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Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital's Center
Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing's “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar—one of the capital city's poorest neighborhoods and only a stone's throw from Tian’anmen Square—lived in dilapidated conditions without sanitation. Few had stable employment. Today, most of Dashalar's original inhabitants have been relocated, displaced by gentrification. In Beijing from Below Harriet Evans captures the last gasps of subaltern life in Dashalar. Drawing on oral histories that reveal memories and experiences of several neighborhood families, she reflects on the relationships between individual, family, neighborhood, and the state; poverty and precarity; gender politics and ethical living; and resistance to and accommodation of party-state authority. Evans contends that residents' assertion of belonging to their neighborhood signifies not a nostalgic clinging to the past, but a rejection of their marginalization and a desire for recognition. Foregrounding the experiences of the last of Dashalar's older denizens as key to understanding Beijing's recent history, Evans complicates official narratives of China's economic success while raising crucial questions about the place of the subaltern in history.
1133604188
Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital's Center
Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing's “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar—one of the capital city's poorest neighborhoods and only a stone's throw from Tian’anmen Square—lived in dilapidated conditions without sanitation. Few had stable employment. Today, most of Dashalar's original inhabitants have been relocated, displaced by gentrification. In Beijing from Below Harriet Evans captures the last gasps of subaltern life in Dashalar. Drawing on oral histories that reveal memories and experiences of several neighborhood families, she reflects on the relationships between individual, family, neighborhood, and the state; poverty and precarity; gender politics and ethical living; and resistance to and accommodation of party-state authority. Evans contends that residents' assertion of belonging to their neighborhood signifies not a nostalgic clinging to the past, but a rejection of their marginalization and a desire for recognition. Foregrounding the experiences of the last of Dashalar's older denizens as key to understanding Beijing's recent history, Evans complicates official narratives of China's economic success while raising crucial questions about the place of the subaltern in history.
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Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital's Center
Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing's “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar—one of the capital city's poorest neighborhoods and only a stone's throw from Tian’anmen Square—lived in dilapidated conditions without sanitation. Few had stable employment. Today, most of Dashalar's original inhabitants have been relocated, displaced by gentrification. In Beijing from Below Harriet Evans captures the last gasps of subaltern life in Dashalar. Drawing on oral histories that reveal memories and experiences of several neighborhood families, she reflects on the relationships between individual, family, neighborhood, and the state; poverty and precarity; gender politics and ethical living; and resistance to and accommodation of party-state authority. Evans contends that residents' assertion of belonging to their neighborhood signifies not a nostalgic clinging to the past, but a rejection of their marginalization and a desire for recognition. Foregrounding the experiences of the last of Dashalar's older denizens as key to understanding Beijing's recent history, Evans complicates official narratives of China's economic success while raising crucial questions about the place of the subaltern in history.
Harriet Evans is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster and Visiting Professor in Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Subject of Gender: Daughters and Mothers in Urban China and Women and Sexuality in China.
Table of Contents
Illustrations ix
A Note on Use of Verb Tense, Spellings, Translation, Names, and Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Dashalar 21
Chapter 2 Old Mrs. Gao 42
Interlude 1 67
Chapter 3 Zhao Yong 74
Interlude 2 97
Chapter 4 Hua Meiling 104
Interlude 3 122
Chapter 5 Li Fuying 130
Interlude 4 153
Chapter 6 Zhang Huiming 161
Interlude 5 178
Chapter 7 Jia Yong 183
Interlude 6 200
Conclusion 207
Epilogue 225
Notes 227
Bibliography 249
Index 257
What People are Saying About This
Women and China’s Revolutions - Gail Hershatter
“Harriet Evans makes visible a world that has been hiding in plain sight—the packed courtyards and dense social networks of one of Beijing's poorest neighborhoods. Drawing upon many years of conversation with residents and archival research, Evans provides a compelling account of everyday struggles and pleasures in a community that has been shaped, and neglected, by state policies. Beijing from Below raises profound questions about the reach of an ambitious revolution, even within its own capital city.”
The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China - Rebecca E. Karl
“Through a series of engaging and entirely unique ethnographic oral histories of the subaltern residents of a now all-but-destroyed Beijing neighborhood, Harriet Evans evokes a community, a fractured class, and a way of life that have now surely disappeared into the area's reconstructed shiny commercialism. Never central actors on any stage, and barely bit extras on the stage of Beijing's transformations, Evans's interlocutors are the kinds of people who disappear in any history. Her talent in rendering these left-behind urban denizens is astonishing. Beijing from Below makes a huge contribution.
