty years ago, little in this city has been safe from the wrecking ball. A myriad of architectural and historical treasures are now gone, all in the name of socialist modernisation. Beijing is a city exploding outwards, expanding ever upwards but also imploding at its heart, where what’s left of the old city is now a developer’s dream.
Just a shade shy of seventy, Ning Jinglun is a proud Beijinger. For six centuries his family has lived in this city. For the past hundred years home has been a traditional courtyard house nestled in one of old Beijing’s ever diminishing alleyways, hutongs. Now Ning Jinglun’s house is threatened with demolition and the odds are against him.
NING JINGLUN: The demolition in Beijing involves not only the developers, but also the police, the local police station and the court. They all come together. It shows the legitimacy of their demolition – it is forcible.
TAYLOR: For Ning Jinglun the fight to save the century old family home has become a matter of family honour.
NING JINGLUN: During the Great Cultural Revolution, my family was searched and our properties were confiscated. My family members were criticised and denounced in public. My father died in front of me – he was beaten to death. My elder brother was also beaten to death. I was knocked unconscious at the gate.
TAYLOR: Courtyard homes are unique to Beijing, first built more than eight hundred years ago after the Mongolians invaded and founded the Yuan Dynasty. Near the historic Forbidden City, Ding Ai, her mother and niece, live in a traditional courtyard house.
DING AI: I think we can say the hutongs and the courtyards are the lifeline of Beijing. There is an old saying in Beijing – the hutongs and the courtyards came first and the royal court came later. They say because people lived here and created an atmosphere, the emperors then decided to establish the palaces.
TAYLOR: Two years ago nearly a thousand homes in her neighbourhood were demolished. The residents forced out to make way for a development project. Ding Ai was given an ultimatum – 30 days to move out. But she refused to budge and won a reprieve, for now.
DING AI: You will never know when your private house will face demolition in the future. In other words, the government will inform you, or one day there is an announcement posted on your wall saying your house will be pulled down – or they will draw a circle on your house and they’ll tear it down.
TAYLOR: But Ding Ai’s struggle isn’t over. The once stylish and spacious courtyard boasts its own great wall. It slices the house in two, but the other half is off limits. Government officials dispute her ownership and deny her access.
DING AI: I want to knock it down now because firstly this wall violates my interests and at the same time I feel it is a shameful thing in China that as private property owners our interests can’t be protected.
TAYLOR: The destruction of Beijing’s history and heritage has prompted the United Nations to join the debate.
GENEVIEVE DOMINIQUE: At UNESCO, a UN organisation we are willing to offer a platform of dialogue – even controversial dialogue.
TAYLOR: The UNESCO forum provides a rare opportunity to publicly criticise government and developers alike. Wang Jun is the author of a best seller, chronicling five decades of destruction of Beijing’s unique character. He believes old and new Beijing are involved in a fight to the death.
WANG JUN: It is obviously your cultural heritage, it was a creation from our ancestors. We as the Chinese must carry on it and pass it onto our next generations. Because the cultural heritage can’t be handled by one generation, we are the developers of our offspring. Without the hutongs and the courtyard houses Beijing won’t exist.
ED LANFRANKO: It is the responsibility of the Chinese government, the Chinese companies and the Chinese people to preserve their past because it’s a common legacy that belongs to all of humankind, not just the Chinese people.
TAYLOR: Ed Lanfranko is an American writer who lives in Beijing.
ED LANFRANKO: Sadly I think what’s happening to old Beijing today is a form of cultural genocide. That the past is being obliterated and it’s being sold out to build a new Beijing. I’m not against having this new Beijing but at the same time it should retain the efforts made by people in the past, it’s almost as if modern urban development in Beijing takes elements from Pol Pot, where we’re going back to a year zero.
TAYLOR: But many of Beijing’s old areas are more like slums. Run down, dirty and overcrowded. Mao’s egalitarian policies of the 50s and 60s led to the state seizing thousands of courtyard houses, haphazard building and the influx of a wave of new residents. It’s catch 22 – officials argue many demolitions are necessary because homes are old and dangerous.
