Abstract
Focusing on the Beijing neighbourhood of the Bell and Drum towers, commonly called Gulou, Graezer-Bideau describes the shaping and reshaping of local inhabitants’ collective memories in the changing urban landscape. Located in the north-east of the Forbidden City, this popular traditional area, generally seen as a microcosm of the broader city, is currently undergoing a rapid and radical transformation with a strong likelihood of gentrification. The analysis focuses on the role played by three main groups of stakeholders for the preservation of the site: local authorities, heritage preservationist groups and local communities. Graezer-Bideau examines the challenges posed by everyday heritage-making aimed at maintaining historic characteristics and protecting the sociocultural setup. By offering insights into the strategies of resistance employed for the appropriation and representation of space in relation to individual and collective memory, she sheds light on the current debate on Chinese urban built environment and heritage conservation.
This research was carried out within the framework of a larger project entitled ‘Mapping Controversial Memories in the Historic Urban Landscape: a Multidisciplinary Study of Beijing, Mexico City and Rome’, funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies and coordinated by Dr Florence Graezer Bideau, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. The Beijing research was conducted in collaboration with Dr Haiming Yan, Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage, between 2015 and 2016.
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Notes
- 1.
These reforms on land property (1988), on land property rental (1990), on urban housing systems (1994) and on private property for housing (2004 and 2007) resulted progressively in the distinction between the land ownership and the right to use the land, and in the opportunities for land tenancy to rent, buy or mortgage for 65 years.
- 2.
The Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing and Shenyang was listed in 1987 and extended in 2004 with Shenyang.
- 3.
Several field studies were conducted in collaboration with Chinese and Western colleagues between September 2014 and February 2016. About 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with local residents on issues of memory and territory. Interview questions were about discourses and practices on their experiences and attachments to the neighbourhood, their perceptions on successive renovation projects and change of housing conditions.
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Graezer Bideau, F. (2018). Resistance to Places of Collective Memories: A Rapid Transformation Landscape in Beijing. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64289-5_15
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