Gulou (Drum Tower in English) is a centuries old tower in central Beijing that happily lends its name to the surrounding neighborhood. Together with the Bell Tower directly to the north, the Drum Tower was used for centuries to announce the time to Beijing's residents before western timekeeping made it obsolete after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Some of the hutongs surrounding the Drum and Bell Towers date back to the Yuan Dynasty and give this otherwise bland megacity a few points for livability and originality.
Sadly the drums are eerily silent now. The neighborhood named after the city's largest timepiece appears to have run out of the valuable commodity it kept track of for centuries. The historic neighborhood that surrounds the towers is one of the city's main tourist destinations because it remains so well-preserved, but the city seems intent on changing this fact.
Beijing might be my temporary home, but outside the second ring road it is a lame, desolate cultural wasteland. Imagine a never ending vertical suburb that is unlivable and lacks any sort of defining characteristics. Places like Gulou are few and far between in mainland China. Most people from mainland China seem oblivious to the fact that development and construction don't necessarily make a neighborhood more livable or raise quality of life. As a result, you'll find many housing developments in China that are tens of stories tall, but still miles away from anywhere. Living in a neighborhood like Gulou is far closer to what life is like in the United States where convenience is king. Even if most of the structures are older than dirt, at least a list of errands doesn't take 10 hours
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But now it looks like the neighborhood's days are numbered (Probably numbered 4 because it sounds like death in Chinese). Last week the Drum and Bell Coffee Shop, a Beijing institution known for its great Americano, closed without warning and is slated for demolition soon. You might be wondering why the Chinese Government is demolishing one of the city's most historic neighborhoods, and the answer might surprise you. It is planning to build a Disneyland-esque copy of the current neighborhood. That is right, tear down the old buildings and simply reconstruct copies of them in their place.
Officially called a "restoration", the destruction of a historic neighborhood in Beijing is nothing new. Both Qianmen and the Houhai district went through "restoration", with Qianmen now resembling a Chinese version of Disneyland's Main Street USA, complete with every bland American, Taiwanese and Japanese chain-store that you can imagine. The funny thing about it (at least from the perspective of foreigners) is that they destroy the entire historic neighborhood to rebuild a cartoon version of what stood before. And as you can guess, in mainland China, there isn't any public dissent against this travesty.
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| Beijing tour guide pointing out Gulou |
Beijing might be my temporary home, but outside the second ring road it is a lame, desolate cultural wasteland. Imagine a never ending vertical suburb that is unlivable and lacks any sort of defining characteristics. Places like Gulou are few and far between in mainland China. Most people from mainland China seem oblivious to the fact that development and construction don't necessarily make a neighborhood more livable or raise quality of life. As a result, you'll find many housing developments in China that are tens of stories tall, but still miles away from anywhere. Living in a neighborhood like Gulou is far closer to what life is like in the United States where convenience is king. Even if most of the structures are older than dirt, at least a list of errands doesn't take 10 hours
.
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| Old ladies playing mahjong in the rubble |
Officially called a "restoration", the destruction of a historic neighborhood in Beijing is nothing new. Both Qianmen and the Houhai district went through "restoration", with Qianmen now resembling a Chinese version of Disneyland's Main Street USA, complete with every bland American, Taiwanese and Japanese chain-store that you can imagine. The funny thing about it (at least from the perspective of foreigners) is that they destroy the entire historic neighborhood to rebuild a cartoon version of what stood before. And as you can guess, in mainland China, there isn't any public dissent against this travesty.
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