Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

IKEA Store Construction Destroys Ancient Chinese Tombs in Nanjing – Grassroots Activists Succeed in Hangzhou – Old Jazz Band Leave Shanghai's Colonial-era Peace Hotel [UPDATED]

Reading a July 3, 2007 Reuters report about the destruction of 10 ancient tombs (made of green brick with lotus patterns) from the Six Dynasties period (220-580 CE) in Nanjing, I was reminded of Gina L. Barnes' 1999 The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea, and Japan. In it, she discusses reburial and preservationist issues:

"The 1960's Preservation Movement in Japan is a case in point. In the early phases of the post-war construction boom that led Japan to economic recovery, many mounded tombs were razed to provide earth for landfill in road and rail projects. The perpetrator of this destruction was the government, which – according to the 1954 amendments to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties – was also responsible for guarding the nation's archaeological heritage. To force it to fulfil its own legal obligations, the citizens of Japan rallied in a grassroots movement to petition and lobby the government and even to boycott its activities in their neighbourhoods. The result was a massive response that has built the most comprehensive state bureaucracy and excavation programme anywhere in the world.

"Archaeological remains are undergoing similar destruction in China today, for example in the Shenzhen economic zone, as development programmes take precedence over protectionist legislation. Hopefully the Chinese populace will respond with equal force and effectiveness to save its material heritage from wanton destruction."

This does not appear to be happening yet in full force, especially with the upcoming Olympics speeding up demolition and rebuilding, as Antoaneta Bezlova's "Shanghaied into Modernity" points out.

However, there are signs that such movements are gearing up, as Richard Spencer reports, in "China's heritage lost to look-alike cities, critics say:"

Current Construction Vice-Minister Qiu Baoxing, media, and other critics, are calling for historic preservation. Qui compared the level of historical destruction resulting from commercial motivation to Mao's Cultural Revolution:

"CHINA'S record of bulldozing swathes of historic city quarters in its rush to development has come under attack from one of its own construction ministers.

"The country's cities had been "devastated" by the "senseless" actions of its officials desperate to construct "new and exotic" buildings, said the Construction Vice-Minister, Qiu Baoxing.

"'This is leading to a poor sight – many cities have a similar construction style. It is like a thousand cities having the same appearance,' he said.

"Mr Qiu, who has an increasing reputation for criticising the drawbacks of China's rapid growth, then strayed into even more sensitive territory, comparing the effects of modern commercial development with two of the major disasters of the era of Mao Zedong.

"On Monday, the English-language China Daily quoted him saying that what was happening to China's heritage was a "third round of havoc" after the Great Leap Forward, Mao's catastrophic experiment in mass industrialisation in the 1950s, and the Cultural Revolution of the following decade.

"'Some local officials seem to be altering the appearance of cities with the determination of 'moving the mountain and altering the watercourse','" he was quoted as saying at a conference on Sunday on urban culture and city planning in China.

"The conference coincided with the second national cultural heritage day on Saturday, a belated attempt by the Government to encourage preservation in an era of rapid economic change.

"Mao's hostility to traditional Chinese culture, followed by redevelopment under the raw capitalism pursued in the three decades since his death, has reduced most Chinese cities to grey patchworks of housing blocks, glitzy office developments and increasingly packed roads.

"During Mao's reign Beijing's historic centre and city walls were knocked down to make way for a ring road, as well as the concrete expanse of Tiananmen Square and the monolithic Great Hall of the People.

"Recent attention has focused on the hutongs of Beijing, old alleys lined with grey-brick, gabled courtyard houses, and the shikumen of Shanghai, a distinctive cross-breed of Chinese and Western housing, partly because of international interest and partly because so little survives in other cities. In some cases, even historic temples have been torn down. There have been signs that the Government has become more responsive to local and international pressure.

"A development in a hutong north-east of the Forbidden City was put on hold earlier this month after it was condemned by local newspapers.

"But the destruction of Qianmen, one of the most famous of old Beijing's districts, south of Tiananmen Square, has continued unabated. Officials say that it will be replaced by courtyard-style housing.

"But such schemes came under fire from the Government's representatives at the conference.

"'It is like tearing up an invaluable painting and replacing it with a cheap print,' said Tong Mingkang, the deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage..."

