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.