Olympism and Nation-building from a Cultural Perspective

Beijing Olympics and the Traditional hutong Neighbourhood

Final Report to the Olympic Studies Centre,

IOC, Lausanne, Switzerland

Submitted by: Jialing LUO

Department of Social Anthropology

University of Cambridge

August 2010

Research Report, Jialing LUO, August 2010

I. The cultural Olympiad: an introduction1

It is not surprising that the Ancient Olympics did not start with the scale and influence of the Games that we see today. In fact, the very first Olympics in 776 BC were merely a one-day event, consisting of a single sport (running) and involving only local participants (International Olympic Committee 2006: 7-9). However, it evolved over time into a multi-dimensional festivity described by historian Donald G Kyle (2007: 94) below:

Competitors and spectators came from all over the Mediterranean for over a thousand years, from the eighth century B.C. to at least the late fourth century A.D…At the Panhellenic (all-Greek) games of Zeus, however, Greeks assembled to venerate their gods, enjoy elite competition, and appreciate their common culture, which included their language, gods, mythology, and, of course, their passion for athletics.

“[Reminding]reminded Greeks of what made them Greek,” (Ibid.) the aspects of Olympia as athletic event, sacred ritual, and cultural celebration are considered to be the “ethos of the panegyris”2, on which Pierre de Coubertin drew to restore the Modern Olympics (Gold & Revill 2007: 59). Rising from this ‘ethos’ is the cultural dimension of the Olympiad that form ‘a spiritual component’ of the modern Games, replacing the religious aspect of the ancient Games involving the worship of Zeus. While the cultural Olympiad was essential to fostering a sense of unity among the city-states of ancient Greece, the Modern Olympics are intended to promote a common identity for humanity on the basis of respecting and celebrating differences. This idea is reflected in Olympism, the contextualization of the vision of Coubertin and his understanding of the revived Olympics:

Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles. (International Olympic Committee 2006: 18)

Seeing the Modern Olympics revived in 1896 as “a new cultural institution” (MacAloon 1981: xii), John J. MacAloon (Ibid.: 262) uses anthropological terms to interpret Coubertin’s Olympic ideal of “international harmony” and a peaceful world

1 This section describes the research topic and its objectives, and outlines the contributions it is hoped the work will make to both existing scholarship and the Olympic Movement in general. 2 Panegyris, “also spelled Panegyry, Greek Panēgyris (“gathering”), plural Panēgyreis, in Greek religion, an ancient assembly that met on certain fixed dates for the purpose of honouring a specific god. The gatherings varied in size from the inhabitants of a single town to great national meetings, such as the Olympic Games. The religious aspect of the meetings was by far the most important and included prayers, feasts, and processions. The populace, however, was probably more attracted to the amusements, games, fairs, and festive orations (panegyrics) that occurred at the gatherings.” Gwinn, Robert P (Chairman). The New Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 9, p111. 15th Edition (founded in 1768). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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free from conflicts and wars. He (Ibid.) gives depth to the idea of “popular education” in the “knowledge of the “others”, which Coubertin thinks vital to the Olympics, through rephrasing it as ‘ “popular ethnography” ’. In doing so, the cultural aspect of the Olympics is highlighted, in the sense that “national differences were to be celebrated as different ways of being human” (Ibid.: 266). This directs the Olympics and Olympism towards a glorious objective of expressing a common humanity while recognizing differences: one’s performance and behaviour is, as MacAloon (Ibid.: 266) quoting Ruth Benedict, “to make the world safe for differences”. Here, differences are understood to be not only between nations and between individuals, but also between “collective social forces and unusual individual initiative” (Ibid.: xii).

Thus, my research topic emerges. Rather than ceremonies (Luo 2010: 771-730) and the various accompanying cultural events ( Gold & Revill 2007: 59-83) that make up this extraordinary spectacle, my research draws on the Olympics’ reverence for antiquity and tradition, and for the differences and uniqueness of any given culture, based on which the Olympic spirit of internationalism and universal humanity is established. In particular, the research takes historical and cultural perspectives to discuss urban renewal in central Beijing in terms of architecture, urban planning and traditional way of life. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the hutong and culture-related concepts developed by Raymond Williams, T.S Eliot, Guy Debord and Clifford Geertz, the research paper argues that culture, taking a politicised form, can be planned in a society where tradition has to give way to modernity for ideological reason. Through focusing on changes in the South Gong and Drum hutong neighbourhood, this paper indicates that, while recognising the rapid improvements in infrastructure and facilities, modernization of Beijing at the expense of its irreplaceable traditions and heritage is worth debating in a wider social context beyond academia and the Olympic Movement. This paper hopes to offer a new perspective for understanding contemporary Beijing and China, and to call for the protection of the hutong, the last vestiges of old Beijing.

Beijing had been transforming even before the Olympics, which, however, accelerated the pace of change. The seven years between 2001 when Beijing won the Olympic bid and 2008 when it delivered the Games was “biblical”- like (Friedman 2008). During this period of time, “under the banner of the Olympics”, China accumulated seven years of “national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.” (Ibid.) However, one thing omitted from this process of modernization and nation-building was some degree of participation from ordinary people. This is a point reflected in my case study of a hutong neighbourhood, whose traditional cultural values had to give way in the interests of tourism and a politicised new culture, rather than being integrated into the urban restoration in such a way as to best retain the authentic nature of the symbolic old district. Participation is the essence of Olympism. Similarly, involvement of local residents in neighbourhood development is vital in building and consolidating community solidarity and a common identity. This research also suggests that rebuilding is not always the solution,

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and that radical modernization can lead to a loss of cultural strength. Change should be allowed to take its natural course. Only in a more balanced and rational way, can a nation state be built into its best. Hopefully, the ideas stated in this research paper will contribute to the wealth of knowledge and experience of the Olympic Movement. Or, as D. P. Martinez (2010: 747) puts for Documenting the Beijing Olympics, “…in some small way…will contribute to this understanding of what happens when a nation decides to host the Olympic Games”.

II. Methodology

In-depth fieldwork was conducted at the South Gong and Drum neighbourhood in Beijing for nearly ten months from October 2007 to September 2008. I did participant observation and intensive interviewing. Visiting and living in the neighbourhood offered me opportunities to acquire an insider’s view through experiencing the everyday life as the local people lived it.

Semi-structured interviewing was undertaken, targeting specific issues and informants. Interviews were done before, during and after the Olympics, to detect changes in attitudes and viewpoints over this time span. Two categories of people (organizers and ordinary citizens) of different ages, gender, profession, ethnic backgrounds, and economic status were selected for interview. Some of them were followed up throughout the three stages. Unstructured interviewing and informal interviewing were more frequently carried out, involving a general random population, while focusing on hutong residents.

Visiting the Olympic Studies Centre at Lausanne in the summer of 2009 was a good opportunity to access books and documents on Olympism, on the history and development of the Olympic Movement, and on the Beijing Olympics etc. Especially, the Beijing bid books for both 2000 and 2008 Games, the internal journals issued by BOCOG and IOC and the internal online journals and audio/visual documents that can not be found elsewhere were important resources for me to understand the Olympics as other than sporting events. Communication with the IOC members also greatly contributed to my studies of the Olympics.

Literature studies at Cambridge helped me organise my thoughts and theorise my research paper. The excellent resources here contributed to my thinking and writing. Academic exchange of ideas on the Olympics at international conferences, such as “Documenting the Beijing Olympics” at SOAS, London, 2008 and ‘Heritage and the Olympics’ in Cambridge 2010, also shed light on my work.

