THIS WAS MY FIRST POST FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST, WHICH I’VE JUST SENT IN. CHECK WWW.HUFFINGTONPOST.COM LATER TO SEE IT. CHEERS! MEG
Tucked within the traditional Shanghai lane where I reside, a Sunday is in full swing. Alley cats creep along tiled roofs searching for the perfect spot of sun, the elderly resident opera fans tap in rhythm as a man on erhu accompanies an octogenarian with a plucky mezzo soprano voice, and children scamper after soccer balls in the car-free passageways. The breeze picks up the fresh scent of laundry hung to dry and the verdant coolness of potted plants. But this is a refuge – a way of life that is rapidly coming to an end.
Excluding this alley and a few select others, this neighborhood, full of early 20th century Chinese and French lane homes, will fall to make way for luxury condominiums and the new subway line. It’s part of an effort to clean up and modernize the city before the 2010 World Expo, the motto of which –better city, better life—is as ubiquitously slathered onto posters, bulletin boards and banners as the government’s catch phrase since 2004—”build a harmonious society.”
But harmony isn’t the word that comes to mind when the bulldozers crush stone walls as people, clinging tightly to parcels of clothes, of onions, of photo albums, stand outside their devastated homes in bewildered groups. Their homes, however historic, were not among those set aside for preservation.
In China, most land is owned by the state, and individuals are only permitted to own buildings; the land upon which the building rests is rented on a long-term lease. Illegal land confiscation by corrupt local governments, which often play henchmen for privately owned businesses that fill their personal coiffeurs, runs rampant – especially in China’s impoverished countryside. I’ll never forget hitching a ride through rural Henan a few years ago. When my driver stopped in a small township outside of Kaifeng, I spoke with some farmers who were turning over vast mountains of corn that they had spread onto the highway. The used sun, hand and rake to dry it. They had no money for electronic driers, as the people in my home state of Nebraska do. They were curious about such technology and also about how much land American farmers were allowed to rent.
Things are a little better in Shanghai. Money is more easily made here, and, indeed, in the large metropolises, some people have received generous settlements from their municipal governments in exchange for the property they are forced to give up. In the past month alone, a man in Chongqing was rewarded 3.8 million RMB, or approximately $496,972 USD, and a man in Guangzhou received 1 million RMB or $132,782 USD – amounts they would have never received for an ordinary sale, had they been able to sell at all. A friend of a co-worker of mine here in Shanghai has taken to buying old houses in neighborhoods not yet slated for demolition in the hopes that he can make a similar turnover via government settlements. Real estate speculation and amateur abuse of the stock market have been going on for years here, but this was a new one to me. And whether it’s mere propaganda or an element in the complex web of truth that makes up modern day China, the local papers have recently brimmed with tales of woe from residents who bemoan their inability to abandon their dangerous and decrepit alley homes for modern high rises with better plumbing and a pool to bop around in. The government’s decision to preserve their old neighborhood means no money for a new place.
In my neighborhood a few bored cops sit on their fat motorbikes with the lights flashing. During the past three months, the police have slowly moved people out – mostly without protest. Despite the decree of new property rights in March, most Chinese have little control over the ability to guarantee that the place they want to be is the place they’ll be allowed to stay because of the law’s strong eminent domain provisions. Although the law introduces the new idea of “rights,” in a nation where the operating goal has been “shengcun” (the accessibility to life’s basic necessities), not “quanli” (rights), much less “renquan” (human rights), the connection between these concepts, even with the law’s implementation, will take time to solidify.
But some are starting to recognize the potential. Last week, Xinhua News reported that 33-year-old Xia Jia, a resident of the Beijing Dongsiba Hutong, appealed to the government to end the destruction of the traditional alleyways. It violated her and her family’s rights, she said, and did not contribute to a harmonious society. The article made sure to mention that she had been educated abroad.
China displacement issues have also entered the international spotlight – whether via art films, such as Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (San Xia Hao Ren), a Golden Lion winner at this year’s Venice Film Festival, or through mainstream media such as Newsweek, PBS and NPR. But the stories aren’t permitted the room to be as nuanced as the situation really is. As a journalist just beginning to investigate this situation, I’ve had to put aside my ideas of rights, of nostalgia, of expectation. But living within the tense environment of my changing neighborhood has made those demands exponentially more difficult.
One street over from my apartment, He Limin and his family had lived in the same old stone lane house for more than 80 years when, in the late 90s, the government demanded the area leveled and destroyed for new development. A real estate agency charged with buyouts bullied He and his family into a deal. But instead of destroying the house for ambiguous government developments, the place was turned into a bar at the fringes of what was then the freshly constructed Xintiandi – a fashionable retail space that borrowed design elements from the lane houses and turned the neighborhood into one of Shanghai’s new–largely expatriate–”it” spots for commerce and cocktails.
It’s exactly these kinds of scams that make people hold on to their residences until the hammers come knocking or at least until they’ve a wad of cash in hand. A few months ago I befriended the owner of a sweater shop who lived in a building opposite of my lane. His place had doubled as his family’s home and business for more than a decade. “We’re not going,” he said, “until they give me a good reason.” The good reason came last weekend. A crew of men uprooted the electricity and plunged their sledgehammers into the windows of his shop. The last time I saw him, he was dragging a plastic bag of sweaters down the street. Bits of loose yarn danced in the haze of construction dust.
Without people like him, I think, the neighborhood will unravel. The charm of a place like this is that you get to know the people from whom you’re buying your eggs or your flowers or your fruit. You develop relationships with them. You trust them, and they look out for you and vice versa. I wonder what is more important to the construction of a harmonious society – prosperity or trust? To recognize rights is to recognize individuals. But if people are living in isolated high rises, buying their groceries at mega-marts and ordering their flowers online, it seems to me that the government’s definition of social harmony is not to put personal connection into better practice, but rather to engineer its limitation. To view it cynically, for the Chinese government, it might not be such a bad idea to keep the people separated as it doles out greater rights.
Great piece.
Micah
June 5th, 2007