City Government Backs Hutong Revival
Oliver Wainwright reports for the The Guardian that Beijing Design Week architects have carried...
Beijing architecture
Modern-day Tiananmen Gate is Fake
At Hug China, Bernd Chang reports that the present Tiananmen Gate as seen on the Tiananmen Square...
Architect Wants To Turn Tiananmen Square Green
ABC News reports via Spiegel International that Chinese architect Ma Yansong has “taken the...
False Historical Consciousness
After scuttling plans in 2010 to redevelop Beijing’s historic Bell and Drum Tower neighborhoods, demolition of a nearby square has now begun. The government has announced plans to restore the tangle of hutongs back to its...
Old Building Restoration Taking a Hold in China
Starting from the reinvention of Dashilar, a historical neighborhood in Beijing, innovative architects are racking their brains to balance city development and cultural preservation. From Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore at The Los...
Iconic CCTV Headquarters Completed
China Central Television’s headquarters building is finally complete. 10 years after design approval and 8 years after construction began, China’s state-run television broadcaster is finally ready to set-up shop in...
Razing History
In the Atlantic, Jonathan Kaiman writes about the destruction of Beijing’s historic neighborhoods, including the hutongs surrounding Zhongnanhai, the central leadership compound, which were on a protected list compiled in...
Developers Demolish Home of Revered Architects
Liang Sicheng is known as the “father of Chinese architecture.” He and his architect wife, Lin Huiyin, lived in an ancient courtyard home in Beijing from which they fought for the preservation of Beijing’s...
Sinica: The Soul of Beijing
The latest Sinica podcast, hosted by Kaiser Kuo, focuses on the transformation of Beijing through the eyes of several long-time residents: As housing prices and rents soar, hutongs get ripped down and “crazy bad” air...
Fate of Old Beijing: Videos and Slideshows
China Green features a series of videos and slideshows exploring Beijing’s disappearing hutongs. In the face of China’s rapid modernization, the world’s most populous country is struggling to preserve its cultural...
A Trip Down Beijing’s Half-fake Memory Lane
For the Los Angeles Times, Megan K. Stack writes about life in the Beijing hutongs as they are being destroyed and transformed into tourist sites around her: All around us, workers are tearing down the neighborhood and...
Bulldozers Meet Historic Chinese Neighborhood
The New York Times reports on the imminent destruction of the ancient Drum and Bell Tower neighborhood of Beijing: These days, those who reside in the neighborhood known as Gulou are anxiously counting the days until...
In Beijing, a Brand-New Old Quarter (with photos)
In the New York Times, Richard Bernstein takes a walk through the new Dashalan pedestrian district: But while most of the old residential areas of Beijing that have been demolished were transformed into zones of high-rise...
The Truth About Peking Duck and Other Beijing Reflections
Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, continues his guest-blogging for the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog with a trip to Beijing: One thing that struck me about the Olympic architecture is...
CDT Bookshelf: The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China
Taipei Times gives a review of Jasper Becker’s new book,The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China. You might think that City of Heavenly Tranquility, with its subtitle “Beijing in the History of...
Beijing, the Invisible City
China Heritage Quarterly, a publication of the China Heritage Project, The Australian National University, has published a special issue focusing on Beijing, the Invisible City. From the Introduction: We feature the historical...
CDT Bookshelf: The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer
Beijing-based writer Josh Chin contributed the following review of Michael Meyer’s “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed,” to CDT: Western observers have been lamenting the...
Beijing Simmering Over ‘The Egg’
From Los Angeles Times: It’s the building Beijing residents love to hate. The dome of the new National Center for the Performing Arts glows luminescent as it emerges from a reflecting pool like a pearl or a rising sun. At...
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