Urban cultural Landscape term paper

I have worked three days for this, but still feeling not good.1) My sentence structures are too simple and too Chinese. You see? It may because I just change Chinese in my mind to English, but not consider in an English way. I will try specify what I want to express in a sentence and then write it down as a complete one. In fact, I just have a try of this method in above sentence and it turned out to work (I don't know whether it is 'well'). Make further effort on it!~

Moreover,2) vocabularies are repeated, though I tried to make them looked different.

3)The most important problem is the logic still seems confused. The possible reason is that I didn't say the words to myself at first, just wondering what I come out with. In another words, I didn't view the essay as a whole, but point by point so it is not influent. I will improve it later by generally think through the whole essay before I would write.

I asked a friend who is good at writing, in fact, what he study is how to write---he majors in international journalism. Hope he could help.

Blogger is really great that I paste 3000 words on and it could still work!

Loving it!

Hope you guys give some comments, thanks! see ya 

The Culture and Transition of Hutong

Introduction

The history of hutong can be traced back to yuan dynasty, when Mongolians defeated Jin dynasty and occupied Zhongdu (the old name of Beijing in Jin dynasty). The designer created the city like a nine-square land system where palaces, markets, temples and so on are located in specific positions. Dadu (the old name of Beijing in Yuan dynasty) became a city embraced by walls, in which streets, lanes and alleys across almost perpendicularly. Those alleys were called hutong.

Precisely, hutongs can be categorized into two types: standard hutongs and collective ones. Nowadays, what we called hutong is always the broad meaning, including lanes and small streets. In Yuan dynasty, there are about 410 hutongs, through the development in Ming and Qing dynasty until the year of 1949, there are nearly 5050 ones.

However the number of hutong is gradually decreasing since the found of new China. Especially, Beijing had the largest scale of transition since 1949 for the Olympic Games in 2008; the number of hutongs has reduced to about one fifth of one in 1949.

In the 21st century, Beijing as the capital city of China is facing with the crucial time of development. The land of urban area becomes even more scared; the price of land is increasing exponentially, amount of real estate developers are thirst for old city areas, which is at the hub of the city and thousands of tons people visit every day. By contrast, the historical buildings in hub area seem like to be less useful, the planners thus are willing to replace them with modern buildings which are of great tall and multi-uses to fulfill the demand of fast development.

One the other hand, another group of people, most of whom are experts, researches and people treasuring the value of antiquities, against such kind of development by saying that hutongs are dwelling of original Beijingers, which shows the tradition of Beijing. Moreover, as to researches and studies of history and Chinese arts, they are priceless as well.

How does the development impact hutongs? Do hutongs’ changes affect residents’ life? Are these changes more favored or harmful to the city? I will discuss in the following part.

Contemporary city and buildings

History and culture

hutongs have a history of more than 700 years across three dynasties till now. During these periods of time, hutongs indicated lots of changes.

 In Qing dynasty, the most names of hutongs were initialed with the character “Da”, but now, the most common initial character is “Dong”, which is even more in Cultural Revolution, such as dongfeng lu (east wind road), dongxin hutong (east new alley) During the Cultural Revolution, when everything liked to be “red”, most hutongs’names were altered to be including a word “hong”, such as hongri lu (red sun road). There were also other names showing people’s claims, for example, fandi lu (opposing the emperor road), miezi hutong (vanishing capitalism road) and so on. Though some of names are not remained today, their historical value is remained.

They show the prevalent ideology of a time and let present people know what former people were doing. According to the famous contemporary writer Feng Jicai (1942- ), when a specific way of living has gone, its spirit transfers to objects and environment which have been coexisting with it. After a period of time, people thus perceive and understand the past ways of life and their spirits. In this way, objects and environment change essentially.

What’s more, though we generally say hutongs begin from Yuan dynasty, actually, from Liao and Jin there are already model of hutongs, which can be proven by poems of Jin dynasty. Unfortunately, hutongs of Jin and Liao dynasties are out of conservation areas and most of which are demolishing. The area called Dajipian is an example; it is original Yanjing’s (Beijing’s name in Liao dynasty) city gate and around area and later Zhongdu combined it with a city moat, which has highly historical research value of people’s living condition and habit in Liao and Jin dynasties.  But with the demolishment of this area, hints are also erased.

Once hutongs are destructed or rebuilt, they will never come back again, especially former residences of celebrities. Celebrities are distinguishable because of their outstanding performance and contributions. When we visit their old houses, they always call us back to the former residents’ stories. For example, when we visit Mei Lanfang’s former residence, his fabulous art performance would emerge to our minds, along with his revolution in Peking opera and his devotion to his opera career. All these things are of both historical meaning and educative meaning, inspiring us to learn from Master Mei Lanfang.

