Problems with the Liulaogen Guildhall in Beijing

I don’t know much about this building or the problems that apparently beset it of late but I’ll add it to the blog anyway with links. There appears to be a row about a Chinese TV celebrity by the name of Zhao Benshan who’s media company is the operator of an upscale club inside the “newly renovated” Liulaogen Guildhall building in Qianmen. Reporters who often highlight architectural damage claim that the siheyuan, or courtyard, has been damaged by additional structures. The Guildhall comprises 6 siheyuan in total apparently, protected and about 280 years old.

Anyway, there’s various stories about what has or hasn’t happened here that I’ll point you too as I am not familiar with this structure of this project to a degree enough to make any form comments:

China Daily and again here

Global Times

Quite Simply You Have Got to Check out the Midnight in Peking Website

The website that goes with my new book Midnight in Peking (I’m in Melbourne at the moment selling it) is completely brilliant. I’d go so far as to say that no author and publisher has ever got together to build such a cool website for a book. All ChinaRhymers will love it, I can assure you – there’s loads or old Peking pics, links and information on the Tartar Wall, the Badlands and the Legation Quarter. There’s an audio walk through the Peking of 1937 and a rather excellent video filmed at those locations with me doing my Simon Schama impression!

The site has loads on it including downloadable images of old Peking and old maps too. There’s information for book clubs that might like the book as well as details of where I’ll be speaking over the next few months. And, of course, the fact that the mighty David Peace blurbed my book does not got unremarked upon!!

No problems finding the site – www.midnightinpeking.com – how easy is that!

And if you want a copy of the book and you’re in Australia click here, or in China then click here. If you’re in Europe or America then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till next year!!

Shanghai’s French Bund – The Last Man Standing

The old Butterfield and Swire building on the former Quai de France, or French Bund, (now Zhongshan Dong Er Lu) is all that remains with any history to it. Actually nothing much else is there now, as the developers clear land, except a few rather predictably crap pieces of early 90s Shanghai architecture about which the less said the better.

No.22 is effectively the last man standing on that part of the riverfront south of Avenue Edward VII (Yanan Road). The rest has been pulled down, bulldozed, harmonised into temporary parks that will soon make way for a grotesque SOHO development that will overshadow the former British Bund and generally cast gloom both architecturally and heritage wise. Such is what passes for progress in quick-obsessed, dodgy developer-controlled Shanghai.There used to be a plethora of old godowns, warehouses and commercial premises around here running along to the colonnaded and once truly splendid Rue du Consulat (Jinling Road). For a nice summary of the history and architecture of the French Bund do read this piece from Hugues Martin’s excellent Shanghailander blog.

At least it looks like it will stay, though visiting a restaurant in the building called Brix the other day you immediately note that now the view to the south is a typical insta-park with scaffold supported insta-trees but will soon just be the walls and windows of a massive SOHO high rise – it’s going to be permanently dark dining in Brix I fear!

Not sure what they’re calling this redevelopment – 22 South Bund on the outside and then Bund 1906 on the inside. Externally the building looks great actually if a little marooned! Internally it’s now a sort of messy sub-Venetian, cod-classical mash up that obviously doesn’t really work and is, rather unfortunately, faintly reminiscent of the main hall of an old Victorian prison like Brixton or Pentonville – Brixton Prison is the picture on the right below by the way for anyone confused, the luxury new development is on the left…or maybe it’s the other way round…I’m all confused now…

When will the anti-suicide nets be fitted at No.22 South Bund one wonders?

Chungking Mansions – The Ghetto at the Center of the World

An interesting new book for those who have known Hong Kong’s infamous Chungking Mansions over the year: Gordon Mathews – Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions (shame Hong Kong University has decided to adopt American spelling). Anyway here are the details as per usual.

Midnight in Peking – The Curtain Raiser

So last night the great and the good of Beijing gathered on the roof the Beijing Bookworm to do an official launch of my new book Midnight in Peking. A massive thanks to Penguin, the Bookworm and everyone who came – it was a great night of old Peking gossip and gabbing!