III. Modern Summer Olympics and the host cities

III. I. The Summer Olympics: 1896-2004

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Table 1. Host cities of the Summer Olympic Games, 1896-2008

Year City Year City Year City 1. 1896 Athens 11. 1936 Berlin 21. 1976 Montreal 2. 1900 Paris 12. 1940 Not celebrated 22. 1980 Moscow 3. 1904 St. Louis 13. 1944 Not celebrated 23. 1984 Los Angeles 4. 1908 London 14. 1948 London 24. 1988 Seoul 5. 1912 Stockholm 15. 1952 Helsinki 25. 1992 Barcelona 6. 1916 Not 16. 1956 Melbourne 26. 1996 Atlanta celebrated Stockholm (equestrianism) 7. 1920 Antwerp 17. 1960 Rome 27. 2000 Sydney 8. 1924 Paris 18. 1964 Tokyo 28. 2004 Athens 9. 1928 Amsterdam 19. 1968 Mexico 29. 2008 Beijing 10. 1932 Los Angeles 20. 1972 Munich

Source: Mostly based on The Olympic Movement, 2006.

There had been a long interval of about 1,500 years until the Modern Olympics were revived by Coubertin and his collaborators in 1896. However, the modern Games had a difficult time in their early years. First of all, there was a heated controversy concerning whether or not to sponsor the 1896 Games between the Prime Minister’s group and the monarchy group in Greece, though in the end the Games turned out to be successful (Gold & Gold 2007: 21-22). The following Paris 1900 and St Louis 1904 Olympics were not as satisfactory, as both were downgraded to “sideshows” to the World Expositions in the two cities, threatening the Olympic Movement with signs of “collapse” (Ibid.: 21-24). To rescue the Olympics, the 1906 Intercalated Games had to be arranged in Athens in 1906, when efforts were meticulously made to ensure a real spectacle (Ibid.). London 1908 saw a rise to prosperity, with a 68,000-seat stadium being built and its track and field events being acknowledged as “the first truly international championships in Olympic history” (The Associate Press & Grolier, 1979: 60). However, there were more uncertainties to come. The four-year cycle of the Olympics has been interrupted three times in 1916, 1940 and 1944 because of WWI and WWII.

The relationship between the above-mentioned early Games and the host cities was essentially concerned with sports, while the following decades witnessed the Olympics being combined with non-sports purposes, either negatively or positively, as exemplified by the Berlin 1936 Olympics which Adolf Hitler hoped to use to confirm his racial theories; Tokyo 1964, the first Asian Olympics, was integrated into the city’s ten year development plan (Gold & Gold 2007: 33), and used to symbolise the rebirth of Japan after the WWII as “no longer a beaten nation” (The Associate Press & Grolier: 254) and Japan’s reintegration into the international community of nations; The Los Angeles 1984 Games, when “named sponsorship” and “private finance” (Gold & Gold 2007: 39) were introduced, brought in commercialism.

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In their article Athens to Athens: the Summer Olympics 1896-2004, Gold and Gold (2007: 15-46) review the evolution of the Modern Olympics and their relationship with the host cities. They (Ibid.: 17-19) perceive the following “seven main phases”:

The first (1896-1906) traces the way that the nascent Olympics narrowly survived negative associations with the fairground, with two sets of Games held in Athens a decade apart offering a more positive path forward that intimately involved city and stadium. The next phase (1908-1936) saw local Organizing Committees devote mounting resource to preparing stadia and associated facilities. By the time of the 1936 Berlin Games, the Olympics had started to gain a consensual content with ingredients broadly replicated by each succeeding festival, although remaining an event that gave the home nation scope to mould the associated spectacle according to its own needs. After the war and a brief series of lower-key events framed by Austerity (1948-1956), the Olympics witnessed growing acceptance of the economic importance and general promotional significance of the event for the host cities. The fourth phase (1960-1976) saw host cities viewing the Olympics as catalyst for initiating major infrastructural and related works; a period that ended with the misfortunes of Montreal 1976. After an interlude when the Games became dominated by late-Cold War ideological issues with rather less attention to regeneration (1980-1984), the success of the strategies introduced at Los Angeles 1984 and Barcelona 1992 heralded a new phase of commercialism and regeneration programmes (1988-1996). The final phase (2000-present) found cities actively competing to host a festival designed to leave a perceptible but sustainable physical legacy.

When asked about the strength of the Olympics which enables its survival, development, popularity and world recognition, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) staff members whom I talked to in Lausanne referred to “Olympism”. Olympism represents the universal values of the Olympics that go beyond the sporting world, and embrace “an eternal humanistic spirit” (Hughson 2010: 754). It becomes clear that what connects sports, the Olympic Movement and the host cities is Olympism, surrounding which competition, organisation and cultural events take place. In particular, one senior manager considers the success of the Olympic Movement to be the ‘inclusiveness’ of the Games, in the sense that everyone is encouraged to participate in whatever way, whether as competitors, organizing officials, journalists, spectators, or volunteers. In the end, it is the participation of people that keeps the Olympics alive and flourishing.

III.II. Beijing Olympics 2008

The long-anticipated Beijing Olympics, “as everyone was aware”, Martinez (2010: 745) says, were “an event of more than usual geopolitical and cultural significance because of China’s emergence from isolation, burgeoning economic power and growing political influence”. The Games were “an opportunity to represent the social changes that has taken place in China in the last part of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century” (Ibid.).This can be longer, as long as one

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hundred years, as one of the Chinese slogans says“an Olympic Dream of One Hundred Years”(bainian aoyun meng,百年奥运梦). There are sentiments and historical associations with the Hundred Year Humiliation (biannian chiru, 百年耻辱) since the Opium War between Qing China and Britain in the mid-19th century, after which China became semi-colonized and went into rapid decline.

With this part of history in the background, China had to show its best and to impress the world. As the major host city of the 2008 Olympics, Beijing went through a dramatic transformation. Different from the largely local event of Atlanta 1996, and the half local and half national Athens 2004, the Beijing Olympics were unquestionably national in every sense. As well as a total of seven host cities (the other six cities were Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, Qingdao and Hong Kong), “the Olympic torch was carried through 113 cities in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and zhixiashi (municipalities directly under the Central government of China), a journey totalling 40,000 kilometres” (Luo 2010: 772). For seven years, the Olympics were placed at the top of the government agenda. Sufficient financial support was guaranteed: a budget of twenty-one billion pounds was invested for infrastructure construction in Beijing alone. As an immediate result, a number of avant-garde buildings such as the Bird’s Nest (the Beijing National Stadium), the Water Cube (the Beijing National Aquatics Center) and the CCTV (Central China Television) Tower emerged, while in the old city centre the familiar imperial landscape of the hutong was disappearing.

The Olympics became far more important than it had hitherto been as the prism through which China aimed to project a different image from its traditionally backward looking one, both to the outside world, and indeed, to its own population. It is worth mentioning that there was lack of confidence in how to approach this at the beginning, for example in connection with the opening ceremony. There appeared to be uncertainty about how to display China as a modern society, though the Chinese organisers were clear about how to present a traditional one, characterised by the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta Warriors, red lanterns, lion and dragon dancing, and women in their costumes, the qipao (旗袍), playing the traditional Chinese musical instrument pipa (琵琶), as shown in some of director Zhang Yimou ’s (who is also the chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies) films and documentaries. The organisers were concerned that what they produced would be too stereotyped and traditional, so they invited many top foreign experts to work on the consultative committee to make sure that a historically and culturally rich China would be promoted in a modern and state-of-the-art way.

On the other hand, the involvement of the state in the Beijing Olympics was said to be unparalleled by that of any previous Olympic host country. A case in point was the Olympics-related expenditures on infrastructure construction in Beijing. The government invested at least 80% of the planned £21 billion, which accounted for over 43% of the total cost for all the Olympics (including Beijing) since the 1976

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Montreal Games (The Economist 2007). As a result, “a dozen Olympic sports centres; a new cross-city underground railway; a host of office towers; a massive airport terminal; and…a colossal French-designed egg-shaped theatre in the city centre” were all in place before the Olympics (Ibid.). Compared to the largely privatised London 2012 Olympics, the state played an enormous role in the Beijing Games.

The influence of the Beijing Olympics on architecture, urban planning and government ideology can not be overstated, which will be discussed in the paper. In particular, the research addresses how far the city has travelled from a physically traceable past to its recent modern appearance through examining changes in the physical environment of the traditional courtyard neighbourhood and its impact upon the lives of the people who live there.

