46 China The EconomistAugust 10th 2019
2 party, the Kuomintang (kmt), supports
friendlier ties with the mainland and made
big gains in regional elections last Novem-
ber. China’s leaders would like it to van-
quish thedppin next year’s polls. But Ms
Tsai’s support for Hong Kong’s democrats
has helped her once-dismal ratings to re-
bound. She could even keep her job.
In an attempt to capture some of her
newfound support, thekmt’s presidential
candidate, Han Kuo-yu, is trying to sound a
bit more sceptical about China (earlier in
the year some Taiwanese criticised him for
a chummy meeting with mainland offi-
cials in Hong Kong, ostensibly to promote
trade). Mr Han is the mayor of the southern
port of Kaohsiung. Fan Shih-ping of Taiwan
National Normal University says the city
will suffer disproportionately from China’s
block on tourism—Kaohsiung has tended
to be popular with solo tourists because it
is easily reached by train. But thekmtap-
pears to have decided not to make political
hay out of China’s decision to cut the flow.China will doubtless have more tricks to
play in the run-up to January’s polls. Hav-
ing already poached five of Taiwan’s dip-
lomatic allies in the three years since Ms
Tsai came to power, it may try to peel off at
least one more. In the past China has called
off military exercises around the strait in
advance of Taiwanese elections, for fear of
provoking a backlash at the ballot box. An-
drew Yang, a former defence minister,
thinks that this time China may step up its
drills, partly because it has lots of new kit it
wants to try out. Taiwan has accused the
mainland of trying to influence the island’s
politics by spreading “fake news” through
social media. But how much any of this will
work is hotly debated in Taiwan. It may be
that such efforts will deter voters from sup-
porting radical anti-China politicians (Ms
Tsai is relatively restrained in her approach
to the mainland). But the unrest in Hong
Kong has shown that even in a place where
it has many levers, China can struggle to
get its political way. 7I
n a leafystreet close to a busy under-
ground station in the southern city of
Guangzhou, two middle-aged women sit in
a booth giving out hand-drawn local maps
to passers-by. These feature cartoon-style
images of churches and other grand archi-
tectural relics of the city’s pre-Communist
past. Nearby, giggling youngsters take pic-
tures of each other outside one such edi-
fice: a European-looking villa, its high gar-
den wall topped with ornate green tiles.
There are few foreign visitors. The hand-
drawn maps are all in Chinese. It is young
locals who are drawn to this neighbour-
hood of large three- or four-storey houses
built in the 1920s and 1930s in Western and
Chinese styles (one is pictured). Its tree-
lined lanes dotted with cafés and art galler-
ies have become fashionable hangouts.
The area, known as Dongshan, is close
to central Guangzhou, the capital of the
southern province of Guangdong. It was
built by the families of Cantonese who
moved to America in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Many old neighbourhoods
in China have been bulldozed to make way
for new development. Dongshan is an ex-
ample of how some are being saved, and
even turning chic.
The survival of Dongshan’s old build-
ings owes much to growing public interest
in preserving urban heritage—not merelythe few structures that the government
designates as important. Activists have
been taking up the cause, and some devel-
opers have begun to support their efforts.
Much of the credit for protecting Dong-
shan goes to an ngofounded by Yang Hua-
hui, a primary-school teacher who grew upthere. Fearing it would be demolished, he
organised his students to make a website
about the area’s history. This won a nation-
al prize and drew the attention of the local
planning bureau. Now many of Dongshan’s
buildings have plaques showing they are
protected. Some display qrcodes provid-
ing links to their history. Many original res-
idents still live there. Official permission is
needed for any renovation work.
Mr Yang calls his organisation a “culture
promotion association”. It is one of the few
of its kind in China that has succeeded in
registering as an ngo (the Communist
Party is suspicious of activist groups). Its
60-odd volunteers visit old districts and
gather oral histories. They also draw atten-
tion to buildings in danger of demolition.
“We go there straight away, take photos,
and tell the government departments
there’s a problem,” says Mr Yang.
Officials have long recognised the tou-
rism potential of the colonial-style build-
ings on Guangzhou’s Shamian island and a
nearby river front close to which foreigners
first began trading in the 18th century. They
are realising that other old districts—for-
eign-connected or not—have value, too. Xi-
guan, a residential area that was home to
wealthy merchants before the foreigners
arrived, now has several local-history mu-
seums. Many of its buildings have been
listed as protected. Nearby, a stretch of dis-
tinctive colonnaded “shop houses”, built in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is be-
ing refurbished. It includes a network of al-
leyways, known as Yongqing Fang, which
has been turned into a leisure zone. One
popular attraction is a museum devoted to
the late martial-arts actor Bruce Lee in a
house where his family lived in the 1940s. It
is a sign of growing interest in pre-Com-
munist history. Last year China’s leader, Xi
Jinping, toured the area.
Some redevelopments cause problems
for residents. Many people in Yongqing
Fang were moved to make way for the new
zone. Some buildings were demolished.
The same happened in Shanghai’s Xin-
tiandi district—a pioneer of such redevel-
opment. That area, which includes the site
of the party’s first meeting in 1921, is now
ultra-trendy. Shanghai has recently
pledged to preserve 90% of its (few) surviv-
ing 1920s and 1930s residential lanes. While
some areas have been revived, “demolition
continues apace”, says Patrick Cranley of
Historic Shanghai, a heritage group.
Enthusiasm for old districts has been
fuelled by television dramas set in the
years before the Communists seized power
in 1949. Young people like to take selfies in
front of buildings redolent of that era. But
Ying Zhou of the University of Hong Kong
says local officials do not always recognise
the importance of authenticity or retaining
original features. “Often the bricks are new
fakes, the history is concocted,” she says. 7GUANGZHOU
In old urban neighbourhoods, conservationists sometimes winHistoric preservationOld buildings, new chic
A missed selfie opportunity