Letter from Beijing: A Chinese Slum?

Last Thursday, an Indian colleague and I accompanied two Chinese friends – a public interest lawyer and a documentary maker – to the western outskirts of Beijing. They wanted to show us a low-income neighborhood and to carry out preliminary research for a documentary about female migrant workers. I had been intrigued by their terminology of choice. In English, they used the word "slum," but in Chinese they preferred "cheng zhong cun," which translates literally into "village within a city." Inequality in China has been increasing, and huge numbers of migrants have been pouring into cities from the countryside. Nevertheless, I found it hard to imagine the idea of a slum in Beijing.

We took the subway from near the city center, past Beijing University to the westernmost stop on the line. Outside we hailed a cab, and in another five minutes we arrived at the community. The area looked a bit like a run-down hutong: a neighborhood of traditional courtyard residences (siheyuan) linked by narrow alleys. Here and there among the small, sloped-roof houses there were squat shoebox apartment buildings. The alleys were busy with people on bikes; workers pedalled tricycles loaded with goods, garbage and children. We peeked into some of the homes. What I had assumed to be small but single-family homes turned out to be subdivided into closet-like rooms lined with bunkbeds. The bunkbeds are rented out to migrant workers, and sometimes to entire families.

Most of the houses are self-built out of red brick and gray tiles. Many homes have thick padded quilts strung across the threshold instead of a door. Heating and cooking is done with coal; pipes are inserted through the wall to let the smoke out. In one alley there is a wooden table piled high with red fire extinguishers. Electricity wires hang precariously from roof to roof; there are communal bathrooms, and for the most part very little trash is scattered along the unpaved alleyways. Turning a corner, we come upon a rusty gate under an arching sign; the peeling characters read, “University Student Housing”.





Inside we see rows of run-down barracks with clotheslines strung between windows. By the rusty gate there is a grim-faced man leaning against a pool table under a plastic tarp, and behind them a large pile of coal. Plastic bottles, broken tiles, a child's bicycle are strewn about the coal. At first the man seems suspicious --- Laowai! -- but after we explain that we are doing research, he seems to warms up to us and lets us look around. The rows of run-down dorms, he explains, were long abandoned by the universities (in fact, we saw some of the fancy new dorm buildings in our visit to Beida). The area now houses migrant workers.

Still near the entrance, we strike up a conversation with a woman wearing an orange puffy coat and a Walmart employee tag. She has a smooth round face and sad eyes. We explain the documentary project, and she offers to show us the neighborhood. Over the next few hours, as we wander the alleys, her story emerges: a recent arrival from the northern province of Hebei, she came to Beijing to escape an abusive marriage. She tell us candidly about her conversion to Christianity and her hopes of finding a second husband in the capital. I ask her what kind of man she would like to marry. “A kind man,” she says.

She takes around the community. As night falls, a cold chill sets in. The coal pipes begin to unfurl their plumes of grey smoke above the neighborhood. We invite our new friend to join us at a local noodle shop. Over dinner, we wonder whether the word "slum" can be used to describe this place. Although the area is poorer than just about any part of the city we've seen so far, it looks nothing like the labyrinthine alleys of Indian "shantytowns" and Brazilian "favelas". I argue that these terms are too vague, and none of them -- including "slum" -- terribly useful.

The conversation turns to the fast changes in the city center -- hutongs being razed as if they were made of paper, skyscrapers popping up like mushrooms after a rain, neon signs everywhere. Our local friend mentions that some of the residents in this community are construction workers in those projects, others work as cleaners, nannies, and in other low-income capacities. It's well-known fact by now (and acknowledged even by the Central Planning Committee of the Communist Party) that inequality has been increasing in China even as the national economy grows at breakneck speed. Mostly we hear and read about the rural-urban divide; but in visiting this community, we see the physical manifestations of that growing disparity within the city itself. The village-within-a-city, the Chinese slum -- all these are signs that the "Chinese miracle," like any other self-proclaimed feat of economic growth, is not all about gleaming towers of steel and glass.


