On a historical timeline, it's finger-snap gentrification. Ou Ning, a sociologist and filmmaker, characterizes it in simple terms. "If a city wants to develop, you have to sacrifice something," he says, "and this is the cost of change in Beijing."
The push and the pull of new versus old is taking place on nearly every street corner.
Even as Chinese leaders boast of their preservation efforts, many worry about a vanishing way of life. Already, lower-income Chinese have been transplanted from their aging family homes near the city center to high-rise apartments closer to the outskirts of town and, along with them, their traditions and routines.
As Beijing rushes to modernize and its traditional way of life is bulldozed and replaced with big business and 21st-century architecture, the city must decide just how much of its historical and cultural identity it will hold onto.
"We use a metaphor to explain this," says Wang Hui, executive deputy director of communications for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. "Beijing is like a growing kid. It would grow up anyway, but this is just helping it to grow up much faster. It was inevitable that Beijing was going to develop. It was going to happen with or without the Olympic Games."
Amid the hutongs southwest of Tiananmen Square, a young couple bats a badminton shuttlecock back and forth in the dirt roadway. A few feet away, Wang leans against the wall, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
"Those people who come to Beijing, they're just here to earn a living," he says, the tip of his cigarette turning red. "It is not their responsibility to maintain our culture or to care about our city. I don't like the people, and they're taking away the culture that Beijing has spent years and years building."
Like many fearful of government retribution, Wang won't reveal his last name. He's 54 years old and lives in a home that's bigger than most - 160 square feet. He has lived here since he was a child, but for how much longer, he's not sure.
He scurries inside his home, emerging seconds later, waving a pink piece of paper. It's an eviction notice, posted recently on the home of a lifelong friend. His neighbors have been lured away by developers or forced out by their government. Wang doesn't want to leave, but every day, he says, he's just waiting for a knock on the door.
"Please come back," he says to a visitor, stamping out his cigarette. "It's near. They're coming for me next."
