The city of Beijing took on its current square layout in the Ming dynasty. Taking the Forbidden City as the centre, a street grid was laid out around it emanating out to a high grey wall which encompassed the city in a square. Sections of this wall remain, roughly where the second (of five contemporary) ring road now runs. Were it to have been built on similarly arduous terrain it would be as remarkable a construction as the Great Wall itself. It is wide enough for fifteen people to walk abreast. At regular intervals on the wall the Ming emperors built watchtowers. These are large rectangular buildings, with the long face parallel to the wall. Built of grey Chinese brick with a pagoda roof, they are probably the height of a modern six-storey building. The walls are covered with parallel lines of slit windows, like a cheese grater. From behind these windows archers would watch for the marauding armies of the ever disloyal warlords. The most famous of these watchtowers is, of course, in Tian An Men Square. Its cautionary effect has rather been tempered because its perfect feng shui alignment with the Forbidden City is starkly interrupted by the Mao mausoleum, a perfect acknowledgement that Communism represents a decisive break with China's imperial past.
About two kilometres from Tian An Men to the east at what would have been the South Eastern corner of the city is the next watchtower, called Tung Bian Men. Just outside this stretch of wall, during the Qing dynasty, a flower market came into spontaneous existence. The aristocrats, senior Mandarins and the imperial household would come here not just to buy fresh flowers brought in from the countryside but also to buy handmade silk flowers. According to legend they were the most beautiful and the most well-crafted silk flowers in the whole of China. Small workshops run by master teachers grew up around the main street which was the flower market and for decades it was a hive of industry, employment and community, with those that worked in these workshops and the flower market, living in the streets and hutongs nearby. All that was brought to an abrupt end in the Cultural Revolution when the market was closed, along with all Beijing's markets, the furniture market, the market for horses and donkeys. These were examples of capitalism and rightism and therefore had to be removed from the face of the city.
The neighbourhood fell into poverty without the market and many of the people who had worked in the local industry could not get registrations and jobs in a daan wei because the system then was that you had to be resident in the area to get a job in the factory and you had to work in the factory to get a flat, the combination of household registration (hu kou) and employment effectively excluding the former small business people and craftsmen - as the system was designed to do.
In 2003 the neighbourhood was rebuilt. The old 1950s and 1960s brick flats were demolished and much of the land was sold off to private developers who also had to provide replacement housing for the poor people who had been living there. Attracting the interest of private developers was not difficult. The neighbourhood, by the standards of the modern city is very central, a few minutes from Beijing East station from where the new white bullet trains with noses like dolphins rush from the city to the big cities of China's eastern seaboard. The new homes for sale have been built in high blocks with their south sides glassed over to attract light and heat during the many cold, grey, polluted months of the Beijing winter. In the middle of the blocks is a gated courtyard with a strange sculpture of a flowering cabbage.
On a Saturday morning there are few young couples around, they are too busy shopping and doing chores in their smart new flats. But there are plenty of children, mostly being tended by indulgent grandparents, for whom their sole grandchild is a precious gift to be nurtured and cherished. All grandparents are more lenient than all parents, but when there is only one grandchild, how special must that relationship be. Many of these little emperors have the latest in expensive childhood accessories, including motorised jeeps and scooters which whirr around the square guided by a three year old, kitted out in designer baby wear, complete with baseball cap at a tilted angle. Others are on roller skates. None have nothing. China has changed and who would begrudge these families these luxuries of love and generosity so long unavailable?
The old flower makers are still around too. They now live in small flats, the smallness of them being their principle complaint. Mostly they have televisions and refrigerators, supplied by their children in some cases. But something has been lost. Many old people in China still feel superstitious about living off the ground and there is nowhere amidst these flats for those communal activities that are the mainstay of Chinese community life, Tai Qi and Mah Jongg. In the older communities based around the daan wei there is always a place to gather, gossip, gamble; a place for communal singing, ping pong and exercising. Since the flats were so small and the interiors often unappealing many old people spend hours and hours out and about with friends and neighbours, not so much with families. Many of their children have moved away to find work, some have moved out of Beijing to the cities of the Pearl River delta where jobs are easier to come by, particularly for those with few qualifications, and salaries are higher. But in the old flower market too much time is spent cooped up at home with your spouse and the Pekinese dog for company.
