Op-Ed Contributors

Case for preserving the old in China

By Arvinder Singh (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-28 07:58

My sense of unease increases when I see ancient-looking but brand new temples and pagodas - all of which are replicas. There is one in Boao in Hainan province.

In the debates on demolishing, preserving and rebuilding older areas and structures in cities, one aspect that seems to have completely escaped attention is the fate of old markets and bazaars. These markets (including street markets) deserve to be preserved as much as the hutongs in Beijing.

It took centuries if not millenniums for such marketplaces to evolve. For ages, life in towns and cities revolved around them. They are treasure troves for social anthropologists and the common heritage of the world. One is not talking of just minzu (ethnic) food streets, newer, fancy and exotic versions of which have lately spawned in almost every Chinese city, but the whole range of traditional specialized and general markets that used to occupy the hearts of towns.

There are living remains of some such markets in Xi'an. Having been the starting point of the Silk Road and a major habitat of the Hui people - conventionally a trading community - Xi'an (or Chang'an) had something special to its markets.

I have marveled at the bylanes of markets meandering through residential areas in the old part of Guangzhou. In Guangdong, a province where traditionally business interest has run deep, much of the historical and cultural value and interest has survived the frantic transformation of the last three decades in older towns such as Zhaoqing in the west and Meizhou, a Hakka town, in the east.

Kunming, another city I'm familiar with, has demolished itself almost indiscreetly. Very little remains even of the remains in the capital of Yunnan province. When it comes to the old or traditional, it is more or less just the "colorful" ethnic minorities that get attention but there, too, the accent seems to be more on transforming things into "museums" rather than on preserving ways of life. The old survives happily in many smaller towns in Yunnan, though.

Xiamen in Fujian province is another city where old areas and markets seem to be reasonably intact. But the renewed construction spree in Xiamen has just begun, and one cannot be too sure about the fate of the old in such a situation.It is important to remember that markets, market towns and traditional business communities - for whom buying and selling had been a way of life for centuries - in China suffered heavily in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the eastern and central parts. Those that have survived should not be made to suffer again in the name of reform or on the pretext of building world-class cities.

The author is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India.

(China Daily 05/28/2010 page9)