Courtyard in conflict: the transformation of Beijing’s Siheyuan during revolution and gentrification

Abstract

After Liang Sicheng’s effort to preserve ‘Old Beijing’ failed, vast areas of traditional hutong neighbourhoods were cleared to make way for socialist monuments and work-units. From the 1950s onwards collectivisation that forced siheyuan dwellers to share their homes with ‘comrade tenants’, especially after the Cultural Revolution when courtyard owners were persecuted, remaining siheyuan houses had been dirty and crowded, known as dazayuan, mostly occupied by working-class families, until recently, when the ‘socialist market economy’ rendered such neglected residences profitable. Wealthy property developers evicted the local population, often not without forced relocation and government cooperation, and refurbished these courtyard houses as ‘new siheyuan’ for sale to the emerging business elites and celebrities.This article explores the transformations of Beijing’s siheyuan against the turbulent history of China since the mid-twentieth century. It illustrates the ways in which architecture was reconfigured to channel and contribute to the broader social and ideological missions of the CCP. Whilst the construction of monuments propagated a positive image of the regime through grand ceremonial events, the tragic experiences of the courtyards’ inhabitants during both revolution and gentrification embodied the penetrating depth and far-reaching consequence of the Party’s social and ideological engagement in the daily life of the common people. The former operates on the symbolic level with landmarks, satisfying growing nationalism with the promise of a powerful country of which to be proud, and the latter on the practical level with day-to-day dwellings, first accommodating the urban proletarians as a product of the revolution then satisfying the emerging commercial elites in a society of growing capitalism. The control of domestic space became an important part of Chinese governance, for which the reshaping of people’s lives through architecture served as a crucial measure to legitimate the regime in ideology and to provide support for its changing political agenda.