Old Beijing's Goldfish Ponds

BEIJING WATER ORAL HISTORY SERIES MY HOME AND WATER: A people’s ACCOUNT Old Beijing’s Goldfish Ponds By Wang Jian Translation by Madeleine Ross and Fang Li Below is the seventh in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to Wang Jian by Wang Zhidong, an 80-year-old physicist and lifelong resident of Beijing. eventy years ago, when I was very In earlier times, candidates for the civil service young, we lived right near a place called who came to Beijing to sit the exams all loved Lucao yuan or Reed-Grass Gardens in spending time enjoying themselves in that SChongwenmen District. You might ask why it area. Right up until the 1950s people were still was called Lucao yuan. The reason is that in coming into the laneways to sell goldfish in those days there was a large lake with a lot of buckets attached to the ends of their carrying reeds in that area. Xianyu kou or Fresh Fish poles – it was one of Beijing’s famous old sights. Junction was close to our home. Many of the old The precious varieties of goldfish to be found in hutong (laneways) were arranged on an angle Beihai and Zhongshan parks had originally come because they followed the direction of the old from these goldfish ponds. river, and all the houses had been built along its banks. All the goldfish bowls you saw then were the shallow kind, but if you want to know how deep My mother often took me back to my the goldfish ponds were, I’ll tell you a story. After grandfather’s place. He lived on Xiaoshi Da Jie my wife and I got married we were really busy, so (Small Market Avenue), in the Jingzhong Miao we sent our three- or four-year-old son to live at (Loyalty Temple) area, where there was a very his grandparent’s house near the goldfish ponds. well-known lake about half an acre in size. The What really worried my mother was the thought manager had used earthen dykes to divide it up that her grandson would go over to the ponds into smaller square-shaped ponds – the original by himself. One day, when he was nowhere to be Goldfish Ponds – where he raised all sorts of seen, the neighbours said he had probably gone different kinds of goldfish. Willow trees lined all over to the ponds. My mother ran over there four sides of the lake, and there was also a small after him as fast as she could, forgetting to take grove of about forty of them in the southeast her walking stick, despite the fact that she had corner, some trees so large that a person couldn’t bound feet. She found him playing happily on put their arms right round them. Every summer one of the dykes, but she didn’t dare call out to the leaves would create a huge patch of shade on him for fear he’d get distracted and fall into the the ground beneath the trees where pedi-cab and water, so the ponds must have been quite deep. handcart drivers often took a nap around midday. I remember that they used hoses to change the It was also a place where kids went to catch water in the ponds and the hawkers who sold pet cicadas! Old Beijing‘s Goldfish Ponds | Beijing Water Oral History No. 7 | July 2008 fish used siphons to draw water out of the ponds pond, with the reeds growing as tall as a man. to fill their fishbowls. Water automatically seeped Houses lined the long strips of road, just like back in and filled the ponds because the water ridges in fields. table was so high in those days. The Beijing Institute of Industry was established Only the poor and destitute lived in the vicinity in 1951. Having already graduated, I took up a of the goldfish ponds: pedi-cab drivers, people teaching position there. That whole area, which with things to sell in their carrying pole baskets, also included the Capital Stadium and Beijing people selling fish as pets, and people like the Zoo, was called Bagou. There was a huge pond rickshaw man Lucky Camel, in Lao She’s novel.1 outside the wall of the Stadium and Zoo, and the The most beautiful fish ponds as well as the Gaoliang River flowed past the walls surrounding smelliest drains were all in that area. Going the Institute of Industry. The river is still there southwest from the goldfish ponds, you’d get to now, but it’s so narrow that only a tiny strip Rushes Ditch – an area where a sewage drain in of water is left – it’s actually the place where old Beijing ran alongside the old river bed. As it Dowager Empress Cixi would get out of her was a fairly low-lying area with a few bodies of sedan chair and onto a boat when she used to go water, more and more fish breeders tended to from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace. flock there. It stunk to high heaven because of After getting into a boat she had to travel less all the open drains and ditches full of rushes – it than half a kilometre to get to Baishi Qiao (White was the open sore of Beijing at the time. After Stone Bridge) – it’s still called a bridge but there’s the communist party came to power, one of their not a drop of water to be seen under it any more. first projects was to transform Rushes Ditch. The goldfish ponds were all filled in during Going further south, you’d come to Sanli He. the Cultural Revolution because the river had Actually, there was another Sanli He, (Three Li already dried up. Now it’s totally covered in tall River) near Jingzhong Temple in Zhushi Kou buildings. south of Qianmen (Front Gate), reached by walking south from the city for three li, which In the 1940s, I was a student at Qinghua is how it got its name. The area was dredged University. The campus was surrounded to create a channel for water from the moat to by imperial residences and parks, like flow. Further on it was called Shui Daozi (Water Yuanmingyuan and Yiheyuan, (the old and new Channel), a name it still retains, and in the past, Summer Palaces). How come so much beautiful that area was nothing but a tract of water. You scenery was all located in that one area? It know, when I was teaching at the university, was because there were springs everywhere. there were streams crisscrossing the whole city – Just listen to the well-known names: Yuquan that’s how plentiful water was in Beijing in those Shan (Jade Spring Hill), Wanquan He (Ten days. Thousand Springs River) and Daoxiang Yuan (Rice Fragrance Park). When I was a student, You must have heard of Guo Shoujing. He was this whole western area of Beijing was water, an eminent 13th century scientist in the Yuan including Xiyuan and Bago, and there were reed Dynasty who worked out how to calculate pi beds everywhere. If you walked in from Haidian so it was possible to make accurate numerical South Road it was all just a crescent-shaped reed calculations to a number of decimal places. Even before the Yuan capital had been established, he was able to foresee the difficulty they would 1 Lao She (1899-1966) was a novelist and have with transporting tribute grain2 north to the playwright born and raised in Bejing. His original name was Shu Qingchun, and his courtesy name was She Yu. He is perhaps best known for his novel Camel 2 Grain that was for the exclusive use of the Xiangzi or Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse. Royal Family. 2 Old Beijing‘s Goldfish Ponds | Beijing Water Oral History No. 7 | July 2008 capital. He spent more than two years making a more drastic than in the previous one thousand survey of the springs and rivers systems as well years. as taking exact measurements of the terrain in northwest Beijing. He discovered that water could Beijing’s lack of water will have the direct effect be directed west from a very plentiful spring on of inhibiting Beijing’s development. As early the slightly elevated Phoenix Hill, around the as the 1950s, the government was aware of the foothills of the Western Hills and from there importance of the water supply but unfortunately toward the southeast, collecting water along the solution they decided upon was to build the entire route from all the little springs, then reservoirs. In 1954, Guanting Reservoir was built feeding into Wengshan Bo (now called Kunming with the added benefit that it would assist with Lake) and eventually following the Gaoliang flood prevention. In 1957, another location was River into a holding pond. This irrigation hastily sought out, and the Shisanling (Ming channel followed the rules of nature rather than Tombs) Reservoir was built, but a few years later obeying the dictates of man, and was the basis it was discovered to be leaking water. At the end of the Yuan capital’s settlement and expansion: of the 1950s yet another reservoir was built, the a source of plentiful and clean water. It was not Miyun, but still there wasn’t enough water. In only transportation to the capital that benefitted the 1960s they excavated the Yongding River from this water – it was also what the ordinary diversion canal, later the Jingmi diversion canal, people of the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties but the problem remained unsolved.

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