建设美丽幸福济南
Build a Beautiful, Prosperous Jinan
My first couple weeks in China have been primarily in places that I've only visited briefly, or don't have a lot of knowledge of outside of the basics: Nanjing, Shanghai. This was new, or mostly new terrain for me. However, early this week, this changed somewhat as I found myself in a place I knew all too well: I returned to lovely Jinan. I lived in that city for about 18 months teaching English before I started at OU. So this was totally a homecoming for me. I've been back before but each time there's something else that makes me do a spit-take.
The city is just changing faster than I can keep track of. Which is expected, in some ways. I guess it's the degree with which the city is changing that I find surprising. Or maybe the pace. My first day in townI went for a walk (or tried to) in my old neighborhood. The area, DiKou Lu, sits just north of the central train station in the city. I lived off of the main street, a wide boulevard, down a little alley. While the neighborhood I lived in was filled with aging apartment buildings, the alley below was lined with little one story houses (referred to as pingfang 平方). During the time I lived in this neighborhood, it wasn't entirely uncommon to walk down the alley and find the residents (many of whom lived in places that doubled as their business/workshop/etc.) out in front doing work on the sidewalk. For most of them, this meant making window grating for apartments like mine. It looked like taxing, difficult work. Spending all day squatting over a band saw cutting lengths of plastic. Spot-welding with a handheld blowtorch and no mask. Spraying everything with polyeurethane, or spray paint, or finish. This started early in the morning and ended late at night. It wasn't work I envied in the least. If you wandered further away from the main road, the alley passed through a large open-air market where you could buy fresh produce, fish, meat, various baked goods, and other household items. Eventually this warren of little homes and market spaces passed under a rail bridge and emerged near the school I where I worked, on one of the major East-West roads in the city. I walked this path most days to work. It was a part of my routine, and though the path was labrynthine, I knew it by heart. I also knew, however, that by the time I left that apartment, about a year into my time in Jinan, the alleys were starting to be torn up. The houses were coming down. The markets were closing. What, I wondered, if anything, remained?
When I arrived at the back end of the path, near the school I used to work at, I noticed it was all completely changed. The houses were gone. The lanes were no longer narrow. There are now no fewer than 4 enormous condo towers under construction on the site. I felt totally lost. Where was the street? Had the pavement I was standing on been completely remade, or was this the same street I used to walk on? Could I even walk the way that I used to? After a few befuddled minutes of looking aroudn for anything even slightly familiar, I finally caught some landmarks that I recognized. Only after being directed by locals to, quite literally, walk over a rubble pile did I manage to get to my old street. Once I arrived things started to make a bit more sense. My apartment complex was still standing, though looking very much more than five years older than it was when I left it. Other improvements stood out: the alley, which had been gravel in some places, has been fully paved. A new sidewalk had been built to replace the crumbling one. A stoplight had been added at the major intersection with DiKou Lu, perhaps in anticipation of increased traffic due to construction, or to new residents moving in. As I took the bus over the railroad bridge, I got the bird's eye view. It was strange. I had been used to looking out on either side to see relatively open views of downtown. Now, on the opposite side of the apartment, a forest of 10-20 storey apartment towers had grown up, as if out of absolutely nowhere. On the side I used to live on, cranes, bulldozers, tents for construction workers, rubble. All was in flux as the forces of development converged.
But this newness was not unique to my old neighborhood. In other places the city is much changed as well: construction everywhere. And all kinds of signs promoting the construction of a "civilized" (wenming 文明) Jinan. Don't know what that means exactly. But I started taking down these signs on my phone's notepad as I saw them out the bus window yesterday, and they quickly filled the screen.
住在泉城
热爱泉城
美化泉城
建设泉城
Live in the Spring City
Love the Spring City
Beautify the Spring City
Construct the Spring City
Nowhere is this remake of Jinan more apparent than at the foot of the brand new, supertall skyscraper, called the Puli Tower at the Greeland Center (for reasons I'm still not totally sure about). The building dominates the city skyline. It is visible nearly anywhere you go within the city, making it far from inconspicuous. Around it, a street that used to be nor more than a narrow, pot-hole filled alley that ran behind the city's Muslim Quarter, is now a long, straight, smoothed out avenue. On the tower side of this new, remade Puli Lu, sits the Greenland Center, a building that looks poised to become a shopping mall. But for now the center sits empty. Weeds are growing up through the spaces in between the sidewalk. The elaborate bridged walkways that connect the different parts of the development as gated shut. The tower, too, seeks occupants. Though it's topped out, the building uses its elaborate light display a phone number for would be renters, as if it were a giant classified ad.
Old buildings catch my eye, too. Shandong province (of which Jinan is the provincial city, which is like being the capitol, I guess) was a place that experienced the "semi-colonialism" that China talks about in its history books, a little more intensely than most places. We think about HongKong and Shanghai when we think about foreign powers taking concessions in China, but Germans established concession areas in the province, and effectively ran large swaths of Shandong from about 1900-1919. Jinan is no exception. The Germans built train stations, cinema houses, post offices, churches and a number of other colonial style buildings that pop up throughout the city. So every now and then you'll find a German building (or a row of them) nestled in one of Jinan's older, narrower streets near the train station. Many of them look worse for the wear. Time takes a toll on even the best maintained of buildings. Jinan's colonial architecture, on the other hand, is largely the victim of neglect. Some of these places have broken windows, missing roof tiles, damaged brick work, crumbling masonry. Some of them bear traces to other parts of the city's history, as the traces of badly faded propaganda slogans from the cultural revolution may still be traced on them. Though they may be run-down, locals still speak to the quality of their construction. A shopkeeper boasted to me, "These buildings are over 100 years old, and they're still here. Not like those." At this he gestured across the street to apartments that were perhaps only 30 years old, and already showing their age.
However, these sturdy, longstanding, buildings, too, are changing. Renovation hits even these corners of the city, tucked away thought they may be. Some of the old houses here seem to be in the process of being fixed up. There's one that is currently a trendy looking bookstore. Another appears to be some sort of coffee shop. Others bear the telltale signs of urban renewal more clearly: blue corregated sheeting has been thrown up around them. It will not be long before they, too, emerge remade, new, and ready for high-end commerce. Similarly, in Old Jinan, located just to the north and east of the city square, changes, though subtle, occur as well. The willow lined streets of the city's best preserved old neighborhood used to be a space for very local eateries. During the day, it was possible to grab a local baked good or two at the stores that lined the streets in this area of town. At night, barbecue grills emerged from these storefronts, and patrons could sit on low plastic stools around fold up card tables, eat grilled meat skewers, and drink locally produced draft beer of dubious quality from the Laoshan or Baotuquan Breweries. Now, these barbecue restaurants have been replaced by a decidedly more boutique set of shops. Instead of local eateries, one finds cafes serving lattes and cappucinos, and tiny little bars or Japanese style Izakayas featuring foreign brands: Guiness, Asahi, Kirin, Delirium, Hoegaarden, Heineken. While these aren't particularly unpleasant places, they are certainly a departure from what it used to be. And if the scale model for the neighborhood's development plans, located inside the newly renovated Confucian temple, is any indication, more big changes are in store for the neighborhood. Perhaps this place is gentrifying as well?
Jinan is not all change, however. The city's public square still gushes out an absurd amount of water as a part of an elaborate fountain show that begins everyday at 5pm on the dot. And as it has for the past five years, this show is set to the music from the movie, Titanic. Some things, it seems, never change. Jinan, as you may recall, is one of my major case studies. I eagerly await my chance to come back and do extended observation here. Things are in motion here. And my timing seems to be just right to see it unfold.