Down & Out

"It's been closed for five days now," 35-year-old Zhang Wei said in a Weibo update on Saturday, a similar message to the ones he has posted every day since last Tuesday. It's almost as if he has nothing more interesting to do with his life, but since his website was mysteriously shut down, that may be close to the truth.

Keeping mementos

When Zhang saw his hutong courtyard home torn down 12 years ago, he felt like he'd lost a part of himself. He decided to create an online archive to preserve the memories of Beijing's disappearing architecture so others would always be able to see what the Beijing of the past looked like.

The results were oldbeijing.net and oldbeijing.org, a pair of websites that had amassed an impressive 600,000 pictures, which were provided by around 20,000 members.

The websites were a resounding success until last week, when Zhang was asked by the Beijing Internet Information Management Office to shut them down.

Instead of displaying a smorgasbord of hutong photographs and articles about old Beijing customs, it now reads "the website server is under construction, and we're sorry for the inconvenience."

"I'm just afraid that a lot of Beijingers, our regular visitors, will feel like they've lost their home, like how I felt watching my family's courtyard home in the hutong being torn down 12 years ago," said Zhang.

Zhang's loss resulted in the creation of oldbeijing.net, which four years later led to the creation of oldbeijing.org, a forum for the discussion of Beijing architecture. It was then that Zhang discovered he was not alone. There were others who also felt a sense of loss when confronted with the destruction of Beijing's past.

The forum had attracted over 20,000 registered users including many people from overseas, while the daily hits were as high as 20,000. Many locals had formed a habit of uploading pictures of Beijing hutong, after they'd been exploring. It was a way for them to keep a record of the past.

Snatched from destruction

"We want to at least record some places before the bulldozers come," said a local resident surnamed Guan, who is also a registered member of Oldbeijing. "The pace of demolitions has accelerated in recent years, so it was great that we had Oldbeijing," he said.　

"I couldn't believe it was gone," Guan remarked to the Global Times, the frustration evident in his voice. "What's wrong with recording and protecting the history of our city?" he asked.

According to Zhang, there were about 600,000 pictures on Oldbeijing. Almost half of these pictures showed buildings that have since been demolished.

The website even had a photography team go out and take pictures of hutong every weekend for the last decade, while creating detailed maps of Beijing's iconic traditional streets.

"Sometimes it felt like I was doing something dangerous, exploring the disappearing hutong and collecting folk stories from the old residents there," said Xiao Juan, who is a member of the Oldbeijing photography team.

Xiao said that on one occasion, she was attacked by a man in a uniform and told to take her camera away from a demolition site.

"I wasn't intimidated by him, but now I'm terrified the website will not be allowed to reopen, which would make it harder for people to notice how much of Beijing's culture is disappearing," said Xiao.

Members of Oldbeijing had taken action to try to protect certain buildings from being torn down. Complaints were made to various levels of government and overtures were made through the media.

The group scored a victory when the demolition of Tieshan Temple was halted and instead, the temple was restored. Most battles however, were lost, and the bulldozers moved in.