On sunny afternoons, Yang takes his wheelchair-bound 90-year-old mother out along the Yu River, a canal near their home in Beijing’s historic Gulou neighbourhood. In the autumn, willow trees sweep their branches in the water, and the place gives the impression of a lazy, golden city from the last imperial days.

Gulou, often called the heart of old Beijing, is one of the only areas left that still have the city’s ancient winding alleyways, or hutongs. Yang and his mother live in Yu’er hutong, which lies just off the well-known and tourist-packed Nanluogu Xiang pedestrian street and is a short stroll from the ancient Drum and Bell Towers once used to tell the time across the city.

The Yu (or Jade) River was restored in 2014. Much of the real estate immediately surrounding it has already been developed into highly-priced recreational spaces. Photograph: Lavinia Liang

Yu’er is still largely home to the remnants of the working-class families who moved in during the mid-20th century and many of the houses lack proper plumbing – the residents use communal public bathrooms instead.

Yang, who moved back in to take care of his ailing mother, always thought that, like her, he would grow old in Yu’er hutong.

But Yu’er is part of the Four Hutongs project, a municipal campaign to renovate four historic alleyways near Nanluogu Xiang, and work is accelerating as the scheme approaches its end-of-year deadline.

Shoppers on Nanluogu Xiang. Photograph: kpzfoto/Alamy Stock Photo

Yang’s dream of growing old here is looking increasingly unlikely.

Four Hutongs is part of a city-wide campaign to beautify and modernise Beijing, including tearing down unauthorised structures, renovating for fire safety and accessibility, and decreasing the population of China’s capital city to 23 million by 2020.

Whole historic neighbourhoods have received drastic facelifts. In the months leading up to the 2008 Olympics, the historic Qianmen/Dashilar neighbourhoods to the south of the Forbidden City palace were demolished and rebuilt into a shiny shopping area. Dashilar remains popular with visitors but is largely mourned by locals for its “soulless, modern replicas” of old Beijing.

A restaurant shut down as part of the “Great Brickening” – in which businesses were forced to shut storefronts were bricked up. Photograph: South China Morning Post via Getty Images

This isn’t the first time Gulou has felt the heat. In 2010 the area was designated to be completely demolished to make way for Beijing Time Cultural City – an underground museum and shopping complex. The plan faced a severe backlash, from the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center among others, and was put on hold indefinitely by city authorities.

The areas around Yu’er already suffer from what is colloquially known as the “Great Brickening” – in which businesses in the hutongs are forced to shut down awaiting development and storefronts are bricked up.

The Four Hutongs project is different. It is not a large-scale demolition and transformation like the 2010 proposal, and in contrast to the Great Brickening, it concerns residential rather than commercial properties.

In the months leading up to the 2008 Olympics, the historic Qianmen/Dashilar neighbourhoods were demolished and rebuilt as a shopping area. Photograph: China Photos/Getty Images

But by tearing down unauthorised housing and building sounder and more accessible structures, it inevitably raises real estate prices in an area that was previously untouched due to long-established occupancy. Although the four hutongs won’t be replaced by modern shopping malls or concrete high-rises, the renovated homes can be turned into recreational spaces, private clubs or expensive courtyard houses.

‘The city is still growing’

Many longtime residents wonder what this gentrification means for them.

Zhou, who is in his late 60s, grew up in Yu’er hutong with his parents and six siblings in a one-room house with a lean-to kitchen. In 1969, as a teenager, he was sent to live in Jilin province under Mao Zedong’s “re-education” programme. He didn’t make it back to Beijing until the 1990s. “So much of what wasn’t city is now city, and it’s still growing,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

Hutongs off Nanluogu Xiang in 2016. Photograph: Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images

Zhou now lives with his dog in the old one-roomed family home that used to house nine people. Unlike Yang’s side of the hutong, Zhou’s area isn’t being completely torn down – instead, he and his neighbours will be offered the choice to move back in after renovations.

Others are being offered apartments in high-rise superblocks on the outer edges of the city or monetary compensation in proportion to the square footage of their current homes.

More than 400 of 662 households have registered to move out, many happy enough with a move to higher-quality housing that would otherwise not be possible given Beijing’s inflated real estate prices.

But some are intimidated. Changing lifestyles so late in life is daunting for elderly people who have lived in one-storey houses their whole lives, they say, and they would miss the intimate communal feel of the hutongs.

Zhou with his dog, Coconut, outside his house. Photograph: Lavinia Liang

As demolitions start around them, others find they can’t move out even if they want to. Yang fears his mother’s condition is too fragile. Zhou, due to his time away from Beijing, has a bureaucratic hurdle: the house is not in his name because his family formalised the document when he was in Jilin.

Zhou lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. Just outside the door is his family’s aged dingxiang tree. He recalls how his parents used to yell at his friends if any of them picked the fragrant white flowers.

“Half of it’s dead,” he says, pointing out a cluster of gnarled, empty branches. “But that part” – he points to the other half, which holds a number of blossoms – “that half is still alive.” For now, at least.

Lavinia Liang’s family have lived just off Nanluogu Xiang for more than 50 years. Her writing has appeared in Time, the Atlantic, Fortune and the South China Morning Post

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