Absurdity, Allegory and China

The first time I walked down the tree-lined lane between Hujialou Xili and Nanli was in the late afternoon of March 24, 2008. The trees were all on the Nanli – the east side – of the lane, though Nanli literally means “south neighborhood”. The short stretch of lane runs north from Chaoyang Lu. The first photo I took was of a young girl, 6-8 years old, who was riding in the back of three-wheeled bicycle pedaled by an older man who I assumed to be her grandfather. Grandparents often assume the duties of transporting students back and forth to/from school, since parents are, more often than not, at work. The shadows had begun to get long and the temperature was dropping. I’d been taking photos for several hours and I was getting cold. It was a nice place to wind up the day. A wall was under construction along the west side of the lane, and the majority of buildings which had once been Xili (west neighborhood) had recently been torn down. There were still a few building left even as the brick masons were adding to the height of the wall.

Over the last 19 months I have often returned to this neighborhood, always ending with a walk along this same lane, which, from habit and photographic angle, I always approach from the north. The last time I was there was at the end of August when I discovered that the trees along the east side of the lane had all been removed, leaving a barren swath and unobstructed view of the CCTV Headquarters, a view that could hardly be worse for the residents, since it allowed them a clear shot of the burned hulk of the TVCC. What a deal. It was quite a shock to find theme gone. My first reaction was to ask someone what had happened to the trees. A middle-aged woman gave me her best “mei banfa” shrug and told me that it was, after all, the year of the 60th anniversary of Liberation, and she continued walking with her husband on their early morning jaunt. And that was that. For a moment I tried to logically process the possible relationship between the removal of the trees and what was then still the upcoming anniversary, a logical reflex which I quickly realized, as I often do, would lead nowhere.

When I first strolled the lane I assumed that the west side had once, also, had a line of trees, forming an impenetrable canopy over anyone who was lucky enough to be there on a hot Beijing summer day. It was obviously the place you’d want to be when the temperatures climbed into the 90′s (F) (mid-30s C). But not anymore. There is a new condo/flat/apartment development being built in the former Xili, a place named Xanadu. (I wish I were making this up.) For those who may have skipped both history and lit and leaped straight into mindless musical romances, Xanadu pre-dates Olivia Newton-John by more than a handful of centuries. In fact, it’s a Mongolian thing: Kubla Khan’s former pleasure palace, which was located in present-day Inner Mongolia. (Back to that Yuan Dynasty thing again.) And for those who skipped history and current events, there is absolutely no love lost between the Chinese and the Mongolians. To mark a neighborhood conquest by giving its replacement a Mongolian name is like building a U.S. fast food chain and calling it George III’s Blue Burgers. Xanadu, the development, is advertised as the “Metropolitan Palace by the National Landmark” allowing that the CCTV HQ project is already a national landmark, which is hard to argue with, especially with a good chunk of it still in post-conflagrative glory. How could it be anything less than a landmark?

Here is a slideshow of photos I’ve taken of what was formerly Hujialou Xili and the small, now treeless lane.

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