From left to right: Fabulous, How Great is the Mass of the Poor, Barbarian Driver,Beijing Awakening Pictorial,1909

Street Life at Da Zha Lan

By Ou Ning

Urban China, 2006, Shanghai

Da Zha Lan is presently one of the areas in Beijing experiencing the most intense level of resident removal and street-level change. Following a new planning standard and benefit distribution principle, the government is reconfiguring urban space in the district. People have expressed amazement at the large-scale disappearance of traditional hutongs in the area and the devastation of many old homes. The changing scene in Da Zha Lan offers a classic portrait of moves to expand and renew urban areas across China.

People have grown accustomed to reflecting on the earth-shaking changes evident everywhere in cities in China. However, they overlook those aspects about them that are unchangeable, that are not subject to qualitative change even as the streets change quantitatively. They are like objects that sink and remain there for years until they have hardened into indestructible truths. Da Zha Lan is one example. Over the last century historical events large and small have unfolded here, but the street life has flowed beneath like a slow and relentless undercurrent.

Beijing’s Awakening Pictorial, launched in 1909, the first year of the reign of Emperor Xuantong, published 60 issues in its short run of less than six months. While it lacked the influence of other late-Qing pictorials such as Shanghai’s Dianshizai Pictorial, Awakening left vivid details about urban life in the Beijing of its day. The pictorial’s printing press was located just south of Yingtaoxie Road in Da Zha Lan district, and its illustrator often drew inspiration from street life in the area.

This month on the night of the Seventeenth, as someone passed through the Xiao Li Sha Mao Hutong, a burst of fragrance suddenly passed over his face, a person of graceful manner. As it happened, it was a man with a forefringe of hair, his face painted with a layer of powder, his attire fabulous beyond words. This, after all, is an era of competition, and we can not let such a style be exclusive to prostitutes. If this bit of news had occurred at Hanjiatan, we would not have thought to make a drawing of it. (“Fabulous”, illustrated by Li Juchai, Awakening Pictorial, Volume 31, November 20, 1909)

The Xiao Li Sha Mao Hutong referred to in the passage above is now called Xiao Li Hutong. Hanjiatan is called today Huanjia Hutong. Both were once listed among the “Eight Hutongs”, renowned for their whorehouses.

Ever since opera troupes from Anhui province came to the capital in the late 18th century, the Da Zha Lan area has been known as a gathering place for performers of Peking Opera (which is thought to originate with troupes from Anhui). It was not uncommon to glimpse cross-dressers on the streets. The artists of Awakening Pictorial found nothing out of sorts about the practice, but on the contrary expressed their appreciation. In an age that encouraged fair competition, they felt, there was no reason to let prostitutes have the upper hand in fashion.

Mainstream Chinese society has always emphasized conformity, while civil society allows more room for alternatives to the mainstream. This is why today’s Urban Love Island, a club at the eastern end of Beijing’s Glazed Tile Factory Road, has become a famous hangout for the city’s gay population. The Urban Love Island has periodic gay parties, but specific times are kept secret from those outside. Each party features drag shows and original short dance and drama performances. At times, aside from entertainment, they offer current news shows that mock mainstream society. Subcultures of this kind are the product of spontaneity in the distribution of public space, which allows clusters of culture outside the mainstream to find their own places of belonging. While these subcultures sometimes appeared only inconspicuously (a century ago, cross-dressers in Beijing appeared only after midnight), they contributed to a diverse ecology of street culture.

Although situated in the heart of Beijing, not far from Tiananmen Square, Da Zha Lan has a reputation today as one of the city’s slum neighborhoods, owing to the rundown condition of its homes, poor public facilities and high concentration of low-income workers from outside the city. The government’s relocation effort is focused on commercially revitalizing this valuable stretch of property by renewing and reshuffling the neighborhood. All local governments in China regard urban poverty as a shameful mark that must be cleared out of sight of the city.

Da Zha Lan’s history of migration and habitation by the poor parallels the history of Beijing. The neighborhood has been a center of commerce since the Ming and Qing dynasties, but prosperity has always come hand-in-hand with poverty in Da Zha Lan, as opportunities there have drawn more and more people seeking their personal fortunes. Awakening Pictorial once illustrated the squalid conditions outside Qianmen Gate:

In the outer districts of the Forbidden City there are daily a great number of people begging for alms. Greeting passersby with honorable titles, they call out pitiably. Oh, how great is the mass of the poor. (“How Great is the Mass of the Poor”, illustrated by Li Juchai, Awakening Pictorial , Volume 24, November 13, 1909)

Scenes of this sort bear striking resemblance to the streets of today’s Da Zha Lan. To affirm this in no way denies the historical developments of Beijing over the last century, and does not sully the city’s image. In a developing nation such as China it is not surprising to find imbalances between regional economies and economic disparities between city and countryside. Even in developed economies, street-level poverty is not an uncommon occurrence.

Absolute economic equality is merely an ideal. The real question is to what degree a city accommodates poverty and heterogeneity. Low-income communities are a crucial component of the city. They accept and accommodate the minority poor, offering breathing room and low-cost opportunities for survival. At the same time they minimize problems of identification and help diffuse potential conflicts with the city’s mainstream population. Furthermore, the smooth operation of the city depends on the migrant populations drawn to such communities to fulfill basic labor demands. For these reasons low-income neighborhoods must not be treated simply as malignant tumors that must be cut away – such an approach does not lead to the building of an ideal city, and if low-income neighborhoods are removed they will inevitably crop up elsewhere. There is always a degree of poverty in the world. This is not a fact that can be swept away by globalization or by technological advancements, because difference and multiplicity are obstinate and intrinsic qualities of our world.