I’m heading to Australia for the literary festivals in Melbourne and Brisbane but we wanted to make sure that the home crowd in Beijing got first glimpses and first opportunity to buy…and some free drinks in the evening heat.

There’s some pictures here of the evening courtesy of The Beijinger…

And so the Midnight in Peking show is now most definitely on the road for the next year!!

Question: What do Termites and Communists Have in Common?

Answer: they’re both a major threat to Shanghai’s heritage and historic architecture

Many thanks to the young people (and they really are very young actually) over at Shanghaiist who drew my attention to this story from the Shanghai Daily (what do you mean you don’t subscribe!!) about the threat termites are to Shanghai’s historic buildings. The article cites any number of historic buildings with termite problems but imagine the situation in those buildings where nobody’s going to call pest control. I can tell you from experience that sub-division of old buildings hasn’t helped – unless the entire structure and surrounding gardens are treated then invariably the treatment will be ineffectual. In Shanghai’s current phase of high levels of alienation, people being arsey for the sake of it and downright unfriendly there’s always one person in the building who refuses to have their rooms treated. Usually it’s because they don’t want to pay or just downright pig ignorant.

Termites are nothing new in Shanghai – Shanghailanders were complaining about them in the nineteenth century. Of course the government could step in and launch and fund an eradication campaign but as they’re not keen to pay for healthcare or pensions it’s unlikely they’ll be paying for termite eradication and architecture preservation.

Apparently it’s about RMB300 to eradicate a nest of termites – communists unfortunately are a bit harder to eradicate (but not, let us always remember, impossible!).

Felice Beato—A Photographer on the Eastern Road

Somehow I missed this Beato exhibition that just took place, and is now finished, in Los Angeles at the John Paul Getty Museum. Beato of course was one of the earliest photographers of China who liked a bit of gore and was prolific and highly commercial. I wrote about him in some detail in my Through the Looking Glass book though I believe his final days are still shrouded in some mystery.

Anyway,there’s an essay looking at Beato’s body of work and the exhibition highlights in the latest online version of the China Heritage Quarterly.

Coming Down Alert: A Once Beautiful Compound on McGregor Road

Following my post a while back on the old and now seemingly lost Studley Avenue in Hongkou the street photographer Sue Anne Tay (with her great Shanghai Street Stories blog) emailed to tell me about a building close to the site on north to south running Lintong Road (formerly McGregor Road). It is one of only a few now sadly relatively intact privately built compounds in that area. There used to be many more but in the last decade the wrecking ball has had pretty much enjoyed free reign across all of Hongkou, Tilanqiao and Yangpu (tourists and foreigners by and large don’t go north east of Suzhou Creek so many people haven’t even registered the extent of destruction over there.

Anyway, here’s Sue Anne:

This is a beautiful entrance along Lintong Lu, leading towards Yulin Lu. There is a story behind this house, built in the simplistic Suzhou-styled rural design. I ran into the owner though I lost my notes and his name. It turns out the the whole house was owned by one family, whose patriarch worked for foreign companies or “æ´‹è¡Œ” (or the industry involving foreign businesses) and designed the entire structure himself. The family also owned the the opposing apartments where each son had owned a house. They lost it all during Communism including many relatives, and were relegated to a small adjacent apartment. Now the plot, as seen from the bird’s eye view (immediately below), is split into two families who don’t really speak to each other. One side has kept the traditional facade though horribly defaced (see picture above) and the other has a metal gate (see second picture below).

The ornate entrance is the left entrance. Shame I don’t have a “contrast” photo of the two entrances – old vs modern. One of the brothers live on the right, and the sister lives on the left. They are separated by a giant structure in the middle which now serves as a shed that was once the main room (see picture immediately below). As you can see from the other photos, the house is now half-torn down (see bottom picture). If I recall right, the developer came and starting going at it and somehow ran out of money. These pictures were taken January 2010, so I don’t know if it’s still in the same state.

(China Rhyming – as my photo from the street outside in the Studley Avenue post taken in August 2011 shows the dereliction has just been left – the damage done through one or two, and another upcoming, Shanghai winter with a smashed roof is probably now irreparable)