Maybe Chinese planners might want to take another look at what developers in New York City did to the magnificent Penn Station, which was demolished and replaced with a nightmare structure that appears straight out of the worst Soviet realist genre of the more-than-bland international modernist style.  If there was ever anti-feng shui construction for disharmony, this is a prime eyesore example.

Chinese Migrant Worker, a grad student blogger, suggests that foreign ex-pats should stop "weeping over the impending doom of the hutong neighborhoods", and start initiating and supporting preservation activism themselves. CMWorker describes "historic influenced" urban redevelopment happening and contrasts this with authentic historic preservation:

"In Shanghai, the architecture firm of Ben Woods created Xintiandi, similar to 'festival marketplaces' like Fanueil Hall in Boston and Pike Place in Seattle. In fact, Ben Woods was trained by the architects that did those projects. However, since this is China, it's got to be 'festival marketplaces with Chinese characteristics.' So Xintiandi takes the old buildings and narrow alleys of a Shanghai neighborhood and converts them into premium, top-of-the-line luxury retail and dining.

"We visited the architects' office, and the first thing they emphasized was that this was not historic preservation, simply an urban development with a historic influence. The architect had a very simple definition of what it means to be urban – connected and related to what is around you, in space and time. I love that definition. It's very simple and very clear. However, a historic preservationist would have saved as much of the old neighborhood as possible, while Ben Woods saved only those buildings and spaces that could be profitable in the final development, and gutted all of the interiors. It would be so cool if projects like Xintiandi could be done for areas other than the most wealthy spaces in Shanghai, and if more could be preserved. It's not really reasonable to expect the private sector to do that, so maybe the growing community of Chinese NGOs will spawn historic preservation groups that want to work with the government to do that kind of project."

Contemporary neo-colonialism is threatening Shanghai's historic colonial-era Peace Hotel, now owned by a Toronto-based international hotel conglomerate. The art deco structure, originally called the Cathay, was built by British tycoon Victor Sassoon. The current owners' renovations for the 2010 Olympics have forced out the Peace Hotel Jazz Band, a group of jazz musicians (average age:75) who survived the Cultural Revolution, and formed this band in 1980. Wen88888's short You Tube video has a few takes of the hotel and a few shaky notes of the band's music. eswiftfire has posted complete songs.

Somehow, their jazz (and historic Shanghai jazz) has an enervating, sad tone that reminds me of the New Orleans "jazz funeral" style and their story reminds me of jazz musicians forced to leave New Orleans, which is now being remade into a plastic, gambling center version of its former incarnation. Another hotel in Shanghai has moved the entire Peace Hotel Jazz Band into a recreated version of the Jazz Bar in its building. I wonder if the band members enjoy their work, or have to do it for the income. I can't tell from the videos. At their age, some of them don't expect to return to the Peace Hotel when it reopens.

Historic preservation/Environmental Activists in Hangzhou have cleaned up an ancient waterway, the Grand Canal, in their historic city, according to David Lague's upbeat "An ecological triumph in Hangzhou."  To garner support, they used an  argument that commerce-focused policymakers can understand – a cleaner environment and historic preservation results in more tourism and tourist dollars. 

This is an argument long used by historic preservationists in many places, including Japan where Nara preservationists petitioned the Meiji government to turn the Kofuku-ji temple grounds, which it had seized from its Buddhist owners, into a large public park, to attract more tourism.  These nineteenth century activists planted flowering trees and initiated other beautification projects.  Since that time, Nara preservationists have challenged government plans for roads and development, in their efforts to maintain the authentic historicity of Japan's eighth-century capital.  More recently, preservationist and arts activists in Ireland easily persuaded their government to support these kinds of policies in the 1980's and 1990's, resulting in a spike of quality of life capital that has contributed in no small way to Ireland's economic revitalization.

There's no reason that economic development has to result in historic destruction and environmental degradation.  China has a chance to be a laboratory for green technology and change, and a chance to preserve what's left of the history of one of the world's foremost and fascinating sources of ancient and medieval culture.   China's people, and natural and historical wealth and beauty are much more valuable than the fast profits, crass consumerism, and exploitative model  of modern "Western" industrial culture now being emulated there. 

Previous ........... Next
Back to Ten Thousand Things index page...