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Posts: 61

Governor

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Q: How come so many old historical buildings were destroyed and replaced with modern buildings?

In comparison to a country like Thailand for instance, China has done a pretty poor job preserving lots of its old historical buildings, not even necessarily to be replaced by skyscrapers, but just dull apartment complexes. Aren't there any government-imposed preservation laws set in place?

The country prides itself on its history but then tears everything down. Anyone who's gone to Vietnam will have witnessed the same thing.

12 years 11 weeks ago in  Culture - China

 
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Posts: 3025

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I am sorry to respectfully differ from you and your stated opinion in your question.  In a way, it may seem to some as if in China, there is a rampart destruction of old buildings to make way for newer buildings.  Yet, as I travel out of the cities, and into the country side, I do see many old buildings which are properly preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Maybe what you are referring to is a policy of the Chinese Government to tear down old residential buildings (those around 40 years old or so), maybe up to 7 stories high, near city centers, to remove slums and create more modern high rises, giving tenants of demolished buildings preference in getting apartments on the newer high raisers.  In a way, they are removing eye sores from downtown areas, and building in its place a new, modern and more attractive building.  I guess the question here will be is the building demolished (or to be demolish) really a historical site, or just a slum ?.  What does make a building a historical site ?.  Well, for one thing, history had to be made within that building, not just because it was built 50 years ago, and 20 families lived there qualifies the building as a historical site if nothing of importance to humanity happened in the building, or one of its occupants did something to make it famous.

As I said, and with due respect, I differ from you, I do think that true historiacl buildings are indeed preserved in China, while modernization of city centers is also taking place at a rapid pace.

But that is my opinion, and I could be wrong too.

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12 years 11 weeks ago
 
Posts: 1197

Shifu

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development at any cost. Short-term thinking with long-term negative effects.

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12 years 11 weeks ago
 
Posts: 1932

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Yeah, it's funny that in a country that regularly boast a 9000 year history, the oldest surviving building his hundreds of years younger than the Pantheon and the Coliseum, much less the Greek temples or buildings you'd find in the middle east.

Seems like in a lot of Europe you couldn't throw a stone without hitting something at least a few hundred years old. The city I'm in is thousands of years old, but the oldest buildings are a couple dozen that date back to the 1800s.

Shame how they show so little respect for their own history, which acting so proud of it.

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12 years 11 weeks ago
 
Posts: 1968

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I would venture to say that is more of a cyclical event than anything else. Initially after New China was founded, things were left as they were as attention was focused elsewhere.  During the Cultural Revolution, many historical buildings suffered terribly.  That gave way to the rapid development of the last twenty years.  For many Chinese, old buildings symbolize poverty from which they wish to escape.  The mindset has changed, however, over the last 5 - 10 years and in the larger cities, at least Shanghai, and Harbin, and to a lessor extent Guangzhou, and to a far lessor extent Beijing, there have been serious efforts to classify buildings as "protected structures". 

In Harbin, for example, several historic buildings that suffered during the CR have actually been either rebuilt or restored from scratch.  Guangzhou has Xiamen Dao which is very well preserved and Shanghai has swaths of still-protected Beaux Art buildings.  Beijing, alas, embarked upon a different path with its hutongs.

As happy.expat wrote, outside of the major cities, in the countryside one can often seen very well-preserved or re-created temples, pagodas, etc., etc.

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12 years 11 weeks ago
 
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Happy and 981 answered all. 

The thing I dont like to see the most are  the mixture of modern building and historical building in the city.  I think Beijing etc had done bad city plan in the beginning of protection, so it's hard for now to make changes... The historical buildings here mostly lose their aesthetic beauty around with all modern buildings imho.... .but I'm local maybe I cant see their beauty more clear than a tourist, like Londoner see their old city not as beautiful as I see it. 

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12 years 11 weeks ago

I like a snowy Happy new year, rather than a no sky one...Beijing's time to ban the cars---the only solution for the time being...

 
Posts: 47

Governor

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In answer to Happy, an article published recently on the NYT about the destruction of a supposedly 'Immovable cultural relic' in Beijing:

BEIJING — Even in its prime, the house at 24 Beizongbu Hutong was no architectural jewel, just one of countless brick-and-timber courtyard homes that clogged the labyrinthine heart of this ancient imperial capital.

 

But for seven years in the 1930s, it sheltered one of modern China’s most fabled couples, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, Ivy League-educated architects who had returned home to champion the notion that a great nation should hold dear its historic patrimony. It was Mr. Liang, the debonair son from an illustrious family of intellectuals, who urged the victorious Communists to preserve Beijing’s Yuan dynasty grid and its hulking city walls. Mao, the country’s unsentimental leader, thought otherwise.
 

So when architectural preservationists awoke last weekend to find that the couple’s house had been reduced to rubble, there was a predictable wave of outrage, but also a sense of helplessness that an official “immovable cultural relic” could be so easily dispatched by a government-affiliated real estate company.

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/world/asia/in-beijing-razing-of-histor...

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12 years 7 weeks ago
 
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