PS: Interesting China Daily opinion piece on the "urban villages" by Raymond Zhou.

Letter from Beijing: Beida Then and Now (Foreigner's Edition)

Earlier this week I arrived in Beijing, where I am spending a week collaborating with colleagues on a couple of research projects. Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Beijing University, also known as Beida, where the China Center for Economic Research (now part of the recently founded National School of Development) organized a panel on the 30th anniversary of China’s economic reforms.

In the mid-90s, I studied at Beijda as an exchange student. Though my experience on the campus was enriching, it was anything but comfortable. I lived with a roommate in Dorm Number 4, a gray pre-fab building built like a big cement shoebox. There were bars on the windows, and at night the door was locked from the outside. I don’t remember a fire escape. An elderly gentlemen had the luckless job of guarding the building at night; we had to ring the buzzer to be let in after midnight, which always jolted the poor old man from his sleep. Our guilt at waking him up was surpassed only by our eagerness to go out at night.

At Dorm Number 4 I split a small bedroom with another exchange student, a petite Vietnamese-American who kept her half of the room immaculate. The room was large enough for two beds and a desk; it was so narrow that we had to squeeze sideways between the beds to reach the window. Upon arrival, each exchange student was also issued two items: an enamel bowl, which we took to the cafeteria for meals, and a plastic bucket for washing our clothes (by hand, on the sink scrub-board, with an odd powder detergent that didn’t lather). The whole dorm was lit with very harsh fluorescent lights, and right outside our windows loudspeakers blared Communist Party news and calisthenics exercises starting at 6am. The common bathroom had hot water only twice a day, early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

The accommodations made our college dorms back in the US look like Sheraton suites, but we could hardly complain: our housing was luxurious by local standards. My Chinese friends lived four to a room, piled on bunkbeds rather than twin beds.

Most of our classes were held at a nearly identical pre-fab building, where in winter the heating was minimal. On the coldest days, we could see our breath even indoors, and I wore gloves in the classroom. At break time, most of us huddled outside for fresh air, smoking for warmth.

After class I liked to head to the Nameless Lake (Weiming hu), with its traditional landscaping and solitary pagoda. A group of Chinese students used to gather there at nightfall to practice ballroom dancing, and they warmly invited me to join. Since we foreign exchange students were otherwise segregated from the Chinese students, this was a rare opportunity to make friends with locals, and some of my happiest memories of that time were there at night, learning to tango by Nameless Lake.



Thirteen years later, I barely recognize the campus. As with Beijng in general, the campus has been radically transformed and expanded. Weiming Hu remains, but surrounding it are dozens of new buildings, and very little open space. When we enter a conference hall, I notice that the floor is marble. There is recessed lighting and fancy-looking fixtures everywhere. The dining hall is a well-lit modern cafeteria -- a far cry from the dimly lit, grim assembly line where dining hall workers ladled rice and mapo doufu into our enamel bowls. I peek into new buildings; I see smart classrooms with computers and projectors. There are air conditioning units near the windows and modern heating units at the back of the rooms. No indoors glove-wearing needed here.

The panel itself is held at the university's economic research center; before arriving, I picture a streamlined modern building of glass and concrete. To my surprise, the center is housed in a Qing era courtyard complex that was once an Imperial garden. The buildings, with their red latticed screens, have been meticulously restored in their tiniest details. It occurs to me that Beida is a metaphor of Beijing's urban development: a beautifully preserved core surrounded by a mishmash of modern buildings erected somewhat in a hurry. (Later I decide the metaphor is far from adequate: Beijing has very poor neighborhoods on the outskirts, inhabited largely by low-income families and migrant workers -- and however run-down some of the older campus buildings may be, there is no part of Beida that does not belong heart and soul to the Chinese elite).