As you can see all these courtyard houses have been built in. Where perhaps 50 or 100 years ago just one family would be living in a courtyard house, now there’s about ten and in the space of two square kilometres of courtyard houses and hutong around this landmark, the Bell Tower, about 60,000 people live.
Life at the top couldn’t be more different. There are hundreds of developers vying for projects in the city. Zhang Xin is a new face of contemporary Beijing. Her real estate and construction company, SOHO, is at the forefront of development in the capital.
ZHANG XIN: It’s funny that how little we, the Beijingers, feel nostalgic about old Beijing and therefore maybe that’s why this current Beijing Municipal Government makes so little effort of preserving our culture.
TAYLOR: Zhang Xin is planning a high-rise development just to the south of Tiananmen Square. Thousands of people who live there in crowded courtyard houses are set to be given their marching orders by the Municipal Government.
ZHANG XIN: And they say oh, they are just hoping, this will be their best moment in life that someone is coming to redevelop it, therefore they will have the means of moving out. They’re dying to move out because if you walk in you will see this is horribly, you know horrible shanty town, you know people just dying to move out.
TAYLOR: Nothing could be further from the minds of Ding Ai and Ning Jinglun yet when it comes to the law, they’re virtually powerless.
In China there’s no democracy, no freedom of speech, no rule of law and no impartial and independent courts. Ding Ai and Ning Jinglun are desperate to save their houses but they have no right to publicly protest.
DING AI: I want to protest, I want to voice my opinion. In China this is not allowed, it is impossible. I know a person whose house was forcibly pulled down. He was angry, and jumped into a river. He tried to commit suicide to protest. Although he didn’t die, after he was rescued he was sentenced and locked up in gaol.
TAYLOR: So in this ancient city, an ancient recourse to imperial abuses of power. Just like in centuries past, people present petitions to authorities in Beijing seeking justice.
NING JINGLUN: I want to fight. I want to fight for my rights. My attitude is it’s a call for resistance – it’s a cry. I make a cry for help – whether I can get it or not is another story.
TAYLOR: Up to three times a week, Ning Jinglun and Ding Ai gather with others outside the Beijing Municipal Government to plead for intervention. It’s sensitive ground and it’s only possible to film surreptitiously.
NING JINGLUN: There is a new guy called Zhang Qishan. His house was forcibly pulled down two years ago. His old man was 72 years old and he mysteriously passed away on May 2nd. He was beaten to death on a flyover. The police issued an autopsy report saying he died naturally.
TAYLOR: Today Ning Jinglun lives with his wife, their daughter and granddaughter. He knows what it’s like to take on the authorities. His battle with bureaucracy dates back to 1958, when he was just a teenager and the state confiscated 20 rooms from his family’s courtyard house.
NING JINGLUN: I argued with them at the courtyard. They abused me as the parasite of the capitalist class, the exploiting class – the class that should be repressed, monitored and eliminated – and lots of other revolting words. I was 16. In a fury I bashed the person from the housing department, but I didn’t hit the policeman. The police ran away.
TAYLOR: Ning was arrested and banished to the country. It would be another 20 years before he reclaimed just three rooms in the family house. Despite his advancing years, Ning is no longer prepared to let the authorities ride roughshod. He’s shaping up for the fight of his life, just like his father, a former head of the Peking Martial Arts team who died an enemy of the state.
NING JINGLUN: In this courtyard on August 24, 1966, my father used a sword given by the Prince Regent to chop five people – the Red Guards. I’m the type of person who can easily get excited although I am 67. If they unreasonably and forcibly destroy my home, I will take my father’s way. I will be even more ferocious. These developers – do they still have Mao as their backing? It is not nonsense, this is my character. I would rather stand up and die than kneel down and survive.
TAYLOR: Today money speaks louder than Mao, Beijing is an old city that keeps getting younger by the day. A city where image has triumphed over heritage and with the Olympic Games looming, Beijing’s going for gold. The every glorious past seems to have no place in the future.