Fuchengmen Will Be Rebuilt to Look Like It Was Never Rebuilt

原创 Charles L. theBeijinger

Beijing has a very peculiar love-hate relationship with all things old: despite feeling compelled to knock down its alleys and brick up its old buildings, the Chinese capital is equally driven to emulate the same thing it destroys.

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After a year-long campaign to demolish and brick up the city's old hutong neighborhoods and alleys, a sneak-peak at redevelopment plans for the historically-protected Fuchengmen Boulevard reveal them to be throwbacks to an "old Beijing style."

A Shichahai Fuchengmen street area construction design department spokesperson explained that the purpose of the street renovation is "to rebuild a living old-style street full of humanity."

Home to such cultural relics as Miaoying Temple and Lu Xun's former residence, the 700-year-old avenue is set to complete the first stage of renovations this October with a redesign that is said to improve the area's transportation and public facilities while maintaining local customs.

The first stage of the rebuilding will optimize 680 meters of lanes for pedestrians, bicycles, public benches, non-motor vehicle parking, trees and cars within a 6.8 meter-wide street space. Street designers say street barriers and designations will keep these separate lanes distinct from each other, thereby improving traffic.

The boulevard will feature improvements like the removal of billboards from bus stops and the installation of lamps and lanterns to help the area look more scenic by night. In addition, the renovation design features plum blossoms, a play on words in Chinese that refers to the shipments of coal Fuchengmen regularly received from Mentougou in the West during China's imperial age.

A second stage, spanning from Zhaodengshu Road to Xisi Road, will complete restoration of the 1.4 kilometer-long road by 2018.

Concept drawings for this "urban leisure zone" look much like Qianmen Boulevard, a pedestrian street at the heart of the city that attracts tourists with buildings that look old, but are in reality newly-constructed in the style of laozihao, a repurposed word formerly reserved to describe things over a century old.

And we'll see more of this. "Beijing old-style street experience" areas are set to open at Beijing amusement parks. Like Qianmen, it will cater mostly to tourists.

Taking after the hot political buzzword of the moment, Fuchengmen Boulevard seeks to improve itself through "rejuvenation." But when Beijing isn't taking bold steps with challenging architectural designs, it finds an easier familiarity by emulating its history, but only under the condition of having re-made it in their own image.

Here are some before-and-after comparisons proposed for the street:

Images: CCTV.com, BJNews.com.cn, Xinhua (xinhuanet.com), Weibo.com

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