Meishi Street

Digital video, color, 85 minutes, English subtitle, 2006

Meishi Street is located on the southwest side of Beijing's Tiananmen Square and runs from north to south. In this old city district, called Da Zha Lan, the city was carrying out a project to improve traffic and facilities for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. On December 27, 2004, the Beijing Municipal Government launched a project to widen Meishi Street to 25 meters from its original 8 meters. Many of the original residents living along the street faced the demolition of their homes and relocation to other areas of the city. Zhang Jinli, Sun Tiesheng and Liu Ruiping are three of these residents. They're not satisfied with the compensation plan made by the government and developers and started a journey of protecting their rights. All failed in the end though with their properties destroyed by force, even including Zhang Jinli, the most resistant one. This is not a rare case in most cities in China during the process of development. However, what's special about this film is many clips were taken by these victims themselves, which irreplaceably strengthens the passion and pain you can feel in them. Their struggles changed Meishi Street, a normal urban space, and gave it new meanings. In the age of sharp changes, equipped with cameras, Zhang Jinli and the likes are the recorders of alternative history.

Director: Ou Ning
Original video by: Zhang Jinli
Additional camera work: Huang Weikai / Ou Ning / Cao Fei
Editors: Cao Fei / Ou Ning
English subtitle: David Bandurski
Production: Alternative Archive

This video is part of The Da Zha Lan Project: www.dazhalan-project.org

The Da Zha Lan Project is part of the Beijing Case fellowship program organized and supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Goethe-Institut Peking.

Prensentation in Beijing

Community Participation 01: Zhang Jinli
Video, Color, 35 mins, English subtitle, 2005

The video was taken by Zhang Jinli with a Sony DCR-TRV10E digital camera from October 12 to 21, 2005.

Zhang Jinli

Zhang Jinli, a resident to be removed and relocated from No. 117 Meishi Street. He was born in 1958 and sent to work in the countryside in Daxing after graduation from high school in 1978. He became a worker at the No. 3 Strip Steel Factory in Beijing in 1980 and resigned to open a restaurant of his own in 1991.

No. 117 on Meishi Street was a private property bought by Zhang Jinli’s father, Zhang Hongqun in 1954 and had been a restaurant since 1984. It was renamed as Jinli Restaurant after Zhang Jinli took it over in 1991. On December 27, 2004, the process of demolition began on Meishi Street. Zhang Jinli’s became a famous “nail-in household” in Dazhalan area as he was dissatisfactory with the estimate on the size of his property and the amount of compensation offered by the property developer.

The version for Beijing exhibition can be viewed at Zero Field, 798, No.4 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Beijing from October 29 to November 12. It will be online after the exhibition. The version for ZKM exhibition in Germany will be completed in May 2006.