The Last Days of Old Beijing
Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
Michael Meyer

Reviews of The Last Days of Old Beijing

 NEW YORK, OCTOBER 28—The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation today named ten recipients of the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Awards. One of the ten writers recognized this year for their extraordinary talent and promise is Michael Meyer, nonfiction. The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed published by Walker & Company in 2008. Read release. "This summer, widespread Beijing fatigue is an inevitability. But it's high-flying Olympic Beijing that may become overfamiliar, a city that's appeared before our very eyes as in a scene from "The Matrix." This is not Michael Meyer's town. The Beijing he has called home is being systematically eradicated, and this book is his testament.

This August, as we watch athletes gasping for breath in 'Bird's Nest' stadium beneath a gaudy international skyline, Meyer's message will sound especially plangent. All in all, his record of the dying ways of a city is an impressive feat. And while the phenomenon may be most extreme there, it's not just Beijing's problem. In a way, we're all living on New Ancient Culture Street."—Kate Sekules, New York Times Book Review Read full review.

"A charming memoir and a compelling work of narrative nonfiction about the city itself...Mr. Meyer writes sympathetically of his school, his fellow teachers and his eager pupils, who struggle with a system that rewards rote learning over comprehension. He punctuates his daily-life chronicle with historical vignettes, reaching back to China's imperial days but also capturing the transformations of postwar Beijing."—Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal Read full review.

"The book...is a delightfully observed view of a vast part of Chinese society that barely was glimpsed during the recent Olympics, yet is fading away."—Kim Ode, Minneapolis Star Tribune Read full review.

"Meyer's heartfelt, understated, readable prose gives us a priceless window into a vanishing world, more beautiful in its way than all the spectacle of any Olympic games."—Utah Daily Herald

"Michael Meyer's voracious curiosity has led him deep, deep into a vanishing world that other visitors and foreign correspondents almost all see only from a taxi window. He comes at it with a wide knowledge of history, a thirst for people's life stories, a novelist's ability to evoke a social universe, and an Arctic explorer's willingness to live through a sub-zero winter with little heat and the nearest communal toilet far down a snowy lane. This is a stunning, compassionate feat of reportage which will long endure."—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains

"Nine years ago, I was standing outside an airport terminal in Beijing, holding my new baby daughter and saying a tearful goodbye to the Chinese woman who worked as a liaison for our adoption agency in China. In the midst of our farewells, this woman pointed over my shoulder and said, "Look!" There, on the green verge of the busy airport roadway, an old man was herding sheep. She smiled at the sight and said, "That is China."

Live from Beijing, The Today Show/NBC
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Interview on CBS Early Morning
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"[The Last Days of Old Beijing is] striking for the unsentimental pictures [it] paint[s] of the urban poor, whose homes and way of life are being eradicated to make room for malls and high-rises...The local characters who share this intimate environment with him - some young, some old, most without resources to live elsewhere - give Mr. Meyer's portrait its flesh tones. (The chance to eat hot pot with his neighbors makes winter his favorite season, even though his breath freezes inside the house.) But his history of land development in Beijing, from the time of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci to Mao to the present, and of attempts in Hanoi, Havana and other Communist cities to preserve their own sense of place, are just as compelling (and sad) to read."—Richard B. Woodward, New York Times Travel Section.

Chip Mcgrath piece on literary scene in Beijing quotes Michael on August 9:
Go.—Chip Mcgrath, New York Times Sports Section

San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times ran the mcclatchy wire review on August 10:
Go!

Financial Times

"In "The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed"(Walker: 356 pp., $25.99), longtime resident Michael Meyer eloquently portrays the madness of the city during this period."—Karl Taro Greenfeld, Los Angeles Times

"These houses are volumes of the city's history, written in brick and beams," said Michael Meyer, the author of the new book T"he Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed." But "the real heritage of Beijing that's being lost isn't just the architecture, but the dense social network within it," he added. "In a hutong, you can't honk your horn without hearing about it later. People look out for one another."New York Times Home Section

"Michael Meyer tells the story of Beijing?s destruction from the perspective of one tiny hutong (narrow lane) neighbourhood to the south of Tiananmen Square where he taught in a school. A spiritedness shines through among his earthy neighbours, even in the face of what Mr Meyer calls "the Hand", which, visiting always at night, paints the Chinese character for "destroy" on houses that are to be razed.&"#8212;The Economist

"Michael Meyer records this orgy of destruction and the ongoing struggle for a new identity in his excellent book The Last Days of Old Beijing. Like Peter Hessler's River Town, it is a haunting portrait of the interaction between change and changelessness in China. Meyer, like Hessler, was a Peace Corps volunteer in southwest China in the mid-1990s, and on arriving in Beijing a few years later, he says it was "love at first sight." Indeed his book reads like a love letter to the hutongs and to Old Beijing itself, a snapshot snatched before the scene disappears for ever...Meyer beautifully dissects the tensions between tradition and modernity in the minds of the Chinese people and examines the identity crisis that still persists, for Beijing, and for China. A question lingers throughout the book: How much of your history should you hold onto, and how much should you leave behind?" —Rob Gifford, Slate Magazine

