China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [56]
At the turn of the century, new forms began growing into the skeleton of the old structures in China. Two brief vignettes exemplify this process. In Shanghai, a Chinese businessman moved two thousand people out of their old homes but kept the homes intact and transformed them into a kind of upscale walking district. He called it “Xintiandi” or “New Heaven and Earth.” As evening falls, the most fashionable youngsters in Shanghai can be seen strolling along its narrow streets and alleys, stopping at swank bars, restaurants, and art galleries. Old Shanghai tunes can be heard wafting from
China’s female table tennis players take the first three places at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. The rise of China’s athletic prowess has been deemed as a symbol of the country’s enhanced national power.
Xintiandi, located near Huaihai Road in Shanghai, is the only vestige of the old city.
“798,” originally a munitions factory built in the 1950s in Beijing, is transformed into one of Beijing’s trendiest places.
elegant stores; Chinese rub shoulders in this place with young people from all over the world. It represents a microcosm of a new future. Very rarely do people notice that in the southeastern corner of Xintiandi is an old twostory house that has been preserved intact. Eighty years ago, thirteen young people met in this house to announce the formation of the Communist Party of China.
Another example is the renovation of a district in Beijing. A young woman involved in cultural pursuits discovered that a huge factory district in the northeast corner of the city had been neglected and was up for rent. Its buildings had housed a munitions factory set up in the 1950s and due to its military nature it was given the rather mysterious-sounding name of “798.” The lady rented one of the factory buildings for an extremely cheap price and created a workshop for her own artistic endeavors, while an American friend rented another space for his website design studio. Soon, other creative people were moving into other parts of the complex and the “798 artists group” snowballed. A creative and dynamic culture now pervades what used to be a weapons factory.
As cultural life blossomed in the late 1990s and the early part of the twenty-first century, a new willingness to confront China’s problems also emerged. People began to use black humor to describe the phenomenon of China’s nouveau riche, in particular. It was widely believed that the latter had gained their wealth through illegal means. A public opinion poll conducted
The Englishman Rupert Hoogewerf has been ranking China’s wealthiest people since 1999. His annual China Rich List has brought both fame and crisis to the wealthy.
by the Renmin University of China indicated that 60% of those polled felt this way. A movie called Big Wrists, meaning a knack for making deals, became an explosive hit among the Chinese movies in 2002. This comedy ridiculed those upstarts who made “explosive wealth.” This “explosive wealth” is being increasingly scrutinized. When the State Administration of Taxation made public the fifty highest tax-paying privately managed enterprises in China, this became an excellent resource for comparative purposes. Someone compared this list to the top fifty Chinese companies on the Fortune 500 list. Only four of the names corresponded.
At around the same time, Timemagazine published a special report on the “The Pitiful Super-rich” in China. The author described the lifestyle of China’s wealthy people and mentioned names: “These people build luxurious offices that copy the inside of the Oval Office in the White House; they try to replicate Rockefeller’s estate in their