Yesterday, in a park near Tianamen Square, we saw some traditional-looking buildings that had recently been built and another that was in the process of being finished: a couple of square metres of bare concrete was left uncovered and labourers perched on bamboo scaffolding were busy sticking thin brick tiles on.
Spurious oldness has been a major problem with quite a few of the cities we've visited. These are places with undoubted heritage that have been over-restored, filled with shops, and been opened to the crowds. Oh the crowds! It wasn't always this way; I'm led to believe that less than a decade ago these places had a more genuine appearance. The problem with spurious oldness is that it feels fake. The paving stones are square and unworn, the bricks moss-free and unweathered, and the roofs free of plantlife. Even if there's not a shop in sight, it feels wrong.
Yes, I know that I love Luang Prabang but there's such a variety of older premises there, and the restoration seems to have been done with more attention to authenticity. In China's old cities, many of the restored buildings are cookie-cutter in their shiny regularity. To be fair, this is probably how the Chinese tourists like it - there's crowds of them there, after all
Li Jiang: Charming while walking to one's guesthouse, with willow-lined stone canal-ettes; less charming once you actually have time get to wander the major streets. Gets more charming the moment you get away from the shops and into the crowd-free shop-less alleys up the hillside.
Yang Shuo: Yang Shuo is a backpacker haven. Much like Li Jiang's main streets, it's filled with light and music of bars and the clamour of souvenier shops and shoppers. It does have some charm, though, being nestled among the always-attractive limestone karst, and it's a bus to boat rides further north on the Li River. The Lotus Caves near the boat ride is simultaneously fantastic for its limestone formations (the "lotuses" are disk-shaped), and hideous in its tastelessness: there's concrete paths and railing, coloured lights, and advertisements for a certain hotel.
Dali: The old city is even less charming than Li Jiang since there are really no non-major streets with a natural feel. Xi Zhou, about 25 km north of the old city is worth a visit, though, as it has crowd-free shop-less alleys, old buildings, and at least one hidden temple. It's a real working town, which is really the problem with Dali, Li Jiang, and Yang Shuo: The "old" bits aren't real and don't work at being anything but tourist traps.
Then there are places where the reverse is true. Kunming, wonderfully modern in the city centre, has had a lot of its older areas torn down. Even in the centre, though, there's still a little real life if you can get off the main roads - street markets and genuine neighbourhoods. These older areas, hidden within the main blocks, probably won't last much longer, though, as stretches of waste ground lie awaiting the construction of new buildings.
Beijing has lost more than two thirds of its hutongs (alleyways) in the last few years and more are scheduled to be torn down. The blocks near Temple of Heaven Park have been shrouded by hastily-built brick walls, with most of the shops that lined the main roads there now derelict; a few dour shopkeepers hold the fort. The Olympics is coming, and preparations must be made. Shanghai is also changing rapidly, says Nik. Unfortunately I can no longer get to it on this trip, and so see it before it transforms completely.
Sorry to sound grumpy. It's not just China: I mourn the gentrification of The Rocks, the conversion of Grace Brothers Broadway into a mall, and the simplification of the layout in the Australian Museum. It might be progress, but sometimes the magic gets badly lost.
Not everywhere has been overrestored, though: The Muslim Quarter in Xian has a real feel to it despite the plethora of shops - it's amazing just how effective slightly uneven paving can be. Even Antique Alley which runs from the market past the Great Mosque is still great to wander - if you've ever wanted something with Chairman Mao on to put on a mantlepiece, this is the place to get it! The Great Mosque, by the way, was rather an unusual complex: it's very Chinese in design, with no domes but with carved animal figures.
Sometimes a place can feel wrong without any attempt at antiquity. The Three Gorges Project Area is a temporary city - a place for workers and companies associated with the Dam project. When the dam is finished, most of the city will be razed and terraformed, and a few hotels put up for visitors. Sue and I were dropped off at a hotel for a few hours while the other members of our tour went for a more in-depth look at the dam. The wing we were in was in the middle of refurbishment. I went out for a walk. The town's streets were near-devoid of cars - much less people, its parks were filled only by maintenance workers, and the local pool was empty of water and bathers.
In contrast to overfinished areas, in the countryside - particularly noticeable around Yang Shuo - the predominant architectural style of newer buildings can best be described as "unfinished". These multi-storey brick buildings are roughly-mortered but what really makes them distinctive is the way that their upper storeys appear to lack any kind of window fitting: No glass, no curtains, and no shutters. On the top storey, the stair to the roof may not have a door, and on the edge of the flat slab, a low wall may be formed. This is not an even wall, however, but what appears to be a random placement of bricks - a one or two lines in some places, and waist high or higher in others, as though the builder was using up excess bricks, or hoping to complete the wall when the money from a particularly bumper harvest came in.
Speaking of walls, I've visited two sections of the Great Wall, both restored. Simatai is rougher and less tourist-friendly than Mutianyu, though interestingly there was a section at Mutianyu where there was a section of paving deeply grooved and worn, apparently trodden by centuries of guards.
Tonight we went to the "Legend of Kungfu" show, which is promoted by agents as being "The Shaolin Monks Show". It was an impressive display of skill, fitness, and some fakir tricks, but I doubt that anyone going came out of it with any more understanding of Ch'an Buddhism than when they went in. "Shaolin", incidently, isn't mentioned anywhere in the show, however, nor does it appear on the brochure or ticket, nor is there any obvious claim that the performers are in any way genuine monks rather than highly-skilled secular acrobats and martial-artists, which is refreshing.
