CHINA:Westerners are helping protect the Olympic city's cultural landmarks, writes Clifford Coonanin Beijing
Massive urban development in Beijing has seen huge swathes of the Chinese capital destroyed to make way for Olympic projects and modern new buildings to reflect the city's growing economic strength, but there are efforts afoot to try to keep at least some of what remains of the city's heritage safe from the wrecking ball.
After widescale destruction, urban planners and enlightened developers are trying to save some of the ancient courtyard houses lining the city's hutong alleyways and landmarks of the Communist era, as well as safeguard cultural institutions such as Peking Opera in the face of modern impulses.
Courtyard houses are the graceful and ancient buildings beneath grey roofs made famous by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where kung fu warriors swept across the eaves in hushed combat.
The courtyards are hugely atmospheric, Ming dynasty-era places of solitude. Persimmon trees hang over carved stone tables where for hundreds of years, scholars, nobles and bureaucrats have sat and reflected, cooled in the shade from the searing Beijing heat in summer, and protected from the worst ravages of winter by the solid walls surrounding the atrium.
The stark vision of a pile of bricks where once there stood a graceful courtyard house, built along cosmological lines, is one of the most shocking in this constantly changing city.
Only one-third of Beijing's ancient hutongs, or alleys, still exist - most have been demolished or partially destroyed. Many of the hutongs and their courtyard houses, some dating back to the 13th century, are gone, removed to make way for new developments.
James Ledger (34), from Yorkshire, has made a labour of love out of rescuing courtyard houses. He leases the courtyards, renovates them carefully and passes them on to tenants.
Ledger had been a derivatives trader in the City of London but had always been interested in China and in Mandarin Chinese.
"It reached the point where I wanted to do something else, so I moved to Beijing three years ago. I did up a courtyard house near the Lama Temple but it was too big, 500 square metres, so I decided to let it out. Since then I've done four courtyards and I have another three on the go," says Ledger.
The courtyard houses can trace their history back to 1271, when Kublai Khan decreed that Dadu would be capital of the Yuan dynasty.
The city was laid out in grids of streets, lanes and hutongs. The word hutong comes from the Mongolian expression for "well"; in early Beijing communities grew up in the streets leading to the wells.
During the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644), there were 458 hutongs in Beijing, rising to 978 during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
Every building in the grid was rectangular, including the Forbidden City, which is the largest courtyard complex in the city. The closer your courtyard was to the Forbidden City, the greater your influence in the court, while the plebs lived outside the city walls.
By the 1980s, when China began opening up, there were 3,679 alleys in Beijing, but this has fallen by 40 per cent since then as planners clear the precincts to make way for roads and gleaming office blocks.
The areas to be demolished are marked with the character chai, which means "demolish". The pace of destruction was expected to slow as 2008 neared, but new chai signs are still being erected.
The market for renovated courtyard homes is a strong one - in April, amade-over home in Beijing's Xicheng district sold for a record 110 million yuan, about €10 million - or about €3,500 per square metre.
Ledger has no background in building but works with a French architect and a team of builders. He is working on a 500sq m (5,382sq ft) courtyard house near Paul Andreu's National Theatre, the concert venue that will be one of the city's signature buildings during the Olympics in August.
"Beijing needs to retain some of its past, otherwise it becomes like Tokyo," says Ledger.
"The past is what makes a city interesting. That said, the old and the modern makes for an interesting blend. I think the courtyards are great and it's a crying shame they are being knocked down, but China has to move forward."
Others in the market include Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendy Deng, who are renovating a courtyard house in the Beichizi district, a block from the Forbidden City.
Efforts to preserve the city's heritage also include encouraging a revival of traditional artforms such as Peking Opera, a highly stylised blend of singing, poetic dialogue, comedy, kung fu fighting and acrobatic stunts.
There were once 40 opera houses in Beijing, but dwindling audiences make it difficult for companies to survive.
Earlier this year, the Guanghe theatre, where legendary Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang performed, was knocked down, a victim of development. Mei was the artform's most famous proponent, loved for his performance of female characters, which captured the imagination of dramatists in China and further afield. Bertolt Brecht was a fan, while Chen Kaige's film, Farewell, My Concubine, is a fictionalised version of Mei's life.
Peking Opera mandarins hope to reverse falling audiences and in December inaugurated the Mei Lanfang Grand Theatre, which can hold 1,100 people in a three=storey building.