| August 7, 2008
Qianmen Dajie will be a walking street. It never looked like this in its entire history. Buildings are built one at a time: old buildings next to new, freshly painted next to worn, grand next to modest. One thing has returned to the past, people are walking without fighting cars, buses and cabs to cross to see an interesting store as they did in 1898 (below).
"But the destruction of Qianmen, one of the most famous of old Beijing's districts, south of Tiananmen Square, has continued unabated. Officials say that it will be replaced by courtyard-style housing.
But such schemes came under fire from the government's representatives at the conference. "It is like tearing up an invaluable painting and replacing it with a cheap print,'' said Tong Mingkang, the deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage" (12 June 2007 The Daily Telegraph).
|
