The demolition of Beijing's historical courtyard alleyways, called hutong, has long been one of the city's most controversial issues. At the height of the city's headlong rush to modernity in the 1990s, about 600 hutong were destroyed each year, displacing an estimated 500,000 residents. Seemingly overnight, the city was transformed from a warren of Ming dynasty-era neighborhoods into an ultramodern urban sprawl, pocked with gleaming office towers and traversed by eight-lane highways.

Remaining hutong dwellers are worried, and for good reason -- they have a lot to lose. Their courtyard houses have survived centuries of war and revolution, the strain of collective ownership, and the turbulence of early economic reform. Passed down from generation to generation, they are often last-remaining monuments to entire family lines.

Patchy compensation schemes have left some displaced families insolvent. Unable to afford a new home in the old city, which is gentrifying almost as quickly as it's disappearing, they are forced to move into shoddy high-rise communities on the city's exurban outskirts.

While some hutong residents are resigned to their fates, others are more resistant. Over the past few years, hutong preservationists have succeeded in forestalling some high-profile redevelopment projects, such as a plan in 2010 to refashion a large swath of hutong north of the Forbidden City as a cluster of museums and public squares.

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But Zhongnanhai-area demolitions are not like other demolitions. They're more frightening, less easy to understand. Their location eliminates the possibility of a commercial motive. I called the neighborhood police and the district government looking for answers, but their spokespeople hung up the phone or put me through to disconnected lines. Remaining tenants responded to my questions about their neighborhood's future with incredulous stares.

"Before they build something, you never know what they will build," said He Shuzhong, the director of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, a Beijing-based NGO that works on hutong preservation. "Every time it's the same. They give some money, the people leave. Some people object, but in general, they can't be helped."

"Looking at a map," he said, "it's not hard to understand the situation"

Indeed, in the absence of domestic media coverage (experts including He affirmed the real possibility of a reporting ban), maps do tell an intriguing story.

In January, 2005, over a decade of negotiations between officials and hutong preservationists culminated in the passage of a sweeping proposal called the Beijing City Master Plan. The Master Plan designated a large swath of hutong in central Beijing as a "historical and cultural protected area," immune from redevelopment. On a map of protected areas, the hutong around Zhongnanhai glowed in a bright, safe yellow. Obviously, it didn't do much good.