After the panel is over and we are back in the hotel, I look up descriptions of current accommodations for foreign exchange students. I land on the following description:

The dorms are equipped with one or two single beds, desk and chairs, TV, telephone, internet access, refrigerator, private bathroom, air-conditioning and 24 hours hot water. The cost of outgoing telephone calls and internet connection where available is to be paid by students. Coin-operated washing machines in the dorm building are available for student use.

Hm. TV, internet access, AC. It's only been 13 years since I was a student at Beida, but I think I am now officially allowed to use the old-fogey expression "Back in the old days, we used to..."

Letter from Chamonix: Seasonal Towns

Last week, work took me to Geneva, and I stayed the weekend to explore the Alps. On Sunday, we headed southeast to hike the mountains around Chamonix. We crossed the border into France and drove into the valley. Below the snowcapped peaks, the treeline was a rich dark green; orange and yellow foliage covered the mountain skirts. A glacier like a heavy gray tongue snaked down between two sharp peaks -- the Mer de Glace.

We wandered briefly into town. Chamonix seemed well-equipped, quaint, and fast asleep. The ski season doesn't start until December, and the lifts were down. Most of the official 9,000 residents appeared to be either elsewhere or hybernating. Except for a few tourists milling about by the train station, the town was eerily quiet. We followed one of the ski lifts uphill until we found the hiking trail that leads to the edge of the glacier. A few hours later, just before dusk, we had this bird's eye view of the town at the bottom of the valley:


Chamonix is a highly seasonal town -- alive in summer, when outdoors activities attracts lovers of extreme sports, and then again in winter, as a premier winter sports resort. During both seasons, visitors and seasonal residents breathe new life into the the town. Stores and cafés are opened, shelves dusted, blinds rolled up. In between, however, the town seems too large for its few souls, like one of those English country estates inhabited by a single family. Only less grandiose. And somewhat cozier.

This ebb and flow is not unique to Chamonix, of course -- any town that depends heavily on seasonal activities will suffer (or enjoy) a sort of urban bipolarity, with steep inclines and declines in population and activity. Larger cities are also affected by seasonal flows, but their economies tend to be more diversified, providing alternative sources of revenue and vitality. Toulouse receives tens of thousands of visitors in summer, and the flow slows to a trickle (by comparison) starting in fall, but tourism is only one of many income-generating activities in the city. Small towns like Chamonix don't have this luxury, and they must often go to great lengths to invent between-season activities to keep financially afloat.

Other towns seem all too content to retreat into the non-summer calm; the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, is renowned for the proud insularity of its year-round residents (The NY Times reported in 2001 that "Nantucket's year-round population of more than 9,000 swells to more than 50,000 in July and August"). After the hike, I get a sense Chamonix natives might also be all too happy with their breaks. When we stop at a local dive for a tasty snack, friends of friends wander in -- a real local and his partner -- and I sense in them the same ambiguity towards the acute seasonality of the place, a mix of impatience for ski season and relief that it hadn't yet arrived.



Chamonix is clearly aware of its yearly economic roller coaster and has taken some steps to smoothen the curve. At the base of the mountain, the tiny Montenvers train runs up steep cog tracks to the edge of the glacier; the train's been there since 1908, but the add-ons -- a museum of local fauna, an exhibit of mountain crystals, a man-made ice grotto with ice statues -- are apparently far more recent. I wonder whether these generate enough revenue to keep the town going between seasons (however small the population). More likely the town council, well accustomed to the town's uphill-downhill lifecycle, tailors its budget to the sharp seasonal effects.

An icy afterthought: after we return to Geneva I read here that every summer workers have to carve out a new grotto because the glacier has been moving around 70m every year -- I wonder if the glacier is snaking further down the mountain or (more likely, given the rates of glacial melt due to global warming) shrinking and retreating. It seems likely that climate change will affect seasonal towns disproportionally -- at least, where the changing temperatures wreak havoc on outdoors activities such as skiing and beach-going.