IV. Disappearing landscape: hutong and siheyuan

The traditional image of a Chinese home has always been the siheyuan (四合院， courtyard house, see Figure 1), a four-sided residence with rooms surrounding a central courtyard, once commonly found in north China and particularly in the inner city of Beijing. The siheyuan are aligned to form alleys, usually narrow in width and long in length, called hutong. Hutong is a Mongolian word for ‘water well’, deriving from a nomadic way of life in which the Mongols set up their tents and settled down where they could find water. A Mongolian friend of mine who was living in the hutong where I did my fieldwork, and ran a café there with his two brothers, drew a rough sketch to show me how the tents were arranged to form a community. It greatly resembled the layout of the hutong and also looked like the Chinese character “井” (jing) meaning ‘water well’.

Most hutong, especially in the East City District (dongcheng qu, 东城区) of Beijing, are aligned in the east-west direction, allowing the main rooms and gate of a siheyuan to face south. There are also minor hutong running north-south, mainly providing convenient foot paths. The word hutong is also used to refer to any neighbourhood made up of such siheyuan and alleys, a structure that gave rise to the symmetric chessboard layout of old Beijing.

Scholars such as Victor F. S. Sit (1995) andNancy Shatzman Steinhardt (1990) have written about the urban planning and symbolism of Beijing that fascinated Marco Polo and, through him, the whole West. The Beijing that Marco Polo encountered was Kublai Khan’s3 Dadu (大都，the Grand Capital), which Kublai Khan entrusted his Han Chinese official Liu Bingzhong to build from scratch in 1267. Polo (Steinhardt 1990: 155, quoting Moule and Pelliot 1938: 212-213) wrote,

3 Kublai Khan (1215-1294) is the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in 1271.

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Figure 1. The rooftops of siheyuan houses near the Drum Tower in Beijing. Photograph by Jialing LUO, July 2008.

It is twenty-four miles round, that is that on every quarter it has a face of six miles, and is exactly square by line, so that it is no more or no longer on the one side of the square than on the other. It is all walled with walls of earth which are about ten paces thick below, and more than twenty high…the whole city is set out by line; for the main streets from one side to the other of the town are drawn out straight as a thread, and are so straight and so broad that if anyone mount on the wall at one gate and look straight one sees from the one side to the other the gate of the other side, opposite to that, and they are so planned that each gate is seen as the others along the town, by the roads…And all the pieces of land on which the dwellings are built throughout the city are square and set out by line…And in this way all the city inside is laid out by square, as a chessboard is.

Here, Polo described a meticulously planned, well-orientated, rectangular walled enclosure on a grid structure, maintained by big avenues intersected by smaller alleys of hutong. In the sentence “…all the pieces of land on which the dwellings are built throughout the city are square and set out by line…”, the “dwellings” were the siheyuan, the “line” was the avenue, and the “square” “pieces of land” were the fifty wards (fang, 坊), into which Dadu was divided. Differing from some previous imperial cities such as the Liao Nanjing, where a ward, also made up of a few neighbouring hutong, was enclosed and gated, the wards in Dadu were open, only naturally divided from each other by avenues. Small alleys, hutong, existed inside each ward but it was only in Yuan that these alleys began to be called hutong (Wu 1997: 22). Outside Beijing, alleys are called ninong (里弄) in Jiangnan (江南, southern areas of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River), nongtang (弄堂) in Shanghai and simply ‘small streets’ (xiaojie, 小街) or ‘alleys’ (xiaoxiang, 小巷; or xiangzi, 巷子) in many other regions in China.

In fact, as Sit (1995) and Steinhardt (1990), among others, note, the design of Beijing,

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in common with those of earlier Chinese imperial cities such as Changan and Luoyang, followed the prescriptions given in the Kaogongji (考工记) section of the classic text The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli, 周礼), which set out the principles of how to lay out a state capital more than two thousand years ago. It says,

The Capital city shall be a walled square. Each wall measures nine-li and has three gates. There are nine north-south and nine east-west arterial roads, each of which shall have a width for accommodating nine chariot-ways. On the left-hand outside of the palace shall be the Ancestral Hall, while on the right-hand side shall be the Altar of Soils. In front of the palace shall be the Audience Halls. The market is to be located at the back side of the city, and measured one hundred paces on each side. (Sit 1995: 25) (jiangren yingguo, fangjiuli, pangsanmen. guozhong jiujingjiuwei, jingtujiugui. zuozu youshe, qianchao housi. sichaoyifu. 匠人营国，方九里，旁三门。国中九经九纬，经涂九轨。左祖右社，前朝后市。市朝一 夫。)

The text presents the plan for an idealised imperial city which many of the dynasties attempted to realize, but none of them could follow exactly. Dadu resembled this model most (Steinhardt 1990: 158), arranging its imperial buildings in the south, the market in the north, the Ancestral Temple to the east and the Altar of Soil and Grain to the west along a north-south axis, all enclosed in a concentric tri-walled setting of (from the innermost) palace city, imperial city and outer city. According to archaeological evidence, this ‘walled city within a walled city within a walled city’ (Ibid. 1983:137), also described as a ‘box-within-box pattern’, along with other forms such as ‘two walled rectangles built side by side’ and ‘one attached to the corner of another’, are all characterized by rectangular wall enclosures, which is the ‘the oldest element in the design of the Chinese city’, dating back to the Longshan dwelling of Neolithic times, and prevalent in the Eastern Zhou (770 BCE – 256 BCE) (Tuan 1970: 105).

The locations of the different functional areas are governed by set rules. For instance, the imperial buildings are of paramount importance, therefore they are situated ‘at the front’ (the literal translation of qianchao, 前朝), meaning in the south, south being the most auspicious direction according to Chinese cosmology and “the ritually favored orientation of important excavated temples, halls, and tombs” (Wright 1977: 37). Thus, “most of the imperial buildings of an imperial city have a southern exposure” (Steinhardt 1990: 8). For the same reason, Wright understands that the ancient cities are usually south facing and their main gate is “in the south wall” (Wright 1977: 37), which Dadu exemplifies. On the other hand, the marketplace occupies the least significant location ‘at the rear’ (the literal translation of houshi, 后 市, meaning ‘in the north’) of the imperial city, because traditionally commerce was thought to be contemptible and did not enjoy equal status with education, the civil service, etc. Since Dadu was slightly narrower in its east-west dimension and longer in the north-south direction, and its imperial palaces and offices were arranged in the southern most area, the ‘northern’ market thus turned out to be close to the Drum

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Tower in the centre of the city. Residential areas were situated in the east, west and north of the Outer City.

The plan also demonstrates another salient feature of the grid system with a central line, emphasizing the recommended ‘nine north-south and nine east-west arterial roads’ and a north-south axial line, on or along both sides of which the major imperial buildings are located. This structure is still traceable in the present-day Beijing, where the major Olympic stadiums, the Olympic Village, the Olympic park and forest were arranged to locate on the northern extension of the old north-south axis. The fireworks that led up to the opening ceremony at the Bird’s Nest (the National Stadium) of the 2008 Beijing Olympics travelled through the sky above the historical landmarks standing on the central axis, all the way from the southern point Yongdingmen (永定 门, ‘Gate of Permanent Stability’), up north to Qianmen (前门, ‘Front Gate’), Tiananmen (天安门, ‘Gate of Heavenly Peace’), the Forbidden City (gugong, 故宫), Jingshan Park, the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower to the Bird’s Nest (Luo 2010: 773 ). The South Gong and Drum neighbourhood is situated to the east of the central line in the vicinity of the Bell and Drum Towers. It is one of the few hutong quarters that still maintains the original Yuan Dynasty grid pattern.

This prescribed method of urban planning reflects a sense of disciplined aestheticism, where centrality and order is essential to achieve the harmony, peace and stability that a state must maintain, while emphasizing the absolute power of the ruler forever in the centre. As Steinhardt (1990: 5) argues, this spatial arrangement indicates that the Chinese imperial city is not only “the ruler’s capital”, but also “an institution”, and “an articulated concept for which a design is drawn and about which ideology – namely purpose and meaning – has been written, accepted, and transmitted through the ages”. The most impressive thing is that, “All this took place long before most imperial cities as we know them today were built.” (Ibid.) It is this historical particularity that makes old Beijing such an irreplaceable legacy unrepeatable in any other place at any other time.

