Why old Beijing's crumbling courtyards face extinction

For years, Zhi Yang lived in an apartment outside Beijing that came with her job as a translator. But she was always partial to the hutong area next to the grand Forbidden City: a complex first laid out by Kublai Khan, where cramped alleys and high walls hide a network of the traditional courtyard houses that once stretched for miles, defining Beijing's architecture and way of life. (Hutong are, properly speaking, the narrow alleys in these areas.)

Tired of the hour-long commute to work, Ms. Yang and her husband finally bought a lot in a preserved hutong area called Houhai Lake. They spent two years planning, cajoling, and finally - last month - erecting a state-of-the-art hutong home with heated floors and a traditional south-facing doorway to catch the morning sun.

A mile away, Mr. Li's experience was quite different. An auto-factory worker who declined to give his first name, Li's hutong was demolished last month after the city gave him 10 days notice. The tightly knit neighbors, who took in one another's laundry when it rained and stood watch for thieves, are now scattered. "They came with force," Li says, trembling as he stands in a pile of rubble. "My family has lived in the house since the 1940s; I was born here.... We weren't prepared."

As China's capital gets more crowded and property values and high-rise construction deals become more lucrative, the old hutong are being given the heave-ho. Once as numerous "as the hairs on a cow," to use the Beijing phrase, homes have been steadily demolished over the past decade to make way for the vision of a new metropolis.

In 1999, Beijing's leaders slowed the pace of destruction, set aside 25 protected zones in the city center, and seemed to respond to a chorus of concern by various local and foreign lobby groups. Yet only about 5 percent of the hutong of yore will survive once the dust clears. The official figure is 25 to 30 percent, but these numbers include the massive imperial palace complex of the Forbidden City, ceremonial temples, and a large park.

Newer is better

China's version of the classic story of preservation vs. modernization shows that most of the impulse is to modernize: In this foreign investment mecca, local developers can work sweetheart deals with friends in the Communist Party, and working-class people prefer better housing.

Still, Beijing preservationists lament, the hutong are exceptional.

Graceful garden courtyards were for centuries the central architectural emblem of Beijing. Goldfish ponds, ornamental trees, and flower pots were carefully arranged in a garden, around which were set four rooms in a quadrangle. Until 1949, single families - ordinary people, not just upper classes and royalty - owned courtyards, which symbolized not just living space, but civilized life. Tea houses, schools, temples - all were courtyard settings.

In her 1942 book "Destination Chungking," Chinese writer Han Suyin described "the mounting terraces ... the arched doorways and their golden roofs sweeping downward in curves of sheer power ... the essential design, the inevitable exact proportions, the soul releasing magnitude - is ... the final statement on concrete beauty of the Chinese philosophy."

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