Letter from Pompeii: Mr. Synistor's Cubiculum

Source: San Diego Natural History Museum


When I was 9, my family moved to a city built on the slopes of a major active volcano in the Andes. Until then, I had lived my entire life in apartments on extremely flat terrain, so my siblings and I were excited at the prospect of living in a real house, with a yard nested amid mountains. The house had spectacular views. Maybe a bit too spectacular: the large window in my room opened out onto the volcano.

During the first few months, I had nightmares about the volcano erupting. At one point we children agreed that the national government had inserted a large concrete plug into the mouth of the crater, eliminating any chance of a major eruption. Nevertheless, those years of living at the foot of a volcano (which, incidentally, spewed a giant column of ash a few years later) left us with a life-long interest in all things volcanic. Among them: the story of Pompeii, the city buried alive under meters of ash and pumice by Mount Vesuvius' cataclysmic eruption in 79 AD and lost for 1700 years until its accidental discovery by workmen working on the foundation of a summer palace for the King of Naples.

The volcanic eruption that took so many lives preserved much of the town at the moment of its demise, not just the houses and artifacts but even its unlucky citizens -- their bodies, buried under the tonnes of ash, left behind spaces that, when injected with plaster, reproduced with poignant accuracy the very second of their deaths. As for their town, it remained remarkably intact. When I visited Pompeii as a teenager, I remember being struck by a perfectly preserved toilet -- a moment of levity in a somewhat morbid tour. Colorful frescoes and mosaic floors from the town's wealthy villas help to tell the everyday life of the city. There are, also, the vivid accounts of the city's destruction. Pliny the Younger, stationed across from the bay of Naples during the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, witnessed the event and attempted (unsuccessfully) to rescue his uncle from the disaster. Twenty years later, he recounted the tragedy in vivid language in a letter to the historian Tacitus (you can view the letter and read the transation here). All of these accounts of Pompeii's before and during the eruption help to make the site much more than an archaeological relic: a living dead city of sorts.

Some 1700 years later and a few thousand kilometers away, my father is in town here in New York, and we decide to visit the Metropolitan Museum. Last year, the museum reopened its Hellenic and Roman galleries after extensive renovations. The day is brisk and bright, so we head northwards to Central Park, where we walk along 5th avenue to the Met. The renovated gallery surrounds a soaring two-floor atrium with ornate columns supporting a skylight roof. Off to one side we find one of the exhibit highlights: a full cubiculum nocturnum, or bedroom, recovered and restored from a villa in Boscoreale, about a mile north of Pompeii, and also buried in 79 AD. At the time, the villa was owned by a (somewhat accurately named) P. Fannius Synistor, and seems to have served as a pastoral reserve of sorts. The villa was excavated along with Pompeii, and many of its treasures were auctioned off to museums abroad -- the Met bid and won the fresco walls of this room *designated Room M" on the blueprint of the villa as interpreted by archaeologists.

The walls of the cubiculum are covered with trompe l'oeil paintings done in the fresco technique. The three walls picture a different motif, with temple scenes, votive offerings, a tree-filled terrace, statuary, rotundas, and pylons, a glimpse of a townscapes -- all of this arranged to create the illution of greater spatial depth (there are nitid photos of the bedroom frescos here). At the rear of the room a vaulted ceiling creates a niche for the bed; the window has grills also excavated from the villa. (You can read more about the Boscoreale excavation -- as well as the sad dispersal of its treasures, here).



I look up the villa in Google Books and find a brief reference in Roger Ling's 1991 "Roman Painting". After stumbling on the architectural vocabulary (the first sentence of the paragraph reads: "The same ambiguity affects the caryatids supporting the modillions of the cornice in the west wall of the triclinium." Er, okay.) I find prose I can deciper: "the winged figure perched on a great disc in the fictive opening at the centre of the same wall... suggest a hazy boundary between real and surreal." From the passage and accompanying description of the cubiculum it seems that Mr. Synistor, or whomever commissioned the paintings, liked to mix realism with a healthy dose of fantasy -- and the same could be said of the Met gallery it now occupies, with its Doric columns and recessed lighting.