However, about one third former residences of celebrities have been flattened now. Lu Xun’s old house was destroyed in 90s, while in Japan the house Lu Xun lived when he studied abroad, is still conserved completely and the house owner put the word Lu Xun’s former residence on both the tablet of the house and his own name card. The house owner felt proud that his ancient had ever been friends with Lu Xun.Nevertheless, without history it is also hard for new comers to know a city. Beijing is a city with amazing number of fluent people, where hundreds of thousands people visit including foreigners. It is important for them to distinguish Beijing with other cities. The hutong is one of important features in Beijing. The crowded siheyuans, playing children, clamor and narrow tortuous alleys are city icons. When people recall Beijing, theses imaginaries would come up into their mind. The same as people like to buy featured souvenirs not the common ones because they hope this place they are visiting is distinctive. Besides, The big problem of modern cities that they are too similar with each other would diminish the belonging feeling and make it hard for people to stay.

Arts

Hutongs are of great arts value as well, shown by the primary component of hutongs---siheyuan (quadrangle), a typical traditional Chinese building, which is a big yard and generally a whole family live in.

Brick and stone carvings on the gates of siheyuans are highly appreciated for the colorful contents and sophisticated carving. In Ming and Qing dynasties, brick carving was flourishing. Most of preserved siheyuans with beautiful carving are built in that time. The carving skills are very complicated and difficult in different categories, such as thin carving, bass relief carving, open carving and linear carving. Among them, bass relief carving is the most outstanding and open carving is liveliest. Usually, these bricks once carved were rarely further polished, which requires highly skills of workers. The most popular patterns were those expressing happy life, flowers, folk tales, and ancient relics, showing people’s good wishes to their life and respect to their ancients  all of them are of great value in both arts appreciation and culture research.. However, today, only a few of old skilled workers can be found in Beijing. It is so hard to preserve the carving skills and replay the old carvings.

These techniques were also used on pillow-stones and decorative objects such as clasps, cymbal shaped knockers and couplets. In addition, stone lions were endeared in old times, because they were in various figures very lively and intended to protect home from evil things. But nowadays well-preserved carved stone lions re extremely precious or even tens of thousands worth, because they are so scared; most of them were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.

To understand these beautiful arts we have to connect it with their environments; only through that way can people essentially comprehend them. As it is said arts derive from life, only when people involve in a kind of life and experience it, can them realize that why origin artists created their work like that and what did they think when designing. That’s why though there are uncountable travelling books in book stores, people still like to travel by themselves. The feeling brought to them when actually facing buildings and landscapes is so special that differ from one in books. Weathers, temporary, language, smell, even air around will tell you spirits in it.

If hutongs disappeared, though we could still see the gate buildings, brick carvings, stone lions on books, they were beyond our life, and we could hardly understand the deep ideas in former people’s minds.

Residents’ life

In the report on TVB news, Zhao Shengguo, a 61 years old woman, whose family has live in siheyuan for 16 generation, said she felt very sad that her siheyuan was probably to be destroyed. She introduced her siheyuan full of passion; it is easily to tell that she love her siheyuan so much. She said that the siheyuan was built in the late of Qing dynasty, decorated with arts features of Qing dynasty. Zhao was very worried that if her family moved into a plat, their neighborhood might not be as friendly as present one.

In hutongs, families are all know each other very well, which may hardly for modern people to believe. In the book of noted Chinese writer Laoshe, he described that for the cleaning of the hutong, residents had to cooperate; they also gathered for listening to important radio programs; neighbors usually held meetings to discuss things about their hutong and so on. Therefore, residents became friends. They talked to each other, helped and even criticized each other, for things such as yard was not that so clean. Not only crucial things, but also trivialities neighbors gave a hand and encouraged each other.

The destruction of hutongs is not only the change of landscape but a great shift of residents. Most of residents are mid-aged to old original Beijingers who lived in siheyuan decades, for them, adapting to a new environment is a very exhausting process. The comparatively aloof relationship with neighborhood also bothers them. Children can hardly get a friend; the old rarely find someone to talk. In the past, though the residential condition is worse, people’s relationship is better.

Opposition and suggestions

On one hand, the development of economy is important; one the other hand, remaining hutongs is also an emergency. To see both positive and negative side of hutongs, I defend to protect hutongs.

As the general secretary of Beijing research institution of history, Li Jianping criticized that current planners’ ideas of contemporary establishment is very narrow; they urged to achieve the results and so resulted in many losses which couldn’t be compensated.

Another expert said the value of lots of historical relics hasn’t been realized by us now. Why don’t we just conserve relics first and wait for discovering their value? In 1960s, when Beijing was planning to build underground trains, planners decided to destruct most exterior walls except for some remainders of Dongbian men (one of gate doors in the east). In 2002, planners realized they had made a huge mistake; thereby the government devoted 200million yuan starting to mend exterior walls and build the Beijing city wall park of Ming dynasty.

In 2008, real estate price of Beijing went down a little, but predictors supposed that the macro trend of the price was stable and would keep going up from 2009. The real estate sector can also influence other sectors. As a whole, they do great impact on Beijing’s economy. However, the economic feedback of real estate is still limited, while the effect of Chinese relics more than economic one is immeasurable.

