Urban Renewal, the National Performing Arts Center, and Beijing Opera's Struggle to Survive:

People who live in Beijing will certainly know where I shot the two photos above, as will the many visitors to the capital last summer making the obligatory stop at Tian'anmen Square. It's the area south of the Tian'anmen Square's Qianmen (前门), or “front gate”.

As part of its campaign to remake Beijing before the Olympic Games, Beijing's municipal government, as well as China's national government, decided that this area needed a major facelift. Thus most of the old buildings, including many old siheyuan (四合院) neighborhoods (邻近), were torn down. In fact, Michael Meyer lived in a siheyuan in this area while teaching at the local Coal Lane elementary school (小学) and writing his great new book about all of this, THE LAST DAYS OLD BEIJING.

To be fair, this bit of urban renewal could have been much worse. To start with, the Qianmen Dajie wasn't turned into a four lane boulevard for automobile traffic. It was instead made into a pedestrian mall (步行街). Moreover, as the photos above indicate, the new buildings have an older traditional look, so the street looks very much it did in the 1920s and 1930s.

When I shot these photos last fall, most of the buildings were still empty. However, I do look forward to returning here when new shops, bars, coffee houses and restaurants open up (if they haven't already).

Unfortunately, the old siheyuans, many of which were certainly run-down (很破) could be seen as substandared housing, were not the only structures razed during this area’s recent makeover. Jasper Becker writes in his terrific new history of Beijing, CITY OF HEAVENLY TRANQUILITY, that this part of Beijing, which locals call the Dashilan (大栅栏), was home to a large number of Peking Opera theaters (京剧院). All of them are now gone.

The gentrification of the Qianmen Dajie provides yet another vivid reminder of the increasingly marginal status of Peking Opera, which I wrote about in one of my Changyucheng village blog posts. The building in the photo below is another symbol of the this art form's struggle to survive.

People who are familiar with Beijing will instantly recognize this very avant garde (前卫派; 先锋派) structure, which is the National Performing Arts Center (国家大剧院). The Center is located on a prime bit of real estate just southwest of the Forbidden City, behind the Great Hall of the People (人民大会堂) and opposite the so-called Zhongnanhai (中南海). The Zhongnanhai is where China's leaders live and work.

We largely have China's former President, Jiang Zemin (江泽民), to thank for the National Performing Arts Center's unusual design. According to Jasper Becker, Zemin fell in love with I. M. Pei's “Pyramid” at the Louvre (卢浮宫) and wanted Beijing to have something equally iconic (标志性) and recognizeable. He thus took the unusual step of personally intervening to ensure that the avant garde design proposed by the French architect, Paul Andreu, was chosen for the theater.

The choice of Andreu as the theater's architect had more than a bit of irony to it. Before doing this project, Andreu had focused on designing airport halls. These included the hall for the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which collapsed some time after being built, killing a number of Chinese passengers.

Like Andreu's other buildings, the National Performing Arts Center is an innovative (创新) glass (玻璃) and steel (钢铁) construction. It's most striking and recognizeable feature, the roof (屋顶), is made out of titanium (钛) and glass. The theater's other notable design characteristic, not visible from the outside, is its entrance, which is a tunnel (隧道) under a lake.

As Becker notes, this design was very controversial. Indeed, when its selection was announced, 108 of China's most prominent architects (建筑师) signed a protest letter stating that such an important should not be the work of foreigner, particularly one who flouted the Middle Kingdom's long-standing architectural traditions. For example, they noted that tombs (坟墓) are the only Chinese buildings one enters through an underground tunnel.

These feelings are shared by ordinary Chinese people. All of my friends, for example, use adjectives like “strange” (奇怪) and “unusual” (稀奇) to describe the building. Due to its roof, one popular nickname for the Performing Arts Center is the “egg” (鸡蛋). Unlike the the “bird’s nest” (鸟巢) nickname for the Olympic Stadium, which stems from its nest-like steel mesh exterior, the “egg” is not a term of endearment.

According to Becker, the National Performing Arts Center is also referred to as the “turd” (一团粪), although I've never heard it called that. But one of my Chinese friends, a very lovely, sweet, and clever young lady, who's a software engineer, wrote that the building's roof makes the Center look like a half-submerged ball floating in water (水上浮着半个球).

Big posters (海报) publicizing events at the National Performing Arts Center often grace the walls of practically every Beijing subway station. Most of these performances are by well-known Western performing artists and musical groups. The latter typically include world famous orchestras, such as the London Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and the like. So it is Western artists and performce art, not Chinese artists and performance art, that is showcased on the Center's four stages (yes, it has four stages with total seating that can seat altogether 2,700 people).

For example, last Monday, which was the Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节) holiday, I noticed a poster for an April-May Opera Festival at the Center while leaving the Military Museum subway station (I was on my way to Yuyuantan Park to photograph the cheery blossoms; more on that in a future post). Four of the five operas to be staged were the Western opera classics: “Tosca” (托斯卡), “La Boheme” (技术家生涯), “Turandot” (图兰朵), and “Carmen” (卡门). The festival’s sole Chinese opera was “Red Guards on Honghu Lake” (洪湖赤卫).

The National Performing Arts Center is thus holding an opera festival that doesn't include a single Peking Opera performance! More evidence, as if that were really needed, that Peking Opera is struggling to survive.

