{"id":174,"date":"2013-05-15T19:20:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T19:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=174"},"modified":"2017-07-25T22:10:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T22:10:23","slug":"to-protect-an-ancient-city-china-moves-to-raze-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>By\u00a0Michael WINES<\/a>,\u00a0Published: May 27, 2009<\/div>\n

KASHGAR, China \u2014 A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid treks through the world\u2019s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city\u2019s cramped streets. Chinese traders, their camels laden with silk and porcelain, did the same.<\/p>\n

Multimedia<\/p>\n

Audio Slide Show
\nA City, and People, at a Crossroads
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Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
\nPreservationists say the demolition of the Old City section of Kashgar is a blow to China\u2019s Islamic and Uighur culture.<\/p>\n

The New York Times
\nEnlarge This Image<\/p>\n

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
\nMahire, 19, left, eating lunch at the 500-year-old home of her in-laws in Kashgar, China. The building is scheduled to be demolished as part of a government plan to guard against earthquake damage.
\nEnlarge This Image<\/p>\n

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
\nAs part of the reconstruction of Kashgar, China will move many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs.
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\nThe traders are now joined by tourists exploring the donkey-cart alleys and mud-and-straw buildings once window-shopped, then sacked, by Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.<\/p>\n

Now, Kashgar is about to be sacked again.<\/p>\n

Nine hundred families already have been moved from Kashgar\u2019s Old City, \u201cthe best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia,\u201d as the architect and historian George Michell wrote in the 2008 book \u201cKashgar: Oasis City on China\u2019s Old Silk Road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the next few years, city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of this warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.<\/p>\n

In its place will rise a new Old City, a mix of midrise apartments, plazas, alleys widened into avenues and reproductions of ancient Islamic architecture \u201cto preserve the Uighur culture,\u201d Kashgar\u2019s vice mayor, Xu Jianrong, said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n

Demolition is deemed an urgent necessity because an earthquake could strike at any time, collapsing centuries-old buildings and killing thousands. \u201cThe entire Kashgar area is in a special area in danger of earthquakes,\u201d Mr. Xu said. \u201cI ask you: What country\u2019s government would not protect its citizens from the dangers of natural disaster?\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics fret about a different disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a cultural and historical perspective, this plan of theirs is stupid,\u201d said Wu Lili, the managing director of the Beijing Cultural Protection Center, a nongovernmental group devoted to historic preservation. \u201cFrom the perspective of the locals, it\u2019s cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urban reconstruction during China\u2019s long boom has razed many old city centers, including most of the ancient alleyways and courtyard homes of the capital, Beijing.<\/p>\n

Kashgar, though, is not a typical Chinese city. Chinese security officials consider it a breeding ground for a small but resilient movement of Uighur separatists who Beijing claims have ties to international jihadis. So redevelopment of this ancient center of Islamic culture comes with a tinge of forced conformity.<\/p>\n

Chinese officials have offered somewhat befuddling explanations for their plans. Mr. Xu calls Kashgar \u201ca prime example of rich cultural history and at the same time a major tourism city in China.\u201d Yet the demolition plan would reduce to rubble Kashgar\u2019s principal tourist attraction, a magnet for many of the million-plus people who visit each year.<\/p>\n

China supports an international plan to designate major Silk Road landmarks as United Nations World Heritage sites \u2014 a powerful draw for tourists, and a powerful incentive for governments to preserve historical areas.<\/p>\n

But Kashgar is missing from China\u2019s list of proposed sites. One foreign official who refused to be identified for fear of damaging relations with Beijing said the Old City project had unusually strong backing high in the government.<\/p>\n

The project, said to cost $440 million, began abruptly this year, soon after China\u2019s central government said it would spend $584 billion on public works to combat the global financial crisis.<\/p>\n

It would complete a piecemeal dismantling of old Kashgar that began decades ago. The city wall, a 25-foot-thick earthen berm nearly 35 feet high, has largely been torn down. In the 1980s, the city paved the surrounding moat to create a ring highway. Then it opened a main street through the old town center.<\/p>\n

