Death of a Building: The Knock-On Effects of Knocking Down Buildings

Three years ago, I taught at a building on the southeast corner of Guanghua Bridge. It was an ugly thing, with peeling maroon paint and dark, musty hallways. There was no air conditioning and in the summer it got so unbearable that sometimes we had to relocate to a nearby coffee shop.

I worked on the eighth floor. Between classes I’d look out the window by the water cooler and watch the construction of the new CCTV headquarters. People called it the Big Shorts but back then it looked more like a pair of assless chaps.

One day late last year, I passed by Guanghua Bridge and was surprised to see our building and its surroundings cordoned off with sheets of metal plating, the kind you see around construction sites. Though the building I had worked in was still standing, a crane was driving a wrecking ball into the wall of a building right next to it. A construction worker stood next to the crane with a hose, spraying water to settle the dust where the wrecking ball had hit.

Over the next few months, more and more of the area disappeared, transmuted into hills of debris and bent rebar, but my building remained, until it was the only thing standing amidst a field of concrete tumuli.

Then, a month ago, my building disappeared too. Like many things in the city, it was there one day, gone the next, and no one could say why. Later I read in the news that when the building fell, it collapsed on top of four cars, including a Porsche, destroying them entirely

I’m not trying to eulogize the place – it was falling apart and I didn’t particularly enjoy working there. And yet, whenever I pass by its ruins, I vainly try to pinpoint the place in the empty air where I had once taught class.

Seeing the building’s destruction brought back memories I thought had been discarded and those memories made me think of the friends I had met during my time there, and the thought of those friends made me miss that maroon monstrosity. Like it or not, that building was a part of my Beijing story, and when it disappeared, a part of me, however small, had gone with it.

In the four years I’ve lived in Beijing, I’ve seen subway lines carved from cavernous holes in the middle of busy avenues. I’ve watched the Bird’s Nest slowly grow into its shell and the Assless Chaps stitched together in midair. But until now I had never given much thought to what had existed before all that. When people complained about demolitions, I used to think, That’s just the way it is. The past has to make way for the future. Now I wonder, what had to be destroyed so that a television station could have a new headquarters?

Cities are cultural, historical and architectural palimpsests. Cab drivers sometimes rant about what Beijing was like before all the high-rises and shopping malls, but maybe that’s what makes them real Beijingers – they can remember an iteration of the city that existed before this one. Though I can hardly remember what Sanlitun was like before the Village, something tells me that I’m going to remember what used to occupy the southeast corner of Guanghua Bridge.

All buildings have a history, but in a country that’s charging so swiftly into the future, there’s no time to look back, no time for sentimentality. That’s the way it is, I guess. The past has to make way for the future. The old has to make way for the new.

Today, the area southeast of the bridge is being cleared of rubble. By the time you read this, there will be no trace of what used to be there. I imagine, over the next year, a construction crew will dig a deep pit and line it with concrete; shafts of rebar will rise out of the ground like spring grass; scaffolding will spire toward the sky with green construction mesh trailing it like scandent vines; and then, before you know it, Beijing will have a new skyscraper.

Click here to see the May issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photo Joey Guo

Comments

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georgeding wrote:
I never said I arrived in Beijing four years ago.
georgeding wrote:
When I first came to Beijing four years ago, I thought I had stepped into an alternate universe. At the end of my first interview, when my supervisor was going over the contract, I could only focus on one thing: “You’re going to pay me this much to speak English?”

http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2012/02/12/Peking-Man-The-Jing-And-I

Ok, its from February 12th, but still....

You should hire me as your fact checker.

Thanks for the kind words Niu Bi.

To clarify for riley and bottle-o: I began my stay in China officially on July 5, 2007. I'm looking at the entry stamp in my old passport right now.

But that means you've been living in China for five years you god damned liar! you're thinking to yourself. But the fact is, I haven't lived in Beijing the entire time since July 2007. I've lived in other cities and gone back to the States for extended periods of time. However, altogether I've lived in Beijing for four years, more or less. If you'll notice, I write in the article, "In the four years I’ve lived in Beijing..." I never said I arrived in Beijing four years ago.

At the risk of sounding contrary, the article is not wrong, nor am I a big liar, though I have been known to embellish in these columns for dramatic effect.

I understand how my words could have caused confusion and I am sorry for that. But in the future, please assume that I've read the same Wikipedia articles you have while researching and fact-checking my own article.

Thank you for your concern and, I must admit, it makes me sleep sounder knowing that thebeijinger.com has such dedicated fact checkers.

Yup, George Ding is a big liar. If he arrived here 4 years ago (May 2008ish) he would have missed both of those landmark events.

June - November, 2007 The membrane covering was installed on the Bird's Nest marking the end of the external construction.

They started putting the 2 towers of the CCTV building together in October-November 2007 and the thing was complete (without the glass) by the end of February 2008.

While I like the sentimental nature of the post and lament the loss of any semblance of architectural cohesiveness/tradition in Beijing, I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this article.

I'm not sure if the author is using hyperbole or if it's just poor fact checking, but this is wrong:
"I’ve watched the Bird’s Nest slowly grow into its shell and the Assless Chaps stitched together in midair"

The both the "rising of the Bird's Nest" and the connecting of the CCTV towers occurred in 2006 and 2007, respectively. So I don't know if they have their dates wrong or the author doesn't know how long he's been in China, but the article is wrong.

extrastrength wrote:
who cares

I couldn't care less about the building discussed in the article but the piece was well written (learned two new words: scandent and palimpsests), so, at least there's that.

who cares