The community is still called the East Flower Community and many of the elderly residents still make silk flowers as a leisure past time. They also make fruit out of glass under the tutelage of the acknowledged expert whom they call Master Grape, because his glass grapes are utterly life like. There is one other echo of their flower-making past. Along the pavement a flower bed has been laid. Plastic grass has been put down and the real stumps of small trees have been stuck into the ground. On to these living branches the local people have attached the silk roses and cherry blossom they have made which will bloom all year round forever - never withering; never dying.
More pictures of the old flower market in its new form on www.flickr.com/photos/gerardlemos/sets
About two kilometres from Tian An Men to the east at what would have been the South Eastern corner of the city is the next watchtower, called Tung Bian Men. Just outside this stretch of wall, during the Qing dynasty, a flower market came into spontaneous existence. The aristocrats, senior Mandarins and the imperial household would come here not just to buy fresh flowers brought in from the countryside but also to buy handmade silk flowers. According to legend they were the most beautiful and the most well-crafted silk flowers in the whole of China. Small workshops run by master teachers grew up around the main street which was the flower market and for decades it was a hive of industry, employment and community, with those that worked in these workshops and the flower market, living in the streets and hutongs nearby. All that was brought to an abrupt end in the Cultural Revolution when the market was closed, along with all Beijing's markets, the furniture market, the market for horses and donkeys. These were examples of capitalism and rightism and therefore had to be removed from the face of the city.
The neighbourhood fell into poverty without the market and many of the people who had worked in the local industry could not get registrations and jobs in a daan wei because the system then was that you had to be resident in the area to get a job in the factory and you had to work in the factory to get a flat, the combination of household registration (hu kou) and employment effectively excluding the former small business people and craftsmen - as the system was designed to do.
In 2003 the neighbourhood was rebuilt. The old 1950s and 1960s brick flats were demolished and much of the land was sold off to private developers who also had to provide replacement housing for the poor people who had been living there. Attracting the interest of private developers was not difficult. The neighbourhood, by the standards of the modern city is very central, a few minutes from Beijing East station from where the new white bullet trains with noses like dolphins rush from the city to the big cities of China's eastern seaboard. The new homes for sale have been built in high blocks with their south sides glassed over to attract light and heat during the many cold, grey, polluted months of the Beijing winter. In the middle of the blocks is a gated courtyard with a strange sculpture of a flowering cabbage.
On a Saturday morning there are few young couples around, they are too busy shopping and doing chores in their smart new flats. But there are plenty of children, mostly being tended by indulgent grandparents, for whom their sole grandchild is a precious gift to be nurtured and cherished. All grandparents are more lenient than all parents, but when there is only one grandchild, how special must that relationship be. Many of these little emperors have the latest in expensive childhood accessories, including motorised jeeps and scooters which whirr around the square guided by a three year old, kitted out in designer baby wear, complete with baseball cap at a tilted angle. Others are on roller skates. None have nothing. China has changed and who would begrudge these families these luxuries of love and generosity so long unavailable?
The old flower makers are still around too. They now live in small flats, the smallness of them being their principle complaint. Mostly they have televisions and refrigerators, supplied by their children in some cases. But something has been lost. Many old people in China still feel superstitious about living off the ground and there is nowhere amidst these flats for those communal activities that are the mainstay of Chinese community life, Tai Qi and Mah Jongg. In the older communities based around the daan wei there is always a place to gather, gossip, gamble; a place for communal singing, ping pong and exercising. Since the flats were so small and the interiors often unappealing many old people spend hours and hours out and about with friends and neighbours, not so much with families. Many of their children have moved away to find work, some have moved out of Beijing to the cities of the Pearl River delta where jobs are easier to come by, particularly for those with few qualifications, and salaries are higher. But in the old flower market too much time is spent cooped up at home with your spouse and the Pekinese dog for company.
The community is still called the East Flower Community and many of the elderly residents still make silk flowers as a leisure past time. They also make fruit out of glass under the tutelage of the acknowledged expert whom they call Master Grape, because his glass grapes are utterly life like. There is one other echo of their flower-making past. Along the pavement a flower bed has been laid. Plastic grass has been put down and the real stumps of small trees have been stuck into the ground. On to these living branches the local people have attached the silk roses and cherry blossom they have made which will bloom all year round forever - never withering; never dying.
More pictures of the old flower market in its new form on www.flickr.com/photos/gerardlemos/sets
No comments:
Post a Comment