You can't buy ...

Article from The New York Times on recent unrest in Inner Mongolia.

“The Mongolian situation is very worrying for the Chinese leadership because you can’t just throw money at an issue like ethnic identity,” said Minxin Pei, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California.

@CCP:Like ... hello! Really?

Sigh, this is what you get when you mix Communist historical materialism with a sheen of capitalist greed. No respect or understanding for the importance of culture, or the depth of feeling regarding issues of identity. They don't even care about their own culture, much less that of other peoples.

You think you can buy your way out of this mess? Or just put up a perfunctory "museum"? Culture is something to be cherished and lived on an everyday basis. People have the right to shape their lives according to their traditions. Money doesn't make people forget.

Well, maybe it makes post-Communist Chinese people forget. But other peoples don't.

The High Price of the New Beijing

“Fifty years from now, someone will regret this.” -- 梁思成

This article and the sentiments it expresses are moving ... and desperately sad.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/high-price-new-beijing/?pagination=false

Balancing the Future and the Past

A balance has to be achieved between preservation and upholding living standards for residents. It seems that the city of Djenné, a UNESCO site, has not done a good job with that.

Mali City Rankled by Rules for Life in Spotlight (The New York Times)

Photos from The New York Times: "Djenné is an official World Heritage site. Guidelines established by Unesco, the cultural arm of the United Nations, which compiles the heritage list, demand that any reconstruction not substantially alter the original." Thus, the city must "preserve its mud-brick buildings, from the Great Mosque to individual homes."

From the article:

Abba Maiga stood in his dirt courtyard, smoking and seething over the fact that his 150-year-old mud-brick house is so culturally precious he is not allowed to update it — no tile floors, no screen doors, no shower. With its cone-shaped crenellations and palm wood drainage spouts, the grand facade seems outside time and helps illustrate why this ancient city in eastern Mali is an official World Heritage site. But the guidelines established by UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, which compiles the heritage list, demand that any reconstruction not substantially alter the original.

“When a town is put on the heritage list, it means nothing should change,” Mr. Maiga said. “But we want development, more space, new appliances — things that are much more modern. We are angry about all that."

PHOTO: "In a cultural clash echoed at World Heritage sites around the world, residents complain of being frozen in time like pieces in a museum, their lives proscribed so visitors can gawk. Abba Maiga's 150-year-old mud-brick house is so culturally precious he is not allowed to update it — no tile floors, no screen doors, no shower. "Who wants to live in a house with a mud floor?" said Mr. Maiga."

However, the present desires of the citizens are not the only thing to take into account when pondering the fate of such a place.

The problem, said N’Diaye Bah, Mali’s tourism minister, is modernizing the town without wrecking its ambiance. “If you destroy the heritage which people come to see, if you destroy 2,000 years of history, then the town loses its soul,” he said.

Djenné residents take pride in their heritage and recognize that the Unesco list helped make their city famous. Yet they wonder aloud about the point of staying on it, given the lack of tangible gains, if they are forced to live literally in mud. Many homeowners want to keep the distinctive facades, but alter the interiors. Unesco guidelines prohibit the sweeping alterations they would like, however.

Mahamame Bamoye Traoré, the leader of the powerful mason’s guild, surveyed the cramped rooms of the retired river boat captain’s house, naming all the things he would change if the World Heritage rules were more flexible.

“If you want to help someone, you have to help him in a way that he wants; to force him to live in a certain way is not right,” he said, before lying on the mud floor of a windowless room that measured about 6 feet by 3 feet. “This is not a room,” he said. “It might as well be a grave.”

Is this place an exhibition or a tomb? (It probably should be neither -- because communities are places that should be lived in). When people are treated this way, it seems they feel a sense of stagnation and resentment. Yet if the population can become engaged in the process of cultural preservation and site restoration, they will be the fiercest defenders and best caretakers of a site. These are their homes, their culture! Let's get creative to find ways for tradition and modernity to coexist and thrive.

I'm not the expert here, and I'm sure the architects and archaeologists have spent a lot of time pondering over how to treat this ancient town and its structures. But more community input is needed; otherwise, you end up with situations like the one reported in the article, where a disgruntled homeowner evicted the UN team, tore down an archway to make room for armoires, causing the house to promptly collapse.

Maybe something can be done where the facade and entryway are preserved in the traditional style, while rooms further inside can be remodeled, with wooden floors added. Maybe we could add more structural support and new wiring for electricity. Who knows? The partnership goes both ways: outside experts can listen and attempt to understand the aspirations and concerns of people in the neighborhood. Local residents can try to recognize the value inherent in these timeless buildings and do their children a favor by thinking of the long-term.