"[A] warmhearted memoir." —-Michael Kenney, Boston Globe

NPR's On Point, August 1


Cox News Wire

From the travel section of the Montreal Gazette


If I'd been less preoccupied with my own seismic life changes back then, I might have paid more attention to how China's speedy efforts to modernize were pushing relics of traditional life to the sidelines - like that shepherd at the airport. As Michael Meyer tells us in his just-published substantive, smart book, The Last Days of Old Beijing, the slogan Chinese officials conjured up to headline their winning bid to host the Olympics was: "New Beijing, New Olympics." It's a slogan that's boded well for Wal-Marts and high-rise developments with wacky, Westernized names like Merlin Champagne Town and Dating Bright California, but China's massive makeover urge has spelled curtains for local food stalls, sidewalk barbers and the historic courtyard neighborhoods in Beijing known as hutongs. Hutongs, Meyer tells readers, are single-story homes that are made out of wood and earthen brick and built around an open courtyard. Narrow lanes run outside the walls of the crowded hutongs, which for centuries composed most of the housing in Beijing. Meyer knows the ins and outs of hutong history because he's one of the few Westerners to have ever lived in one. A resident of China for over 10 years, Meyer moved into one of the last remaining hutong neighborhoods in Beijing when he began teaching English at a local grammar school. As Meyer describes it, hutong living is not for loners (he recalls being greeted by male neighbors and students as he performed his morning squat at the community toilet); nor (during his residency) was it suited for those with a low panic threshold. Many mornings, Meyer's neighbors awakened to see the Chinese character for the word "raze" or "destroy" painted on their houses, which were regarded by the government as eyesores. As one architect tells Meyer, China doesn't harbor a fondness for ancient buildings because they're "seen as reminders of one pre-Liberation period: feudalism."—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

"It's rare that a writer truly lives a book, commits himself to the rhythms of a place, and turns research into something deeper. For the past two years, Michael Meyer has lived and taught in the hutong neighborhoods of Beijing; nobody writing in English knows this world as well as he does."— Peter Hessler, author of Oracle Bones and River Town

"Nimbly told...Through his skillful weaving of his professional experiences with his intimate encounters with neighbors, The Last Days of Old Beijing is as much a chronicle of the physical transformation of the city as it is a tribute to the inhabitants of his beloved hutong."—Julie Foster, San Francisco Chronicle

"A mixture of romanticism and Chinese pragmatism and an attractive...profile of a city in ceaseless change... The Last Days of Old Beijing will give you a good introduction to Beijing just in time for the Summer Games." —Tish Wells, Chicago Tribune

"Meyer is a graceful writer in full command of his voice, with a scrupulous eye for detail and a flawless sense of comic timing...There is a plainspoken eloquence to his account and a winning determination to subject himself to the same scrutiny he brings to bear on his neighbors and sources...An emissary from a nation that routinely junks its own past and starts anew, Meyer finds himself a champion of an unpopular cause."—Holly Brubach, T: The New York Times Style Magazine

"Meyer lived in a Beijing hutong (narrow lane) for two years while he worked as a teacher, having gone to China as a Peace Corps volunteer. Eventually, he was given the nickname Teacher Plumblossom. Meyer was often asked by his neighbors if he knew when their neighborhood would undergo the same razing occurring everywhere in preparation for the Olympics. To show us what this threatened neighborhood is like, Meyer takes us into his life, masterfully describing the seasons, his home and courtyard, and his students and their parents. We meet his landlady, for instance, who runs her house with an iron grip while bringing him nourishing soup. He also adds a wonderful sprinkling of humor, pointing out the sign that greets him on the way to a latrine: "No Spitting No Smoking No Coarse Language No Missing the Hole." Ultimately, the neighborhood wasn't destroyed. Now tourists are brought there to see the real Beijing, and, reports Meyer, they rank the visit as a highlight over the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. All library collections that aim for a complete overview of China must add this unusual title."—Susan G. Baird, Library Journal, Starred Review

