BEIJING — BEIJING - Every other month or so, Philip Lin packs his suitcases, grabs his passport and travels from one home to another. As head of China Business Development for T. Rowe Price, Lin routinely shuttles between his office in downtown Baltimore and Beijing, the city where he was born, where his parents still live, and a place that seems wholly different every time he visits.
"I've personally witnessed the metamorphosis," Lin says.
Over the past two decades, Beijing has undergone drastic change on a scale that has outpaced any other modern city. The 2008 Olympics provided the fuel for even more accelerated progress, while also serving as a looming deadline. At the opening ceremony next month, China will unveil a new Beijing to the world, one rich in culture, one swathed in prosperity and one that bears little resemblance to Lin's childhood memories.
Lin remembers a city with its own rhythm, its own personality, its own inimitable fingerprint. Old men playing checkers roadside. Bicycle vendors selling goods - from coal to fresh chicken. Women inviting neighbors into their courtyards for a cup of hot tea.
"That's the Beijing I remember," says Lin, 47. "That's the Beijing that had its own unique flavor."
When China won the Olympics bid in 2001, government officials wanted to transform a city known for arts, culture and history into a modern-day metropolis, an economic heavyweight. So they essentially sketched out a new city map and laid it right on top of the old one. Ever since, destruction and reconstruction have happened simultaneously.
But what of the old Beijing?
Historic neighborhoods along ancient roads, called hutongs, once stretched from Tiananmen Square more than a mile in every direction. Tiny dwellings with shared courtyards and a labyrinth of narrow alleyways kept neighborhoods tight-knit. With family-owned businesses filling out the communal patchwork, the centuries-old design, distinct to Beijing, was a testament to functionality, if nothing else.
Now 70 percent of the hutongs that existed only 50 years ago are gone.
According to the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 1.5 million Beijing residents have been displaced in preparation for the Olympics. Only 2,700 were displaced in Athens, host of the Summer Games four years ago, according to the same report. An average of 60,000 Beijing homes per year has been demolished since 2006.