Echoing this dynastic planning is dynastic architecture that embodies a faith in ‘round heaven, square earth’ and fengshui (风水，which literally means ‘wind and water’)4. Fengshui is a system of beliefs about the nature of heaven and earth capable of providing benign Qi, the energy or life force that sustains all creatures, that would turn ill luck into good. An example is the Altar of Heaven, where the Ming and Qing emperors went to pray for good harvests, which featured a square foundation (representing earth) and a circle altar (heaven), designed to ensure efficacious rituals. The siheyuan, the traditional everyday house itself, was arranged around a quadrangle, its layout following fengshui principles and exemplifying how an entire space should be organised, including the location of doors, windows and screens. For instance, in terms of orientation, according to some elders in the South Gong and Drum hutong, south is viewed as the direction of heaven, a blessed direction that a sihueyuan ideally

4 Fengshui was said to be introduced by Guo Pu in Jin Dynasty (265-420).

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faces. North is seen as symbolising the earth, east the sun and west the moon. Together, these create a universe encircling and interacting with the central courtyard. It was believed that this arrangement would ensure the coming of positive Qi from the south, in through the front gate to permeate the entire residence. Qi is composed of both Yin and Yang aspects5, which are ideally in balance. It brings misfortune if either aspect of Qi predominates. Therefore, a screen is usually placed facing the front gate in order to redirect and soften the Yang Qi when it is too strong.

According to elderly people living in the hutong, the south-facing zhengfang (正房， main rooms) are of more significance and thus can only be taken by senior members of the family. Xiangfang (厢房，wing rooms), rooms on the eastern and western sides of the courtyard, are of secondary importance and are usually distributed among the sons and daughters and their respective spouses. Servants usually live in the daozuofang（倒座房）, the north-facing rooms beside the front gate situated across the yard from the main rooms, the position of least geographic privilege.

Behind the concept of ‘round heaven, square earth’ and the exercise of fengshui is the fundamental ideal of the ‘unification of the universe and human beings’ (tian ren he yi, 天人合一), a culture and philosophy that finds its expression in many characteristically Chinese thought patterns in Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. It should be noted that the ‘unification’ is orchestrated in an ordered way, such that the hierarchical layout is painstakingly articulated throughout schemes for house position and room arrangement. This form of siheyuan, and the space and environment that it produces, is intended to fulfill the desirable harmonious co-existence of heaven (south), earth (north), sun (east), moon (west) and human beings (centre), and eventually contribute to a society in harmony. Harmony is the way of the ancient Kings, as The Analects (lunyu, 论语) points out. All rituals and conventions serve the purpose of harmony, which the ancient Kings considered to be precious and beautiful (Lizhiyong, heweigui; xianwangzhidao, siweimei, 礼之用, 和为贵; 先王之道，斯为 美。The Analects 1:12. My translation) However, the attainability of harmony requires such depth and complexity as to go beyond any mere architectural aspiration.

What is around us influences what is inside us. The hutong is best understood as a system of ideas and values, a framework on which life and society are organised. Embodying both theory and practice, the hutong is a fundamental component of the “purely Chinese” (Steinhardt 1983: 147) imperial planning of Beijing, whose meaning as the “perpetuation of fundamental beliefs and institutions of the past” was anticipated to be able to “meet the challenge of each new era” (Ibid.:154). It is in this tradition of thought that the hutong and siheyuan form a distinctive way of life, lived and shared during the dynasties of the Mongol Yuan (1271-1368), the Han Chinese Ming (1368 -1644) and the Manchu Qing (1644 -1912), from its animal-skin wearing builder and ruler Kublai Khan to the last emperor Pu Yi (1906-1961) with shaved forehead and braided hair in long pigtail, when Beijing was continuously the national

5 Basically, Yin and Yang are opposing aspects in everything, and balanced Yin and Yang create harmonious universe.

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capital city, except for a period in the early Ming Dynasty when the capital briefly moved to Nanjing. Hutong held together the “traditions of a people”, an entire culture that is according to Terry Eagleton (2000: 2), and played down the ethnic differences between nomadic Mongols, semi-nomadic Manchu and sedentary Han Chinese. They also survived at least half of the 20th century through the Republic Era (1912-1949) until the New China, when they started to be demolished. This historical depth and complexity of Beijing being constructed according to a classical city plan as “part of the Mongolian vision of empire building” (Steinhardt 1988: 59) and the continuity of this symbolism into the following few centuries has made the hutong a powerful and valued cultural manifestation of tradition and politics. It seems to explain Eagleton’s (2000: 4) understanding of culture also as “a matter of following rules”, though, “there can be no rules for applying rules”.

V. Chai (拆, ‘to demolish’)

Recent decades have witnessed a decline in the numbers of hutong and siheyuan. The 1990s urban redevelopment programmes, combined with the post-socialist housing reform, targeted the old hutong neighbourhoods, which were now in near slum-like conditions due to shortage of space and lack of maintenance. Demolition of hutong was more or less viewed by the authorities as a precondition for Beijing’s rise to become a modern international city. They criticised the hutong for being “unhygienic and impractical” and thus unsuitable for “contemporary living” (Mitter 2008: 136). It is true that, siheyuan, mainly occupied by a single household pre-1949, has become dazayuan (大杂院, ‘big mixed yard’) (especially since the Cultural Revolution), shared by several or more than ten families. Living space was small, with each household limited to one or two rooms. There were no inside toilets. People had to use the outside communal squat toilets in the hutong, or chamber pots, especially on freezing Beijing winter nights. Public showers/baths, called gonggongyushi/zaotang ( 公共浴室/澡堂), were only available in the alleys and people usually went once a week, more often in summer. There were no private kitchens either, each family cooked in a simple self-built, tiny shelter in the yard. Running water did not reach the household and the one, or at most two, water taps installed in the yard meant queuing during cooking hours.

However, this mentality of eradicating rather than saving what remains of old Beijing, often combined with economic interests, led to the large-scale clearance of hutong and siheyuan, as well as massive relocation of residents out of the city centre. Ironically, the Olympics, claiming to draw strength and spiritual values from antiquity and tradition, merely accelerated the pace of this “demolition as spectacle of Chinese modernity” (Chau 2008:198). Chau (Ibid.: 204) writes:

Since 2001, when Beijing won the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, the municipal government has sped up the pace of urban renewal in an attempt not only to get the infrastructure ready (stadiums, the Olympic Village), but also to get Beijing ready to

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welcome the millions of foreign visitors that were projected to visit the capital before, during and after the games (see Kearns and Philo 1993; Kotler et al. 1993; Broudehoux 2004; also Herzfeld 2003; Zhang 2006). The winning of the Olympic bid being such a landmark triumph for China’s national pride, Beijing could not afford to lose face. The nation’s face hinged on Beijing’s face, both metaphorical and real. As a result urban renewal programmes became increasingly aggressive. The budget for Olympic infrastructural preparation was a staggering US $22 billion (Watts 2003). The municipal government’s motto was to build a ‘new Beijing’ to welcome the Olympic Games. An estimated 5 million square metres of residential housing were slated for demolition, which meant relocating 300 000 households (around 1.1 million people) in the space of a few years (Tatlow 2004).

