For the Hutong locals, often, the answer is no.
As much as we wanted to preserve Hutongs, the current communal living situation experienced by the majority of residents had me realize that my assumption to this project didn’t quite align with their needs: people aren’t happy with living in the historical districts. Infrastructures need renewal, utilities are cramped into corners, and personal space is so limited that most belongings had to be stacked on top of each other. A few government sectors had stepped in and tried to clean up this mess; Yet, the budget they’ve collected in taxes and the results that had become actually effective are highly disproportional. No one wanted to sell their historical family home in exchange with the government for a new apartment elsewhere; No one wanted to see their neighborhoods being torn down to make space for homogenized skyscrapers, modern shopping centers, and identical parking lots. And yet, the locals still make deals with real estate developers and yield to government acquisition, as they genuinely don’t believe there exists any other option for traditional living quarters to survive in the rapid turnover of urban modernization, let alone one that actually improves their day-to-day life.
None of those issues resembled the home life I grew up with: neither did I have the experience walking to a communal bathroom in the middle of a snowy night or having to cook with coal in the summer; No car used to park in our playground, nor did piles of trash.
My righteous sentiments in preserving Beijing’s historical district had been coming from a cultural outsider, from the ivory tower in academia, from a perspective that’s rather poetic, if not romantic, in nature.