 

The town faces an additional challenge: "Poverty prevents many from fixing their houses. Architects who have worked on various restoration projects said the townsfolk are imbued with a unique pride. Many would rather see their ancestral home fall than admit they lack the means to restore it, said Cheich Abdel Kader, a Malian architect who also helped direct the mosque restoration. Others object that outsiders set the rules."

Most of all, we need to involve the population in the upkeep of a city -- inspire them be proud of their heritage and help them recognize and celebrate their culture. Local residents must be partners; they cannot be bystanders in their own homes and neighborhoods. Sometimes it is the tyranny of the bulldozer; here it appears to be overweening rule of foreign preservationists.

 

拆！Tear it down!

It is frustrating to be a witness to this ongoing tragedy. What will we say to our children -- that we never cared enough? That we were too short-sighted to realize what we were doing?

China heritage chief says building boom is destroying country's heritage

Heritage boss Shan Jixiang says frenetic development is wasting resources and razing valuable city centre districts to make way for 'superficial' skyscrapers

为什么中国不好好地保护中华民族的传统文化？很多城市以为拆掉「旧」的建筑来盖摩天大楼，就是现代化。其实，他们只是在破坏和不断淡化自己的文化。这种行为非但不重视市民的利益，反而带来了很多现代化的弊端。这不是「以人为本」——目的显然不是让市民的生活更方便，否则按照城市规划的原则会选比较 "人本化"的构造——也不重视文化，只重视金钱。

这不只损害到现在生活的人，也对我们的后代很不负责任。破坏文化遗址是一种很严重的罪过，古建筑是整个社会的遗产，我们应该极力保存它。虽然现在有人觉得文化遗址是可以被忽略的，以为自己的行为叫做「现代化」，其实只是一种很烂的「西方化」（不模仿西方好的，只模仿外表而已 ...... 造成一种最低级的同化、也许可以称「水泥化」）。

现在的我们如果肆无忌惮地破坏这些遗产，后代必定后悔莫及。西方的城市（如巴黎、伦敦等等）都极力保护他们城市的老建筑、为什么所谓“历史最悠久”的国家不能采取适当的措施？那么爱提“五千年的历史”的中国人应该更在意这些，不是吗？

Sigh. Why does China do this to its own culture? Why must it destroy what is unique about the country -- the very things that ought to be cherished and protected and celebrated -- and replace them with poorly-made imitations of "modernity"? What the Chinese currently think is "modern" will ultimately not stand the test of time -- just ask the folks from other major cities.

As relics, historic sites, and people's homes are torn down with gusto, fueled by dreams of cash (for the developers and for the officials who aid them), such short-sightedness and greed seem not only highly irresponsible, but also a bit selfish. It'd be nice if a culture that loves to cite "five thousand years of continuous civilization" took some pride in the past, and acted as a better custodian of its inheritance.

Future generations will not forgive us if we participate in the destruction of our common heritage -- for it not only belongs to those presently alive, but to our children and their children as well. It's just sad that in this of all places, history and tradition are so easily tossed aside. But I suppose one should not be too surprised, as reverence for the past, for tradition, for anything other than "Money money money!" "Mine mine mine!" have been blotted out.

One day we will realize that, in the end, culture may be the thing that persists and that actually matters.

● ● ●

I understand that people deserve better living conditions -- but I think accommodations can be found that not only improve people's circumstances, but simultaneously give the proper respect to our history and preserve our heritage, while also keeping communities -- living, breathing, thriving social networks -- intact. For instance, shipping people off into isolated, far-flung apartment blocks, past the fifth ring road on the outskirts of town, is not an appropriate strategy.

We just have to be creative and a little more thoughtful in coming up with solutions that privilege the things we may value aside from money, such as "a connection to the past" or "a sense of community" or "harmony and ecological balance." The main fear is that things in China are moving so rapidly that we won't have time to give due consideration to these other things, and what you end up with is "growth for growth's sake" simply to enrich a few people.

The projects are couched in the language of "development and improving people's lives", but if they actually were intended to "help the people," then shouldn't we see more human-centered projects instead of massive-but-sterile office buildings and extravagant shopping malls? In this dynamic, developers and local officials set up a false dichotomy, denying that alternatives exist to their plans for construction and "development", when in fact there is a rich and diverse set of possibilities -- we just have use human ingenuity to search for them.

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/04/china-culture-cities-heritage