As a result, the character ‘chai’ (拆, ‘to demolish’) was widely seen painted on the walls of many siheyuan in the old neighbourhoods. Chau (Ibid.: 195) interprets ‘chai’ as more than “a utilitarian sign” warning of a house's situation, or indicating to the workers which house to pull down. Rather, he sees it as “an awful mark” bearing the meaning of “symbolic violence” (Ibid.), in the sense that ‘chai’ was primarily a government order jointly perpetrated by government and real estate developers upon vulnerable residents, who had no means of protecting their property. On the other hand, the “visible” (the demolition site was not shielded) process of ‘chai’ was rather primitive and violent, involving “bulldozers, sledgehammers, pickaxes, pneumatic hammers, wrecking balls, explosives, cranes, clumps of bricks and mortar, half-standing walls, abandoned furniture and mounds of rubble”, where “the wrecking-crew members gnaw at the old buildings bit by bit in open view to everyone passing by” (Ibid.: 201). In Jiaodaokou Jiedao (of which the South Gong and Drum neighbourhood, where I did my fieldwork, is a part), Tuer (土儿) hutong, Mingliang （明亮）hutong and the northern part of Xianger (香饵）hutong were razed to ground in 2001 within one month of the ‘chai’ mark being inscribed on them. They were replaced by high-rise buildings, leaving no visual trace of the past. Even the names Tuer and Mingliang disappeared. People who did not live in, visit or hear about this place would not know that it had once been a hutong area.

Prior to 1949, Old Beijing had been filled with one-storey siheyuan, mostly built during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Sit 1995: 208). In those days, housing consisting of two or three stories did not amount to more than 17% of the total (Ibid.). It was said, there were more than three thousand hutong in 1949, 2,250 in 1990 and 1,600 in 2003. Only 600 hutong are now designated for protection. The staggering loss of hutong in the 1990s and early 2000s has been characterised as “wholesale elimination” (Mitter 2008: 136). Hutong are more than just alleys, they are neighbourhoods. What has been annihilated is a traditional way of life.

Unfortunately, this did not seem to provoke the anticipated wide social concern. People who were actively involved in defending the hutong tended to be either those who were directly affected by the demolitions or scholars, while the general population were more excited and bewildered by the material success that a thriving

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economy brought.

Expressing a note of helplessness, an old Chinese idiom chun wang chi han (唇亡齿 寒, If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold) was used to describe the interdependent relationship between siheyuan and hutong. The lips-teeth relation stresses that if misfortune befalls one thing, a closely-related other can in no way be exempted from the same trouble. That is, tragedy would befall both if it were to happen to one. This describes what has happened to siheyuan and hutong.

However, most people who had to move did not get properly compensated. Chau (2008: 202) has found that,

Usually the compensation is a small fraction of the actual worth of the square footage of the homes, and the commercial profit to be reaped from constructing the new modern buildings is thousands of times more than the total compensation given to former residents. Most residents can only afford to buy and move to apartments that are on the remote peripheries of the city far from their places of work and schooling.

David Harvey (2008: 35-36) argues even more forcefully,

Since they [Beijing in specific and China in general] lack private-property rights, the state can simply remove them by fiat, offering a minor cash payment to help them on their way before turning the land over to developers at a large profit. In some instances, people move willingly, but there are also reports of widespread resistance, the usual response to which is brutal repression by the Communist party.

My research has found that compensation payments for private property have been considerably raised since the Property Law was enacted in 2007. The Olympics have contributed to this improvement because they draw world attention to China's human rights issues, of which relocation and compensation was one. At the end of 2007, I gathered that compensation standard in the South Gong and Drum neighbourhood reached between 20,000 and 30,000 Yuan (about 2,000-3,000 GBP) per square metres due to its central location, much higher than the official standard of 8,000 Yuan (about 800 GBP) per square metres.

Considering “the hutong are to Beijing what the canals are to Venice” (Meyer 2008: 146), the traditional Chinese lips-teeth relationship should exist between the hutong and Beijing, but in reality, they do not seem to be sharing the same fate. While hutong are being drastically razed, Beijing is outgrowing its Ming-Qing boundaries. The replacements of siheyuan usually do not have any specifically Chinese character, favouring a modern international cosmopolitan image familiar from New York and Tokyo. Beijing, and numerous other Chinese cities, “taken [taking] in nearly half the world’s cement supplies since 2000” (Harvey 2008: 29), are engaged in “globalized (that is, Western) urban planning” (Mitter 2008: 137) and massive (re)construction,

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abandoning its own culture and identity.

VI. From reality to image: a case study of the South Gong neighbourhood

Steinhardt (1988) argues that imperial Chinese architecture and building traditions influenced the whole of Asia, and in particular the Mongol Empire which built its major cities and towns in the Chinese style “along the Mongolian road to Dadu” in the 13th and 14th centuries. Dadu, old Beijing, was at that period one of the most splendid cities of the world. Today, hutong “born in Yuan Dynasty” (yuansheng hutong, 元生 胡同）can still be found in Beijing. One of them is the South Gong and Drum neighbourhood (Nanluogu Xiang, 南锣鼓巷). This neighbourhood is usually abbreviated to Nanluo (South Gong, 南锣) by most Chinese speakers. I shall therefore refer to it as South Gong. Centrally located in the vicinity of the imperial landmarks of the Drum and Bell Towers and to the east of the north-south axis, South Gong maintains its original ‘herring bone’ layout with eight east-west parallel hutong situated along each side of the central dividing South Gong Alley, the wider main alley which gives its name to the whole neighbourhood. South Gang Alley runs for seven hundred and eighty-six meters from north to south, and is eight meters wide. This neighbourhood is the only remaining example of a hutong of this scale, with the characteristic chessboard pattern, constructed in the Yuan Dynasty. It was part of the market area in the north of Dadu.

Until 2003 when the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic broke out, South Gong had been an ordinary run-down hutong, mainly occupied by people of low income. A random survey of 1,000 people living in the area, jointly conducted by the Jiaodaokou Street Office (Street Office: jiedao banshichu, 街道办事处, government representative office at grassroots level) and the Centre for Urban Planning and Design, Peking University in late 2005, showed a monthly per capita income of 574.8 Yuan (about 57.48 GBP). However, this may not accurately reflect the general income level, since the questionnaire was handed out and collected during the daytime, so it was very likely that most people available to complete the survey were either the jobless or the elderly. However, be that as it may, just like any other hutong neighbourhood, South Gong has a poverty issue.

According to my informants, prior to 2003 South Gong was rarely visited by either tourists or Beijingers. Shops here were small and simple, selling basic things such as cigarette, Yanjing beer (a local beer, a bottle of which normally sold at 1.5 Yuan (15 Pence) in 1999), salt, soy sauce, instant noodles, locally produced yogurt and fruits. There were also affordable restaurants and barbers. A light meal of noodle soup was said to be around 2-3 Yuan (about 20-30 pence) a bowl. There were not many businesses, and most were owned by hutong dwellers catering for their own people. The Pass By Bar/Restaurant, the then only bar in the neighbourhood which opened in 1999, was one of the very few businesses targeting visitors and that was thought to be quite up-market.

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Because of SARS, the adjacent Backsea (houhai, 后海) lakefront rose to replace the Sanlitun (三里屯) embassy district as a more desirable locality concentrating restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars. Principally this was because it offered open air facilities and was felt to be healthier when the highly infectious SARS was claiming human lives on a daily basis. Without any major river flowing through it, and being far from the sea, water has always been a treasure to Beijing. The Backsea area was the location of many residences of princes and high government officials in the imperial age. It was surrounded by high status siheyuan complexes usually comprising several yards.

However, many of my informants mentioned that Backsea had declined because the water was once heavily polluted, and it was not until the SARS outbreak that people came to realise that the enjoyable lake area had been a popular entertainment and meeting point in former times. This awareness added to the modern popularity and prosperity of the Backsea, which obviously became more and more expensive for ordinary people. Gradually, similar, but smaller and cheaper, businesses spread to the neighbouring South Gong Alley, where commerce was indiscernibly integrated into the traditional hutong environment and enjoyed success.

This organic growth was soon to be affected by the local government in late 2005. Perceiving that South Gong had enormous potential for economic and cultural development, the Street Office contracted the planning and design centre of the Peking University to work out a development plan for a funding application for submission to a higher tier of government. The application was made in the name of the Olympics. The idea was to transform the South Gong Alley, a historical and cultural heritage site (so designated by the Municipality in 1993), into a street representative of Beijing culture for the 2008 Olympic Games, in support of the proposed Olympic slogan of ‘New Beijing, New Olympics’ (xin Beijing, xin aoyun, 新北京，新奥运, which was later changed to ‘New Beijing, Great Olympics). The neighbourhood as a whole was to become a showcase.

