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A wrecking ball for Beijing's historyx
As property prices spiral upward in Beijing, some tenants in the city's 600-year-old hutong alleyways are rushing to cash in on their neighborhoods' destruction.
from the May 25, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Tenants fight for more compensation
The latest threat to a hutong has sparked protest because Dongsi Batiao runs along the edge of a preservation zone full of similar lanes. The property developer had announced that it plans to build a European-style residential and commercial complex on the site. That would violate laws that limit construction in controlled "buffer zones" near preservation areas.
In an interview this week, Bai Hua, vice president of the Zhong Bao Jia Ye development company, said his firm's design had changed. It now includes nine replica courtyard houses along the lane, backed by two six-story buildings containing apartments and offices "in Chinese traditional style … colors and materials," he claimed.
Those plans appear to be within the law, conservation experts say. But Mr. Bai was unable to provide architects' drawings or an artist's impression of the scheme, saying his company "is still adjusting the design."
Xia does not find such vagueness reassuring. "Lots of things have changed since 1999," she says, when the developer first earmarked the site for construction and then knocked down all the hutong buildings in the lane immediately to the north of Dongsi Batiao, including a Ming dynasty temple.
The fate of the area's heritage, however, is of secondary importance to most local residents. Not only do the shoddily built and overcrowded lean-to's and extensions where most of them live conceal the courtyards' original elegance; they are miserable to live in, with no toilets or bathrooms.
Unsurprisingly they are delighted by Bai's promise that his firm will pay them enough compensation "to buy a comfortable space to live, a much better place."
That is not what they say they have been offered, however. "Ninety percent of the people here agree with the demolition," says a resident who identified himself only as Huang. "But the compensation is too little to buy anywhere else" given Beijing's rocketing real estate prices.
With the 8,090 RMB ($1,057) per square meter that the lane's occupants say the developer proposed, "I couldn't afford to buy anything, except maybe in Inner Mongolia," scoffed one resident.
While renters prepare to bargain with the developer, none of the seven homeowners facing eviction is ready to budge, says Xia, the only one among them willing to talk in public.
She hired a lawyer this week, and plans to go to court to challenge the eviction order that was posted on a wall last month. "Everything about this is so illegal," she argues. "I feel like I'm dealing with criminals."
Even if she loses her appeal at the district level, she says, she will go on fighting the developer. "There is a whole legal procedure," she points out. "All this takes time."
The developer's original deadline for residents to move out – set in the eviction poster for Saturday, six weeks after it first appeared – has slipped, Bai says. "Because of negative reports in some media, our timetable has been affected," he explains. "Now it depends on the development of the whole situation."
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