"Just in time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing, the Old City's narrow lanes and shops are being bulldozed and their residents displaced to make way for Wal-Marts, shopping centers and high-rise apartments. Part memoir, part history, part travelogue and part call to action, journalist Meyer's elegant first book yearns for old Beijing and mourns the loss of an older way of life. Having lived for two years in one of Beijing's oldest hutongs- mazes of lanes and courtyards bordered by single-story houses- Meyer chronicles the threat urban planning poses not only to the ancient history buried within these neighborhoods but also to the people of the hutong. The hutong, he says, builds community in a way that glistening glass and steel buildings cannot. His 81-year-old neighbor, whom he calls the "Widow," had always been safe because neighbors watched out for her, as she watched out for others: the book opens with a delightful scene in which the Widow, a salty character who calls Meyer "Little Plumblossom," brings him unsolicited dumplings for his breakfast. The ironies of the reconstruction of Beijing are clear in the building of Safe and Sound Boulevard, which, Meyer tells us, is "neither safe nor sound."Meyer's powerful book is to Beijing what Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities was to New York City". 25 b&w photos. (June)—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"According to Michael Meyer in The Last Days of Old Beijing pko[, part of the Chinese capital's unfolding tragedy is that it has "no Haussmann," no presiding genius who could humanize Beijing's massive redevelopment. Instead, swaths of the Old City are being swept away by an impersonal force Meyer labels "the Hand," which is controlled by a potent mix of rampant capitalism and communist bureaucracy.

What "the Hand" demolishes most frequently are the ancient (and dilapidated) lanes known as hutong, which for Meyer are "the lifeblood of Beijing." He speaks from personal experience, having shared the cramped quarters of the courtyard houses that were once the city's typical dwellings. He writes vividly about both the spartan and sensuous sides of hutong living, with the pleasures outweighing the privations:

"The girl liked the change of seasons because the hutong's snacks changed from roasted yams to fried chestnuts and tang hu lu, red hawthorn berries stacked kebab-like on a sharp stick and glazed with sugar syrup."

The residents of Meyer's hutong are preoccupied with two momentous upcoming events: the Olympics and the demolition of their homes. Every schoolchild knows when the games will start; the date of the other event is the subject of intense speculation. When the residents are relocated, as hundreds of thousands already have, many of the old neighbors will, even with compensation from developers, have to settle for apartments "closer to the Great Wall than the Forbidden City."

In the rush to make Beijing "bigger, flatter, wider, more," the Chinese powers-that-be are replacing a unique place with a massive banality, Meyer contends. Haussmann may have leveled many of the Parisian equivalent of hutong, but he replaced them with the avenues and apartment buildings that give the French capital its distinctive look to this day. "The charm of a culture is its individuality," states Feng Jicai, a preservationist whom Meyer interviews. "The boredom of a culture is similarity."

It's an insight that resonates far beyond booming Beijing.—Robert Cremins, The Houston Chronicle Read full article.

"One of the wonders and terrors of freewheeling capitalism is its dynamism. Old ideas, technologies, and physical structures are swept aside without sentimentality or regard for the human costs. This is especially evident in the rapidly emerging economies of India and China, where the old struggles to coexist with the new. Meyer first went to China as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1995, and he continues to reside in one of the few remaining old neighborhoods in Beijing, one that is clearly doomed, as high-rises, shopping malls, and widened avenues move ever closer. Meyer describes his adopted home ground with a mixture of affection and hard realism. Living conditions are harsh, homes are crowded, the wood in many structures is rotting, and outhouses rather than indoor plumbing are the norm. Yet residents, including Meyer, have a strong and stubborn attachment to their community; he provides touching examples of how many strive to stay put. A wistful, charming paean to a community and way of life that is soon to be swept away in the name of progress. "—Jay Freeman, Booklist

"An American lives side by side with the fear-stricken denizens of an ancient neighborhood that will not survive China's Olympic Games. The Old and Dilapidated Housing Renewal program, reports first-time author Meyer, has evicted 1.25 million residents from their homes in Beijing. This massive official initiative to "clean up" the city for the upcoming summer Olympics focuses on demolition and removal in Beijing's traditional hutong (lane) areas, neighborhoods of narrow paths that crisscross the heart of the city. The author, who first went to China as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1995, moved to a walled courtyard home in a hutong in 2005, when the pace of demolitions was accelerating. He makes palpable the impact of this initiative on Chinese families and the many older people who have never known another kind of home. Compensatory payment is offered when "the Hand" (Meyer's epithet for anonymous, creeping bureaucracy) stencils the Chinese character meaning "raze" on their walls, the author explains. But even those who go quietly and promptly, therefore locking in the highest settlement, find that it rarely covers their expenses in a sterile concrete high-rise that could be a two-hour commute away. And such is the pull of the hutong on its older inhabitants that many hold out and get nothing; some who are forced out simply disappear. Most Beijing residents neither abhor progress nor revile the government, Meyer stresses; it's just the total lack of transparency that depresses everybody. Few Americans would care for the hutong's basic amenities-public latrines, bathhouses, coal- or charcoal-burning heaters-and "dilapidated" is often an accurate description. But these venerable lanes shelter neighbors who truly know, trust and depend on each other, avers the author, who paints a picture of deep personal loss as the old alleys vanish. Revealing portrait of urban change, and the consequences of China's unquenchable thirst for modernization."—Kirkus Reviews

"Western observers have been lamenting the demise of "Old Beijing" since at least the 1920s, when the Chinese capital started itself stumbling in the direction of modernization. Each time, the city's ancient charms-it's intimate lanes ( hutong) and enigmatic courtyard houses ( siheyuan)-are said to be not long for this world. Each time, they survive to seduce the next generation of would-be eulogizers. Now comes Michael Meyer's "The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed," due out from Walker and Company this month. How much is there to be gained in listening to yet another requiem for a place that never seems to die?