The plan was approved and a huge government investment was secured. The state was eager to present a modern image of ancient Beijing to impress an estimated 550,000 foreign visitors. ‘Modern’, understood as coming from the West, is related to positive connotations of being developed and wealthy, and therefore decent and privileged. It is seen as the desired destination, at which all cultures and societies should eventually arrive. The idea of becoming modern appeals powerfully to the Chinese. In a sense, ‘New Beijing’ means a modern Beijing. The culture which ‘New Beijing’ presents is accordingly a new culture in which residual traditional aspects have been modernized.

‘Old and traditional’ are usually reminders of the dark ages of the late Qing and Republican Era (1912-1949), when China fell far behind and was weak and unable to resist foreign aggression and interference. Until recently the national stigma of the ‘Sick Man of East Asia’ (dongya beingfu, 东亚病夫) and the ‘Hundred Year

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Humiliation’ (bainian chir, 百年耻辱) that marked that period of history still strongly haunted the Chinese imagination. (Luo 2010: 777-779) There was a strong desire to transform everything old and traditional into the new and modern. Paradoxically, everyone seemed certain and proud of the fact that they were part of one of the world’s oldest cultures and civilizations, but one whose meanings remained unclear to most hutong people despite their continuing to live the largely unchanging siheyuan-and-hutong pattern of life but without much awareness of its history and symbolism.

‘Cosmetic surgery’ was practiced to bring a new look, while its structure as a Yuan product remained. To serve this purpose, the façade of many houses facing the South Gong Alley was pulled down and rebuilt in the same traditional style. Some houses were entirely rebuilt. Close to the southern entrance, a two-story building constructed in the Republican era was bulldozed and re-built on the same site with exactly the same appearance and size but using new bricks and cement. The old could be easily and swiftly transformed into a new old face, but with a changed identity, what William Morris would have characterised as a “feeble and lifeless forgery” (Donovan 2008: 9, quoting Kelvin 1984: 359).

Partitions were installed between the squat toilets in all the seventy-six communal bathrooms, as traditionally there was no private toilet in the residential courtyards, and seventy percent of hutong residents still have to share communal toilets even today. Electrical heating was installed to replace the traditional coal stoves with their danger of fire and carbon monoxide poisoning. House walls facing all the alleys were freshly re-painted, and alleys widened, paved and cleaned. Redevelopment was not all bad, and at least the infrastructure was obviously improved. This did bring a tinge of modernity to the old hutong that had remained more or less unchanged for many years.

The changes that occurred in the months leading up to the Olympics were far more dramatic, turning the entire neighbourhood, and especially the main alley, into a chaotic construction site (see Figure 2). Alleys were re-paved; sidewalks re-dug to arrange or re-arrange sewage pipes; Electricity cables went underground and the old overhead ones and the poles were removed. There seemed much repetition of work done before, and much work which could have been sorted at once was carried out separately on several occasions. For instance, pavements were dug up several times to lay sewage pipes and electricity cables and to re-pave respectively. Many residents complained about this lack of efficiency, as well as the waste of money, noise, air pollution and the inconvenience caused by blocked roads.

When all the major rebuilding projects were completed on schedule prior to the 2008 Olympics, the Street Office started to check the details of doors, windows and signs to

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Figure 2. The South Gong Alley was turned into a construction site in the last few months leading up to the Olympics. Photograph by Jialing LUO, June 2008.

ensure their compatibility with the overall traditional environment of the South Gong Alley and neighbourhood. For instance, all the shop windows needed to be wooden and of one of the approved patterns and designs. The grocers’ shops had to put out signs with the shop names engraved in artistic Chinese calligraphy. Anything that was considered not to fit in with the general traditional style of the main alley would be replaced with something more appropriate. The cost was fully covered by government. By the end of June, when all construction, refurbishment and decoration had to stop according to the timetable, a perfectly new traditional street was in place. Due to attention to both overall style and features and details, a distinctive culture and tradition became overwhelmingly visual, an ancient lady dressed in newly- manufactured fabric of ancient design. South Gong did look much tidier, even attractive. The owner of the Pass By Bar, a former artist specialized in oil painting, when interviewed by the foreign media company Danwei (work unit, 单位), commented that the whole phenomenon felt a bit ‘contrived’.

As part of the market district in the Yuan Dynasty city, South Gong was primarily used as a residential neighbourhood with businesses restricted to the main alley, while the sixteen sub-alleys functioned as dwelling quarters. This tradition was restored, strengthened, and apparently amplified. The houses on both sides of the South Gong Alley were now turned into restaurants, cafés, bars and souvenir shops, types of touristic businesses promoted by the Street Office. The Chinese shops were selling ‘traditional’ products, such as qipao (旗袍, ‘Mandarin dress’, which actually originated from Manchu dress), Chinese knots (中国结, ‘lucky charms’), and Chinese

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porcelain. Exotic elements were greatly encouraged. Western cafés, advertising cappuccino, espresso, caffè Latte, English pudding, Italian Tiramisu and providing free wireless internet access for lap-top users, triumphed over Chinese teahouses. Restaurants were international, specialising in pizza and pasta, fish and chips, Indian curry and such like. Only two Chinese restaurants were to be found there. The busier one was a fusion of Chinese food restyled for Western taste, jointly run by a Chinese and an Englishman. Bars offer Heineken, Carlsberg, whisky and live jazz rather than Wuliangye (五粮液, Five Grains Liquor), Erguotou (二锅头, a popular cheap Chinese liquor) and Karaoke. The only guesthouse on the street was a Western-style hostel called ‘Peking Down Town Backpackers Accommodation’, rather than the local style rest house (zhaodaisuo, 招待所) that you would expect in hutong. All these businesses operated in Chinese bungalows with traditional exterior decorations such as red lanterns.

The strategy was to revitalise the street through its culture (wenhua xing jie zhanlue, 文化兴街战略), making it part of the culture and tourism industry, on the basis of the preservation of historical architecture and the maintenance of continuity with traditional culture. The Street Office’s short-term plan for 2006-2010 aims to transform the South Gong Alley into a ‘street of bar culture with hutong characteristics’ (hutong tese jiuba wenhua jie, 胡同特色酒吧文化街) through the medium of the Olympics, and to make it known both home and abroad.

The contradiction was obvious. While traditional culture was used as the source for the redevelopment, this redevelopment led to the street being characterised by Western-style bars, cafés and restaurants, and referred to as ‘bar street’. The stated purpose was to present traditional Beijing culture, but the preoccupation with creating a foreigner-friendly environment clearly conflicts with this. There was a belief that people intrinsically expect to experience familiar things, especially when they are far away from home. Hence, foreign visitors were thought very likely to miss the familiar food and drinks from back home, so a ‘bar culture with hutong characteristics’ was planned and created. It reflects the Chinese expression of ‘making/creating a culture’ (dazao wenhua, 打造文化), which is widely-used on state media and largely taken for granted. The result is neither Chinese nor Western, but a hybrid culture.

As expected, South Gong was soon swarming with both foreign and Chinese visitors. Restaurants were extremely busy. Some of them kept open until early morning when there were still customers in the summer of 2008. However, it must be surprising to the planners that more often than not, it was the Chinese who were seen to eat pizza and spaghetti with knife and fork at the Pass By Bar/Restaurant, while the foreigners enjoyed eating chicken with peanuts (gongbao jiding, 宫保鸡丁) and spicy toufu (mapo doufu, 麻婆豆腐) using chopsticks at the Chinese restaurant Luogu (Gong and Drum, 锣鼓). Nobody seemed to opt for what they were familiar with, though some coffee-addicts did find it a relief to have a selection of coffee available. In any event, the South Gong turned out to be a successful business model, though not exactly in

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the way in which it was planned.