Notwithstanding all of the criticism of the “egg”, some of my friends, including the Irish attorney, Diarmuid O'Brien, who got me the free tickets for the China vs. Germany and US vs. Spain Olympic Basketball games last summer, say that it really is stunning once you get inside (Diarmuid, alas, has left Beijing to live and work in Madrid). The acoustics are supposed to be especially good, though I doubt if they match those of the Forbidden City Concert Hall (中山公园音乐堂) in nearby Zhongshan Park.

In any case, now that my income has improved, I can actually afford to go there every once in a while—ticket prices for the operas in the April May festival ran from 100 all the way up to 640 RMB. The National Performaning Arts Center is here to stay, so I might as well take advantage of it. Who knows, maybe I’ll have come all the way to China to see … the New York Philharmonic!

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

前门 (qian2men2).
四合院 (si4he2yuan2).
邻近 (lin2jin4). “邻” on its own means “neighbor”.
小学 (xiao3xue2).
很破 (hen3po4). “破” is the Chinese word for “worn”, so if somone’s shirt (衬衫; chen4shan1) has lots of holes or is really frayed, then it’s “很破”.
步行街 (bu4xing2jie1). This literally means “pedestrian (步行) street (街)”. “行人” is another way of saying “pedestrian” in Chinese.
大栅栏 (da4shi2la4).
京剧院 (jing1ju4yuan2).
前卫派 (qian2wei4pai4) 先锋派 (xian1feng1pai4). “前卫” and “先锋” also both mean “vanguard” and are commonly used in military Mandarin.
国家大剧院 (guo2jia1da4ju4yuan2). “国家” means “national”, “大” “big”, and “剧院” “theater”.
人民大会堂 (ren2min2da4hui4tang2). The word here is quite different from the English translation: “people (人民) great (大) hall (会堂)”. And the word for “hall” combines the characters for “meeting” (会) and “hall” or “temple” (堂). “堂” appears in the Chinese word for “church”, which is “教堂” (jiao4tang2).
中南海 (zhong1nan2hai3).
卢浮宫 (lu2fu2gong1). For those interested, the Chinese word for pyramid is 金字塔 (jin1zi4ta3).
标志性 (biao1zhi1xing4). Chinese speakers would thus say, “故宫是北京的标志性的建筑” (gu4gong1 [Forbidden City] shi4 [is] bei3jing1de5 [Beijing] 5biao1zhi1xing4de5 [icon/iconic] jian4zhu4 [building]).
创新 (chuang4xin1). The noun “innovation” is “革新” (ge2xin1).
玻璃 (bo1li2). Bear in mind that you never say in Chinese, “I'd like a glass (玻璃) of milk.” You instead always say, “I'd like a cup of milk” or “我要一杯牛奶” (wo3 [I] yao4 [want] yi1 [1; a] bei1 [cup] niu2nai3 [cow's milk]).
钢铁 (gang1tie3).
屋顶 (wu1ding3).
钛 (tai4). The left side “metal” radical gives you a clue about the meaning, while right hand “太” (tai4) character within the character tells you how to say it.
隧道 (sui4dao4). “道” by itself means “corridor”.
建筑师 (jian4zhu4shi1). “建筑” by itself means “building”, while “师” is a suffix denoting a profession, as in “teacher”, or “老师” (lao3shi1).
坟墓 (fen2mu4).
奇怪 (qi2guai4).
稀奇 (xi1qi2).
鸡蛋 (ji1dan4). While English speakers refer to chicken eggs as just plain “eggs,” Mandarin is more specific, calling them what they are 鸡 (chicken) 蛋 (egg[s]).

鸟巢 (niao3chao3).
一团粪 (yi1tuan2fen4).
水上浮fu2着半个球) (shui3shang4fu2zhe5ban4ge4qiu2). Here is yet another good illustration of how Mandarin word is sooo different from English word order. This phrase literally reads, “water (水) on (上) floating (浮) continuously (着) half (半) ball (个球)”. In other words, the object, the “ball”, goes at the end, not the beginning.
海报 (hai3bao4).
清明节 (qing2ming2jie2). Actually the words “tomb-sweeping” don't appear in the Mandarin term for this festival. “清明” really means “lucid” (as in mind) or “peaceful” (as in times) (“节” is the word for “festival”). But since Chinese people traditionally sweep the tombs of dead ancestors and then leave gifts for them, the holday is called “tomb sweeping day” in the West.
托斯卡 (tuo1si1ka3).
技术家生涯 (ji4shu4jia1sheng1ya2). Unlike the Chinese titles for the other Western Operas, this one summarizes what La Boheme is more or less about: “Talented/skilled (技术) household (家生) on the edge (涯)”.
图兰朵 (tu2lan3duo3).
卡门 (ka3men2).
洪湖赤卫队(hong2,vast/big,hu2, chi4 “red”, wei4 dui4; ). “洪湖” is the name of the lake, while 赤卫队 is another term for “Red Guards”. As stated in an earlier blog post, they’re also referred to as 红卫兵 (hong2wei4bing1).
中山公园音乐堂 (zhong1shan1gong1yuan2yue4tang2). This place is called the “Forbidden City Concert Hall” in English because it’s next to the Forbidden City (故宫; gu4gong1). However, the Chinese name is “Zhongshan (中山) Park (公园) Concert Hall (乐堂)”, as the hall is in Zhongshan Park. While Zhongshan Park is very lovely and one of my favorite Beijing places, few foreigners know about. However, everyone knows about the Forbidden City, so that name is used in the English translation.