Opposite my old high school on Shanghai’s Yongkang Road stands the Yongtai neighborhood. I walked past it every morning when I was in high school, but it was not until I entered college and had more leisure time that I went in and explored.
Unlike many of the recently built neighborhoods in Shanghai, whose residential buildings have dozens of floors and are well-equipped with parking lots and grocery stores, old areas, like Yongtai, lack such amenities.
The day I visited was a peaceful and quiet afternoon; bicycles and cars were dispersed along lane walls instead of in garages, drying laundry hung right above the alleys, and residents sat and chatted in the afternoon sunshine. Everyone seemed to enjoy the environment and the slow living pace. Despite the lack of modern amenities, I would feel honored if I could live in such a neighborhood with fairy-tale serenity.
Thinking about the possibility of living in such a place after graduation, I researched similar old neighborhoods online, thinking that perhaps I could move into one after I save enough money. Disappointingly, such areas are increasingly hard to come by, as the number of old neighborhoods in Shanghai shrank by around 60 percent from 2000 to 2008. By now, in 2022, even more of these urban fairylands have been replaced by modern high-rises.
Anthropologist Chuek Yet Ho, who has studied urban demolition and development in China, writes of a manager of a demolition and relocation company, summarizing their view of the overall situation and presenting it as fairly typical of the mainstream popular view:
A combination of soaring property prices, experiences of previous demolition malpractices, and the ruling Communist Party of China’s resolve to create a ‘harmonious society’ is attributed to more stringent control over how demolition work should be conducted. Chaiqianhu (evictees) are well-aware of the country’s economic transformation from the principle of socialist distribution based on part entitlement and part discretion, to the new game of capitalist accumulation based on part market mechanism and part statist control.
And all that aside, a quick glance at one of these old neighborhoods might lead some to agree that they should be demolished: wires often hang haphazardly from the walls, which themselves may be in clear need of repair, and old pipes and plumbing are as visible as the tangled wires. And yet, as Ho argues, the main reason for demolition in cities, including Shanghai, is not the old age of houses, which may be the sum of generations of people and well worth preserving, but urban development undertaken to accommodate the massive influx of migrants into cities from all around China. Low-rise buildings, it seems, can no longer satisfy the increasing population and demand for living spaces.
Hence, buildings of dozens of stories oppressively loom over patches of remaining graceful old buildings, and the peaceful lives of the residents and their precious memory living there. Although Shanghai pays much attention to the preservation of historical buildings as famous places, including the site of the first CPC conference, turning them into well-preserved and propagandized tourist attractions, people seldom care about the future of old neighborhoods except the residents themselves, who may lose their sense of community because demolition involves moving into suburb neighborhoods and separation from familiar friends. Independent scholar Jeff Hays, in an interview with a Shanghainese resident who has undergone demolition, quotes a Mr Jin as saying, “There’s nothing wrong with improving people’s lives, but we shouldn’t throw our heritage away like a pair of old shoes.”
This reminds me of a famous but regretful example of demolition in China I learned about in a required freshman course at NYU Shanghai, Global Perspectives on Society. Lincoln Lane, an old Shanghai alley named after American President Lincoln, was demolished in 2002. The residents there spared no effort to advertise its charm, even writign a letter to the mayor of Springfield, Illinois and seeking the help of graduate students from Tongji University in an effort to save their beloved neighborhood. The charming and upscale lane still experienced demolition in 2002, and many people attribute this to the ignorance and irresponsibility of the city’s building preservation department. Today, searching on Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, I cannot even find the exact site of Lincoln Lane. Time, and human actions, threaten to erase all the memories and records of it.
As I contemplate my own past, and think about the peaceful lanes of the Yongtai neighborhood — a place I never got to know in high school, and have only now begun to acquaint myself with — I realize that we must all work to save memories of our collective past, even as urban renewal surges ahead and remakes our cities.