Over the last two decades, rapid economic development in China has transformed the faces of its cities. Material prosperity and changes in consciousness have tended to turn attention away from social differences. People in China rarely talk about class consciousness today, but class differences definitely do exist in contemporary China. A 2003 case in which the wealthy driver of a BMW sedan struck ordinary pedestrians drew widespread attention across the country. We can compare the incident with another “traffic accident” that occurred at Langfangtoutiao in Da Zha Lan in 1909. The events are basically similar, although the social impact in each case was different.

On December Fifth at roughly 3 o’clock in the afternoon, a red automobile struck a rickshaw at Langfangtoutiao and an argument ensued between the rickshaw puller and the driver. Irritated, the driver cursed and even cracked a whip. We do not know how the altercation ended. Ah, how barbarous the driver behaved! (“Barbarian Driver”, illustrated by Hu Zuxi, Awakening Pictorial, Volume 47,December 7, 1909)

Such conflicts were common features of street life in the China of that period. It should be noted that Awakening Pictorial included the above illustration in its news pages. Although the print quality of this hand-drawn picture was poor, it offered an intimate account of local street life, combining an image with writing in the local vernacular, and sought to offer material on social trends for city residents to talk about. To this extent, the pictorial already possessed many of the qualities of modern media. A mature society can not function without the participation of mass media, particularly socially instructive media that serve a watchdog function.

Despite its location near the center of imperial power, Da Zha Lan was designated as outside the Forbidden City throughout the Qing Dynasty. Still, it has always been a stopping place for people from all corners of China, for traders, for scholars coming in to take their civil service examinations, etcetera. Its commercial vitality and the influence of ordinary residents generated a popular culture completely set apart from that of the power center. New ideas and social trends found natural ground and took root there. For this reason, it made sense for early media like Awakening Pictorial to emerge in Da Zha Lan. While the publication lacks the scale, depth and social influence of modern media, it was important to the growth of culture in Da Zha Lan, and even to the growth of urban society in Beijing.

A sound civil society depends first and foremost on safeguarding the rights of citizens. These rights include the right to home and property ownership, freedom to use city streets and public space, and the right to participate in the city’s public affairs – rights that give citizens a sense of participation and belonging.

Although under the present system, the Chinese people are nominally the masters of their nation, and city land belongs to the whole country (i.e., is “state owned”), the reality is that popular rights are not protected. This is particularly true in the process of city planning and design carried out by city governments across China. Soliciting of public participation in the city planning process is done as a mere formality, and public opinion is not earnestly considered. This makes city residents feel that the city belongs to the government rather than to the citizens.

Relocation and renovation efforts in Da Zha Lan focus entirely on the renewal of space for municipal government facilities – no systematic consideration has been given to the needs of the neighborhood’s original inhabitants, particularly in the project of widening Meishi Street. Construction along Meishi Street, which is still in progress, has opened it to busy through traffic at great cost to the original street-level environment developed over centuries. Now, instead of an energetic, people oriented environment, Meishi Street is oriented entirely to urban traffic. Original residents who have lived in Da Zha Lan for generations are losing their homes and means of subsistence in exchange for suburban apartments that lack the support facilities to which they are accustomed (i.e., wet markets, stores, other services), or are receiving compensation insufficient to allow them to buy new homes in the city. In this way the relocation effort has meant violating the rights of many of those being moved.

As the government’s relocation work began in Da Zha Lan on December 27, 2004, the neighborhood seemed livelier than ever. On the one hand, the street was being torn to ruins, bulldozers grumbling and homes crashing down. On the other hand, a “relocation economy” sprang up instantly, with shops making grand promises of cutthroat discounts as they sought to clear out their inventories. Lines formed in front of “Bao Du Feng”, a time-honored snack shop, as people feared they would never again be able to take advantage of the shop’s specialties. People scavenged through the wreckage of the neighborhood for things that could be resold. Affected households opposed to relocation held their demonstrations amid this chaos, hanging banners from their rooftops, putting posters over their doors and handing out leaflets to grab the attention of passersby. They had tried all legal means available to them, going to various government offices to voice their concerns, but in the end they could only place hope in gathering public opinion to their cause. This was the most direct means, and the oldest, a centuries old tradition of urban street life.

As urban public space, streets are a place not only for flourishing commerce but also venues for public expression by citizens. Citizen expression and opposition movements today are generally cast as moves to protect personal rights and interests, and avoid suggestion of “political” involvement. But in fact these efforts to safeguard personal vested interests are directly related to public policy. Their actions should no longer be regarded as anti-government, but rather as moves to seek negotiation and consultation with policy makers in the context of existing laws. Their actions are, of course, “political”, but this politics has a newer and more extensive meaning: with an ever maturing concept of personal rights (in this case, property rights), citizens throw themselves into public affairs in order to act for their own rights and interests. The actions of these citizens arise not from government compulsion or mobilization but rather from self-determination. Given these new political patterns, the government should not regard these movements to protect personal rights as anti-government actions. Rather they should lead contact between citizens and the government, inviting the participation of mass media, non-governmental organizations and social volunteers, so that social problems can be resolved in consultation.

The city is a richly colorful place, and the people living there have myriad differences. But the rights of the city belong to everyone, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, locals or outsiders, gay or heterosexual. Da Zha Lan is a slum neighborhood, its homes old and broken down. But the people here are rich with vitality. That a city is home both rich and poor is not an indignity. What matters most is that it offer equal opportunities to all who live there. The reforms carried out in Da Zha Lan should not mean removing the poor to make room for the wealthy; nor should they mean denying aid to the poor when they are in need. The rights due citizens should be returned to them, including clarity on property rights, autonomy in deciding community affairs, making citizens the true masters of the street. Only with the participation of all citizens can street life be preserved in all its richness.

Guangzhou/July 2, 2006

Translation by David Bandurski