Offline City

By Ou Ning

The road separating Beijing’s eastern districts, with their whiff of modernity, from Da Zha Lan on the city’s south side is not long, and yet it is as though the two areas were separated by an age. Da Zha Lan, this isolated city district, has become a place all to its own, has banished itself to the horizons of the world. The slow cadences of centuries past live on here, as though Da Zha Lan has been cut off from all other signals – as though it has been offline. Few of the upper-crust people who live on the east side have ever been to Da Zha Lan. Their map of the city points only to those destinations that lie nearest their fancies and inclinations. Da Zha Lan is too old, too underclass – even if it were to enter their line of sight, it would seem remote to them.

Entering the deep and silent places of Da Zha Lan requires an odyssey. Only by journeying through several ages can you reach them. These slanting streets were carved out by refugees fleeing the imperial capital in the Jin Dynasty (265-420 AD) after its destruction, and they offer the most direct route to the past. Along these streets, the refugees carry the pains of their experiences and journey through to the new capital city of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD). You can imagine their doddering figures, faltering as they walk, shifting step by step along the road, step by step all the way to the present day.

There’s no denying Da Zha Lan is a world of the aged – so many homes here are empty nests, the young, seduced by the trappings of modern life, having moved out to the new city suburbs expanding outwards ring after ring. They feel they’ll go crazy if they don’t escape the stifling pace of the district. The people here live in homes from the late Qing Dynasty, walk along roads from the Republican Era (1911-1949), use electrical wiring dating from the Liberation (1949). The city facilities here are extremely old, social indicators stagnant. Da Zha Lan has been left far behind as the whole nation has rocketed ahead to modernity.

As the new grows newer, the old grows older. The rise of newer urban areas in Beijing has accelerated the ruin of older districts. Economic development disparities and historical protectionism between various administrative districts have given rise to policy impediments that undercut renewal and development opportunities in Da Zha Lan. As the district was forgotten by the upper crust and the nouveau riche, migrants flocked there in huge numbers. Da Zha Lan’s low cost of living drove massive population growth, and density eventually rose to 4.5 people per square meter, more than twice the average for the capital’s city center. All were low-income workers from poor regions all over the country. They lived on average on eight yuan, or one U.S. dollar, per day. Da Zha Lan became known as a slum for Beijing’s poor.

As populations from various regions of China mixed in Da Zha Lan, new forms of social organization began to form under its surface. Beyond the reach of the authorities of the district – the street agency and residential committee – people formed interest groups on the basis of regional connections. People from Henan collected recyclables, people from Hebei sold fruit, people from Shanxi opened boarding houses, people from Anhui worked as housemaids, people from Sichuan opened restaurants, people from Jiangxi ran salons, people from the northeast cooked up small-time investment schemes or worked as pimps. All formed themselves into industry groups, defending their mutual interests. Native accents or dialects became an important way of distinguishing various groups, and only through Mandarin interpretation could they communicate with those outside their circle. If the translation function were shut off, these groups would be isolated totally. This latest expression of China’s old guild culture flows beneath Da Zha Lan district.

Da Zha Lan has long been a place where people from other regions of China can gain a foothold in the city and share in what it has to offer. One young woman working in a local salon says that when she graduated from middle school she came to Tiananmen Square all the way from her hometown in Shanxi Province to watch the raising of the national flag. When she saw how entertaining and full of life the neighboring Da Zha Lan district was, she decided to stay. Experiencing the luster of the city, the grandeur of the national capital, she wanted to plunge into the sea of people and find her own way. The boarding houses scattered like stars through Da Zha Lan accommodate those who stream over from Tiananmen Square – and so her floating life began in Da Zha Lan. You don’t have to worry that she might vanish. If the salon where she works is shut down today, you can track her down tomorrow in some other salon. Today she’s crashing in this or that boarding house. Tomorrow she’ll surface again, just like one of those chatters on QQ (instant messaging service) who go offline but always wander back (although, in this case, she doesn’t even know how to surf the internet).

Individual rooms are generally the basic unit of service at upscale hotels, which also promise a range of intangible products, such as privacy, comfort, a sense of identity, of richness, etcetera. By contrast, the small boarding houses of Da Zha Lan break rooms up into bed spaces and rent these out. Many of the boarding houses here are still in the style of the early Republican Era, old whorehouses with two open inner courtyards, often covered over with metal canopies to keep out the sun and rain. They advertise themselves with electric signs that say, “Beds Available”, drawing in guests from the street. “Beds Available”, this powerful advertisement, bursts through the distinction between public and private space. It might be a sociopath sleeping in the bed next to yours, but its 10 yuan a bed nonetheless, and you can sleep and dream more deeply here than out on the street. With so many beds lined out in rows, the very notion of the room dissolves, the boarding house itself dissolves, and in the night Da Zha Lan becomes a sea of snoring sleepers. The next day everyone awakens and all return to the streets, continuing their push ahead with their lives.

The streets in Da Zha Lan have preserved the original pattern of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They are small and narrow, Lang Fang Er Tiao being a prime example, and as the boss of one restaurant here put it: “You can still ride a three-wheeled cart [through the streets], but an Audi would block the way entirely”. In the past, people might have imagined wide roads and intersections, but they could never have envisioned the speed with which cars fly through the streets today. They preferred cities on a smaller-scale. They liked to experience the labyrinthine streets with their own two feet. Only in places like Lang Fang Er Tiao, lined on each side with shop fronts and jammed in with people, could speed be annihilated and humanity associate. Da Zha Lan is home to some of the most narrow hutongs in Beijing – Qianshi Hutong, once jammed full of small banking houses, is just 80 centimeters at its narrowest point, wide enough for just one person to pass, which means it was easier to catch thieves and protect the old-style private banks. This is one of the best examples to show how traditional streets were the natural enemies of speed.

Unlike the modern automobile, the vehicle most suited to the streets of Da Zha Lan is the three-wheeled pedal cart, which preserves the ancient pace of the district. In the past these vehicles were used to transport pleasure seekers to Da Zha Lan’s Eight Hutongs (Beijing’s old red-light district), or to take prostitutes to clients elsewhere. Today they carry tourists on pleasure cruises through the hutongs, their purpose transformed – once passenger vehicles, now tools of enjoyment. In a society that puts a premium on speed, slowness becomes a curio, a rarity to be enjoyed and appreciated. They have lost their former utility. Collectors of three-wheeled pedal carts will stop at no expense, putting gold on the handlebars, adding bronze bells and brocade. The vehicles are worshiped at home, not carts on which to fly through the streets but lifeless sacrifices.

With the rise of the internet, our world is now divided into the online and the offline. Da Zha Lan is a city offline. It has its own problems, abides by its own logic of survival. I dislike selfish Beijing aesthetes who take Da Zha Lan as their own. I dislike the empty words of historical protectionists who brush aside the lives of real people. I like even less the real-estate developers who talk about reform but are really speaking the language of greed. I’m confident that if the government releases Da Zha Lan from its bonds and leverages the knowledge of civil society, this district may one day become reconnected with our new world of modernity and prosperity.

Translation by David Bandurski