The answer, in Meyer's case, is plenty.

An award-winning travel writer, Meyer has done what few other foreign residents in Beijing are willing to do: actually live in the hutong. It's true, many Westerners rent courtyard houses, but theirs are the neo-imperial mini-palaces of New Beijing, cleared of riff-raff, retrofitted with radiators and equipped with sit-down toilets. Meyer's perch in the neglected lanes south of Tian'anmen Square is not so luxurious. For heat in winter, he relies on cups of Nescafe and the bowls of dumplings foisted on him by the Widow, his busy-bodied old neighbor. The dumplings and instant coffee processed, he walks across the lane to the public latrine, where one of his students once bowed to him as he squatted, pants around ankles, over the open trough.

The result is an account of life in the hutong rich with lived detail but blessedly absent the romanticism and sentimentality that afflict so much of the expatriate lane literature. At times, there is a postcard quality to Meyer's descriptions: "Grandmothers push prams filled with vegetables from Heavenly Peach market. The bells of black steel Flying Pigeon Bicycles warn to make way." But these passages read more like an anxious ledger of scenes soon to be lost than a poem to the exotic, and are few at any rate. Instead, Meyer builds the book around portraits of his neighbors: the Widow, chain-smoking matron of the courtyard; Recycler Wang, who envies the tin buyer at Trash Village; Teacher Zhu, who has put pregnancy on hold until she knows when her school will be demolished.

One of the most memorable of the characters in "Last Days" appears early on, as Meyer describes the character ? (chai, demolish) painted on the wall's of a neighbor's home: "Mr. Yang had never seen someone paint the symbol, and neither had I. It just appeared overnight, like a gang tag, or the work of a specter. The Hand." Dispatched at the behest of a mysterious cabal of government officials and real estate developers, The Hand terrorizes nearly everyone Meyer meets.

Sadly, "Last Days" never manages to uncover the mechanism behind The Hand. It does, however, rely on Chinese historical sources (most of them new to Western readers) to draw up an enlightening sketch of Beijing's transformation from a close-knit, teeming maze of lanes named for the products or services offered in their shops (Chrysanthemum Lane, West Grindstone Lane), into an inhuman grid of wider-than-wide avenues dominated by immense structures designed to be admired rather than lived in-what Zhang Yonghe, an architect Meyer interviews, calls a "City of Objects."

One of the contributions of "Last Days" is to place this transformation it in its proper context. Paris was also erased and redrawn, Meyer reminds us, as were major parts of Moscow, New York City and Athens. In the end, Meyer and his neighbors are preservationists, but it's not the architecture they care most about. Instead, it's the refuge the lanes provide, the space they provide for humanity and civility in a city that grows colder and harder by the year. Meyer makes this point with particular force when he describes the numerous kidnapping stories he and his neighbors read in the local newspaper. "None of the missing had disappeared from a hutong," he writes. "Rather, they vanished from wide roads, high-rise complexes and bus stops. Erasing a city's urban corners left only straight lines, hollow spaces and nowhere to hide."

Beijing will probably always have its hutong and courtyard houses, which are rare enough now to have considerable real estate value. But the atmosphere of Old Beijing- the life-is already fast seeping out of them. In Michael Meyer, we are fortunate to have a writer with the clarity, humor and depth to capture that life before it flows away completely."—Josh Chin, CDT Bookshelf

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/06/cdt- bookshelf-the-last-days-of-old- beijing-by-michael-meyer/

"The Last Days of Old Beijing (Walker & Company) is an intimate, sharply written portrayal of a city in the midst of unprecedented transformation. Michael Meyer recently lived for two years in one of Beijing's ancient hutong, teaching English at a local school while watching the old neighborhood around him give way to high-rises, road works, and shopping malls. His first book is a poignant epitaph to a centuries-old way of life on the verge of vanishing."—DestinAsian

"The Last Days of Old Beijing, Michael Meyer's memoir of living two years in a Beijing hutong in the city's oldest neighborhood, evokes an area and a way of life threatened by modernization."—National Geographic Traveler http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/extras/ travellibrary/ george0806.html

About Michael Meyer