Still, much of the Old City remains as it was and has always been. From atop 40 vest-pocket mosques, muezzins still cast calls to prayer down the narrow lanes: no loudspeakers here. Hundreds of artisans still hammer copper pots, carve wood, hone scimitars and hawk everything from fresh-baked flatbread to dried toads to Islamic prayer hats.<\/p>\n

And tens of thousands of Uighurs still live here behind hand-carved poplar doors, many in tumbledown rentals, others in two-story homes that vault over the alleys and open on courtyards filled with roses and cloth banners.<\/p>\n

The city says the Uighur residents have been consulted at every step of planning. Residents mostly say they are summoned to meetings at which eviction timetables and compensation sums are announced.<\/p>\n

Although the city offers the displaced residents the opportunity to build new homes on the sites of their old ones, some also complain that the proposed compensation does not pay for the cost of rebuilding.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family built this house 500 years ago,\u201d said a beefy 56-year-old man with a white crew cut, who called himself Hajji, as his wife served tea inside their two-story Old City house. \u201cIt was made of mud. It\u2019s been improved over the years, but there has been no change to the rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Uighur style, the home has few furnishings. Tapestries hang from the walls, and carpets cover the floors and raised areas used for sleeping and entertaining. The winter room has a pot-bellied coal stove; the garage has been converted into a shop from which the family sells sweets and trinkets. Nine rooms downstairs, and seven up, the home has sprawled over the centuries into a mansion by Kashgar standards.<\/p>\n

But Hajji and his wife lost their life\u2019s savings caring for a sick child, and the city\u2019s payment to demolish their home will not cover rebuilding it. Their option is to move to a distant apartment, which will force them to close their shop, their only source of income.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe house belongs to us,\u201d said Hajji\u2019s wife, who refused to give her name. \u201cIn this kind of house, many, many generations can live, one by one. But if we move to an apartment, every 50 or 70 years, that apartment is torn down again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the biggest problem in our lives. How can our children inherit an apartment?\u201d<\/p>\n

Building inspectors have deemed most of the oldest homes unsafe, including all mud-and-straw structures, the earliest form of construction. They will be leveled and, in many cases, rebuilt in an earthquake-resistant Uighur style, the city promises.<\/p>\n

But three of the Old City\u2019s seven sectors are judged unfit for Uighur architecture and will be rebuilt with decidedly generic apartment buildings. Two thousand other homes will be razed to build public plazas and schools. Poor residents, who live in the smallest homes, already are being permanently moved to boxy, concrete public housing on Kashgar\u2019s outskirts.<\/p>\n

What will remain of old Kashgar is unclear. Mr. Xu said that \u201cimportant buildings and areas of the Old City have already been included in the country\u2019s special preservation list\u201d and would not be disturbed.<\/p>\n

No archaeologists monitor the razings, he said, because the government already knows everything about old Kashgar.<\/p>\n

Kashgar officials do have good reason to worry about earthquakes. Last October, a 6.8 magnitude quake struck barely 100 miles away. In 1902, an 8.0-magnitude quake, one of the 20th century\u2019s biggest, killed 667 residents.<\/p>\n

Some residents say they also prefer a more modern environment. The thousand-year-old design that gives the Old City its charm often precludes basics like garbage pickup, sewers and fire hydrants.<\/p>\n

In Mr. Xu\u2019s view, demolition will give the Uighurs a better life and spare them from disaster in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n

All that said, there is a certain aura of forcible eviction about the demolition, an urgency that fear of earthquakes does not completely explain. The city is offering cash bonuses to residents who move out early \u2014 about $30 for those who vacate within 20 days; $15 if they move in a month. Homes are razed as soon as they become empty, giving some alleys a gap-tooth look.<\/p>\n

On Kashgar television, a nightly 15-minute infomercial hawks the project like ginsu knives, mixing dire statistics on seismic activity with scenes of happy Uighurs dancing in front of their new concrete apartments.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever has such a great event, such a major event happened to Kashgar,\u201d the announcer intones. He boasts that the new buildings \u201cwill be difficult to match in the world\u201d and that citizens will \u201ccompletely experience the care and warmth of the party\u201d toward the Uighur ethnic minority.<\/p>\n

The infomercial also notes that Communist Party officials from Kashgar to Beijing are so edgy over the prospect of an earthquake \u201cthat it is disturbing their rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/28\/world\/asia\/28kashgar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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