The idea of traditional culture, around which the whole redevelopment was planned, remained only in the original layout and renovated architecture of the neighbourhood which functioned merely as a backdrop, against which exotic businesses and tourism boomed. The South Gong was alien in different ways to both foreigners and Chinese, and this turned out to be part of its charm for both.The hutong residents at first marveled at the splendid appearance and prosperous scene that replaced the staleness of their old neighbourhood. A sense of pride emerged at the idea of living in a popular location with all the glamour of a film set. It was fresh and enjoyable just to walk around the same alleys, now taking on a new look.

However, when the novelty wore off, they came to realise that they could not return to their previous quiet, low-cost life any more. The bar street was teeming with visitors both day and night. Prices for everything soared far beyond their reach. They had to go outside the neighbourhood to find cheaper shops. While most visitors expressed feeling at home in South Gong, many residents spoke of the disruption of normal life and felt a disconnection with what was going on. They mentioned that they had not known what was to happen before, and were increasingly puzzled about what they were experiencing now. They found the changes exciting and fun, but not real, and they did not expect them to be real. At the end of the day they just wanted to get back to normal life. They started to miss the shabby but affordable noodle soup restaurants, the cheap barbers, and the delicious hot roast sweet potatoes sold from the mobile tricycle vendors. It was only after the old and familiar things had disappeared once and for all that the fear of alienation began to creep up on the hutong residents.

Apparently, there was not enough participation from the local people, who were not consulted beforehand about how the area was to be changed. They said that they simply heard rumours and saw the construction and refurbishing work going on. A few shop-owners mentioned being invited to a meeting organised by the Street Office in the summer of 2006, when they were briefed on the redevelopment plan. Unfortunately, according to one of the participants, the meeting ended in huge dissatisfaction because they were only asked to be there to be informed about what had already been planned, not to have their voices heard. Since then no further meetings have ever been arranged.

The Olympics seemed to act as a catalyst for change. As well as redeveloping the infrastructure of South Gong, it also involved the Community Centres in organising residents in neighbourhood watch schemes and street cleaning, and putting up Olympic posters. These activities were meant to unite people, instil national pride in them and strengthen their identity formed by a common hutong culture and tradition. These duties were carried out voluntarily and with enthusiasm and patriotism, but the intention to consolidate a sense of identity was scarcely achieved. People did not feel that they were seriously considered to be part of the neighbourhood, still less of the

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Olympics, because they thought they were always kept in the dark about what was to happen to them, or around them. Unable to be recruited as formal volunteers,6 they were happy to work as informal ones to contribute to the Games, since it was such a privilege to be connected with the Olympics in whatever possible way. Rather than the formal version of volunteer’s T-shirts that many young student volunteers wore, the hutongers wore a different type of uniform with Yanjing Beer advertising on it during the Olympics, thereby distinguishing them from their official counterparts.

Overwhelmed by their suddenly ‘prestigious’ neighbourhood, people found it difficult to identify with the once familiar everyday environment, where life had been experienced and shared through a network of courtyards and alleys. It was now all westernised and commercialised, becoming a spokesman for the seeming splendour of a hybrid Beijing culture, of which they were no longer a part. It gradually became clear to them that they had, in a way, lost their hutong, though perhaps it had never been their hutong in any real sense. However, it had long become the habitus in Bourdieu’s term, or a tradition more generally, that the hutong residents’ sense of community stemmed from their dealing with, and thinking about, real familiar people and concrete things organised by the hutong on a daily basis, rather than their having to envision theoretically “the image of their communion” (Anderson 1983: 6). They had not needed to imagine a community in which to live. They had lived a tangible hutong life that did not require any imagination until now when that reality was reduced to a mere image, representing a culture transformed for the Olympics and the modernisation of China.

VII. New Beijing, new culture

Surrounding the remaining patches of low-lying hutong is a visually new Beijing filled with high-rise buildings, the result of a “bigger-higher-flashier mentality” (Gluckman 2004) of urban development understood as western and modern. The changes in the Sough Gong were moderate compared to what was going on outside the surviving hutong areas, where there was much more space and freedom to imagine and create a modern image of Beijing. The idea was to, at least catch up with, if not surpass, the West, and to signify the return of an old civilization. Driven by this mindset, architecture, rather than producing art to charm and please, was politicised to impress and thrill. This led to the emergence of a series of alien buildings, mostly works of Western designers who, rather than the Beijingers/Chinese, unintentionally played an important role in defining the new culture of Beijing.

Beijing was turned into a field where Western architects tested their bold and costly ideas, being unable to do so in their own countries. Amongst the many avant-garde buildings “in the bland language of the international modern” (Mitter 2008: 136), the

6 In theory, anyone could apply to be a volunteer. However, the formal voluntary work was mainly organised at universities.

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Figure 3. The National Grand Theatre has been nicknamed ‘giant egg’. Photograph by Jialing LUO, July 2008.

most controversial were the CCTV (China Central Television) tower and the National Grand Theatre, both astronomically expensive at approximately 5 billion Yuan (about 500 million GBP) and 2.69 billion Yuan (about 269 million GBP) respectively. The former, the state broadcaster, was ridiculed for its shape as ‘big pants’ (dakucha, 大裤 衩). A fire caused by illegal fireworks on the Lantern Festival of 2nd February 2009 added an extra repair cost of around 160 million Yuan (16 million GBP). Its progress has been far behind schedule, and it is still not completed. The latter, the national opera house, or ‘giant egg’ (judan, 巨蛋, see Figure 3) as it was popularly termed, rose from a man-made lake near the imperial Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. It was regarded as another eyesore by many people, who observed that it did not have even a minimum degree of coherence with its general environment, and should have been located elsewhere, if it was necessary to build it at all.

Ole Scheeren, Director of the Dutch company OMA (the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) that designed the CCTV tower, discerned a “radically” changed mentality in China: China now dares to do things of an unconventional “scale and impact” that Europe and the States would hesitate to do (Gluckman 2004). This irrational attitude to risk taking, combined with the ability to mobilise huge resources towards any state project, exploded between 2001and 2008, years of the so-called ‘Olympic frenzy’. The burning ambition to challenge the impossible and to work miracles could be seen as an irrational response to both rapid economic growth and drastic social changes in a country that had largely remained static since the 18th

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century. The aspiration to re-enter the new world order as a modern nation state is understandable. The irrationality lies in the haste, the lack of reverence for history and tradition and of balanced planning, as well as insufficient participation of the people. Beijing only allowed itself seven years from 2001 to 2008 to reinvent itself for the Olympics, a time when the whole world was expected to gaze at the city and China with admiration. The new Beijing was meant to be the greatest showpiece project on earth, but the result reveals the tension between the impatient demand for instant gratification and cool, calm rationality.

The idea was only a visually clear-cut modern Beijing can be easily and immediately connected and classified with world cities. To achieve this, Beijing had to minimise its reference to a history and tradition embedded in the grey tile-roof siheyuan and hutong, which shared nothing in common with the glamorous metropolitan cities of the world. Beijing has to look different from what it had been. So does the Olympics when it comes to China. The original slogan that Beijing proposed when bidding for the 2008 Olympics was ‘New Beijing, New Olympics’ (xin Beijing, xin aoyun, 新北 京，新奥运). It was said that ‘New Olympics’ was not approved by the IOC (the International Olympic Committee), who are proud of their ancient Olympics and consider that “Reverence for Ancient Olympia was essential to the modern revival” (Kyle 2007: 99).

In fact, the West in general and Europe in particular favours the old, ‘the fabulous old’, as they often say. The history and tradition attached to anything old, such as the Olympics and the hutong, is deeply appreciated. In the UK, historical architecture and towns are exclusively preserved and buildings little more than thirty years old are eligible for listing if they meet criteria. In contrast, Beijing, the once imperial capital made up of siheyuan and hutong of such exquisite style and substance, has to take on a new look to assert itself as new and modern. In this respect, China does not seem to be at ease with its own tradition. Following objections by the IOC, ‘New Olympics’ had to be changed to ‘Great Olympics’ in English, but in Chinese the Olympics remain as new (still ‘New Olympics’, xinaoyun, 新奥运) as Beijing.