In 2007, the price of suheyuan was 50-160 thousands yuan per square meter; some good siheyuan deserved dozens million yuan; the higher one even reached hundreds million yuan. Beside the expensive price of siheyuans, their value of conserving traditional Chinese culture is immeasurable and increasing through time, which is irreplaceable by any other things.

Unfortunately, the history is played again. Materials indicate that every year, there are 600 hutongs pulled down; we can infer that there were less than 3000 siheyuans left in Beijing, without protection, which would disappear eventually.

 As early as the beginning of the found of new China, the eminent architect Liang Sicheng and city-planner Chen Zhanxiang have suggested expanding Beijing in western countryside area, avoiding ruining the primitive one. Until 2007, Beijing is 24 times as large as one in 1949. In 2009, Beijing’s planning area is 1050 square kilometer, which is 17 times than the old city area which is 67 square kilometer along.

We can see that it is promised for Beijing to outwards rather than alternate the old landscape.

The development of transportation technology also supports the outward expanding of the city. Backing to 1969, Beijing already has the first metro of China and as the further establishment going on to 2005, the number of available metros is 4, including no.1, no.2, no.13 and Batong xian trains. The total length of 4 metros is 114 kilometer. 7 new metros will be commenced in 2010. Besides, more than 1000 vehicles are increased in Beijing each day.

However, as several siheyuans are so aged that problems like leak come out, some planners proposed to crack down old ones and build counterfeit new ones. This suggestion is ill-considered. Firstly, the price of new “siheyuans” must be extraordinary, for they are located in the hub and in the name of luxury living style, which is too hard for the public to afford. People who can buy those mostly are the wealthy from various regions of China, while siheyuans are places where most original Beijingers live in, once it is not Beijingers living there, siheyuans are already not the same as primitive ones. The changes are more than the landscape, also living habits, styles, and even languages--- the culture would have been shifted.

Secondly, counterfeit “siheyuans” are not real siheyuans. Bricks, stones, eaves are of hundreds years of history. Also old walls were piled up brick by brick; each seam was polished and laid at exactly place; the slit between bricks are extremely delicate. While modern technique doesn’t do so, by which seams are apart and crude.

In my opinion, we can just repair where is broken to remain hutongs as initial as possible. Famous Chinese-American architect Bei Luming assessed that siheyuans are not only architecture of Beijing but the one of China. We should conserve siheyuans and conserve in the way tile by tile. Concededly, some hutongs have been dilapidated accompanying with too many residents crowded in (because during Culture Revolution, the number of people was out of load, they had to move in siheyuans where primarily only one family could live), but with careful recondition and reasonable arrangement, residents can still achieve a suitable environment; they can move part of residents out as well.

Some residents complained that there were no air-conditioners so that in summer time, it was very hot and windless in the houses. We can divide the whole old area into small sub-areas and install air-conditioners one by one according to time. Dangerous walls and living conditions can also be improved in this way.

On the other hand, the government can provide fair subsidy for those who are willing and able to move out. For those extremely dangerous structures, we can conserve them only for visiting and transfer all residents to other dwellings.

A second type of rebuilding is ancient-looking flats with two to six floors keeping the traditional color and locations with a roof which is the same as siheyuans’ on the top of each building. This type is a compromise between damaged siheyuans and modern buildings. The grey color can melt into traditional siheyuans as for keeping the macro view of old city areas harmonious. But when you go down to take a near visit; they would break your dream. During recent years,hutong it is popular to visit hutongs. Tourists from both domestic and foreign countries want to see those broken stones, eroded structures, to feel old Beijingers’ life, and to return to ancient age. Obviously, those ancient-looking buildings will disappoint them.

I think, as it is spending to construct new flats after flatting old ones, moving residents to some comparatively cheaper modern flats in suburban areas and just leave siheyuans without modifying or mending is a better way. This method benefits tourism industry of Beijing, both fulfilling economic development and reserving precious historical relics.. As I mention before, hutongs only occupy a small area in Beijing. Leaving them as a visiting area has not very huge economic loss and can gain a good reputation for Beijing.

Conclusion

It is a long story for hutongs’ history. The hutong is like an old man telling his descendents about his life. Nothing is more precious than such kind of deep, close relationship. Though time goes by, people pass down the house patterns, living habits and social relationships generation by generation.

After the found of new China, society refreshed quickly. People need to improve their life and the city needs to develop. Beijing tries to speed up its growth thus has to do some scarify.

But Beijing can’t give up its own history which is the main blood of a city. Some people have already realized the importance of hutongs and endeavor to conserve them.

Hutongs are a kind of memory, a part of Beijing culture and a spirit in Beijingers’ life. They are so important that people couldn’t lose. One day, people would find a comprehensive way that can conserve hutongs, while achieving a better future.

---