When the reinvention of Beijing, through the medium of the Olympics, is viewed as cultural innovation, as discussed by Debord, whether seen as “bold” or “brazen” (Gluckman 2004), its battle with tradition is evident and the result unequivocal. Debord sees “the struggle between tradition and innovation” as a fundamental matter of “the internal development of the culture of historical societies” with the triumph of innovation over tradition “permanent”. (Debord 1995: 130) I would argue that this winning is political, as popular culture, although “not inherently political at all” (Eagleton 2000: 122) is politicized once it becomes a tool capable of being used to promote certain ideology.

A politicised culture can be planned and is planned rather than anything else. The new culture of Beijing acts as a powerful ideological force to transform once and for all

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what already existed there in such a swift fashion that does not allow any time at all to come up with other options. Sooner or later, the fever will go and rationality will return, but it will probably be too late then. What disappears with this movement is more than architecture and urban planning, but a tradition that will not be restored, as Beijing can never again be built from scratch as Kublai Khan once did. The Mongol emperor adopted the idealised Chinese imperial city plan in order to follow “an established precedent” (Steinhardt 1988: 72) that China today is so determined to give up. Far from an extension of the Chinese “imperial prestige” (Ibid.) that Kublai Khan admired and continued, the new culture is but a deconstruction of it.

Conclusion

Culture, the ‘most complex whole’, is abstract and unstable without a context. So Clifford Geertz proposes that we need to put culture within a context in order to describe it “intelligibly”, by which he means “thickly” (Geertz 1973: 14). He does so with the culture of Balinese cockfight, which has become a must read on the reading list of all anthropology students. However, there is culture that is difficult to define, and thus beyond description. Aspects of Chinese culture have often seemed to be of this elusive and baffling type when viewed from outside China, and indeed on many occasions have seemed incomprehensible even to the Chinese people themselves, especially at a hectic historical moment when things are dramatically changing towards an unforeseeable future. Many traditions are hastily rejected to allow the intrusion of alien cultural elements, vaguely defined as modern, before they become more explicit as to what exactly the new culture is, what it should be like, and if a new culture can be introduced or invented to accommodate a changed social landscape underpinned by an entrenched tradition. More importantly, why does Beijing, or China, with a rich cultural heritage, need a brand new culture? This paper has attempted to establish the answers to those questions through exploring the hutong and the culture beyond, in the context of dynastic and contemporary Beijing, and especially the Olympics.

Rana Mitter (2008: 134) thinks that “one of the most visible” changes in “cultural forms” which occurred to China in the transition “from premodern to modern” is city planning. The visually new Beijing is primarily about a new Beijing culture, one that largely disconnects itself from the past, while linking itself to other mega cities to achieve an intended international status. However, culture does not mean “some grand, unilinear narrative of universal humanity, but a diversity of specific life-forms, each with its own peculiar laws of evolution.”7 In this sense, Beijing has lost its identity through flattening large areas of hutong to give way to the omnipresent high-rises. Hutong is an essential component of imperial architecture and planning. More importantly, it represents a distinctive way of life shared and passed down through generations of peoples who have lived in the traditional neighbourhoods, despite a varied ethnic background, which only adds to the richness and diversity of the culture.

7 Eagleton analyzes Herder in The Idea of Culture, 12.

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As discussed, the old Beijing was constructed in accordance with the Chinese classics as part of the Mongol’s “imperial program” (Steinhardt 1988: 72). This continuous tradition of building and planning involving a history of more than four thousand years was expected to stand the test of all time. However, it could not survive when faced with the practical political demands of the present day. While “a brand-new Beijing, with flashy architecture and a host of innovative infrastructure” was ready for the 2008 Olympics (Gluckman 2008), the ancient capital had been reduced to another homogeneous concrete forest, based on China’s assumptions about the West and about modernity, in order to impress the Westerners, although this aspect of West remains controversial in the West itself.

The surviving hutong of South Gong, substantially rebuilt into a bar street, has lost its original charm as part of the Yuan Dadu. It now displays restored traditional Chinese buildings, a forgery in Morris’ term, while introducing and promoting a Western life style to attract tourists. Certainly, foreign visitors are impressed by the degree of modernity of this oldest civilization, but the fact that modernity is put in place at the sacrifice of a precious cultural legacy diminishes its reception and popularity. There is no doubt that Beijing would have been much more fascinating to foreigners if its historically constructed culture and tradition had ever been adequately preserved and exhibited. On the other hand, a new culture, when invented as an ideological tool to showcase and create an intended image and status, bears no value and depth, and runs the risk of becoming what Debord (1995: 131) describes as “the meaning of an insufficiently meaningful world”, in which we all live.

Evidenced by the shifting images of Beijing in imperial times and in Olympic-era China, it could be argued that culture can be, and has always been, planned to change what is around us, and eventually what is inside us and how we live. It seems to contradict Williams’ (1963: 321) assertion that “a culture, essentially, is unplannable”. What Williams suggests is a “collectively made” (Eagleton 2000: 119) common culture, stressing the “growth” of a culture, “the growth of consciousness” of that culture, and “the tending of natural growth” (Williams 1963: 320-321). This common culture is a popular culture, involving full participation of and collaboration with ordinary people, whose diversity, complexity and unpredictability determines that the making of culture is a natural and long process, as well as an “unplannable” “unknown experience” (Ibid). The consciously planned new Beijing is not a common culture in Williams’ sense. It is more like Eliot’s type. Eliot thinks “a culture is common even when its making is reserved to the privileged few”, and “then taken over and passively lived by the many” (Eagleton 2000: 119).The implication of an inegalitarian dominant culture may well explain why Beijing is more often remembered as a city of its ‘ruler-planners Khubilai Khan (1215-1294), Emperor Yongle (1360-1424), or Chairman Mao (1893-1976)’ (Steinhardt 1990: 1), rather than its real designers and protectors such as Liu Bingzhong and Liang Sicheng, or, needless to say, its ordinary Chinese, Mongol and Manchu citizens.

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The state planned culture either continues (as in the Yuan period) or disrupts (as in contemporary China) the traditions of the people, who have to live with what has been decided for them. Cultural changes have to happen when a society develops, but they do not have to shift paradigm if not fundamentally necessary. Change should be permitted to happen naturally, and should allow the participation of all those who are affected or will be affected, without external intervention unless it is badly out of balance. Irrational cultural changes driven by the need of the moment are bound to “disappear”, because “that culture itself embodies a call for the victory of the rational” (Debord 1995: 131).

More of an expression of ideological interests, the new image of Beijing presented during the Olympics is debatable. What is certain is that while the construction of Beijing eight hundred years ago was part of the empire programme of the Mongols (Steinhardt 1988: 72), transforming Beijing today is meant to symbolise return of the Chinese empire. The emergence of new Beijing is once again a political discourse. Chinese traditions were once the best resort for Kublai Khan to legitimate his alien rule in China. Today’s shift from this tradition to the modern practice of the architectural exploitation of city space is a contemporary version of such nation building. Ironically, as unstable as politics is, it is the even more ambiguous ideas of culture which have proved most effective in describing changing social patterns.

To sum up, as widely acknowledged, the Beijing 2008 Olympics was a success. Its ceremonies, organization, security work and athletes’ performance were all impressive. The Olympics-related education in terms of Olympism, the Olympic Movement and the history of the Olympics, etc was also well arranged and conducted. 8 It was without doubt that China made enormous efforts to cooperate with the IOC to deliver a high quality Olympics, together with its accompanying cultural and educational programmes. However, this should not mask the problems that I discuss here, since reverence for tradition and heritage, acknowledging and cherishing a unique culture to keep it alive, and the participation of all are important aspects of general humanity essential to both Olympism and nation building. A nation draws strength from its culture rooted in history and tradition. Nation building is, to a great extent, a cultural matter.

8 Susan Brownell discusses Beijing’s Olympic education in her article ‘Beijing’s Olympic Education Programme: Re-thinking Suzhi Education, Re-Imagining an International China’. China Quarterly, 2009, 197: 44-63.

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