The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed

by Michael Meyer

Overview

Journalist Michael Meyer has spent his adult life in China, first in a small village as a Peace Corps volunteer, the last decade in Beijing--where he has witnessed the extraordinary transformation the country has experienced in that time. For the past two years he has been completely immersed in the ancient city, living on one of its famed hutong in a century-old courtyard home he shares with several families, teaching English at a local elementary school--while all around him "progress" closes in as the neighborhood is methodically destroyed to make way for high-rise buildings, shopping malls, and other symbols of modern, urban life. The city, he shows, has been demolished many times before; however, he writes, "the epitaph for Beijing will read: born 1280, died 2008...what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn't eradicate, the market economy can." The Last Days of Old Beijing tells the story of this historic city from the inside out-through the eyes of those whose lives are in the balance: the Widow who takes care of Meyer; his students and fellow teachers, the first-ever description of what goes on in a Chinese public school; the local historian who rallies against the government. The tension of preservation vs. modernization--the question of what, in an ancient civilization, counts as heritage, and what happens when a billion people want to live the way Americans do--suffuse Meyer's story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802779120
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/23/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	384
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps, where he lived for two years before moving to Beijing. A Minnesota native, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California-Berkeley with degrees in education. He was also Blakemore Fellow at Tsinghua University, concentrating on Beijing's urban planning and architecture. A Lowell Thomas Award winner for travel writing, Meyer has published stories in Time, Smithsonian, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Reader's Digest, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, among others. In China, he has represented the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations, training China's UNESCO World Heritage Site managers in preservation practices. The Last Days of Old Beijing is his first book. He lives in New York.
Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. The winner of a Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing, Meyer has also won a Whiting Writers' Award for nonfiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of The Last Days of Old Beijing, which became a bestseller in China, and he divides his time between Pittsburgh and Singapore.

Editorial Reviews

Meyer's powerful book is to Beijing what Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities was to New York City.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“An emissary from a nation that routinely junks its own past and starts anew, Meyer finds himself a champion of an unpopular cause.” —Holly Brubach, T: The New York Times Style Magazine

“His book reads like a love letter to the hutongs and to Old Beijing itself, a snapshot snatched before the scene disappears forever.” —Rob Gifford, Slate Magazine

“A charming memoir and a compelling work of narrative nonfiction about the city itself.” —Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal

“The book...is a delightfully observed view of a vast part of Chinese society that barely was glimpsed during the recent Olympics, yet is fading away.” —Kim Ode, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Heartfelt, understated, readable prose.” —Utah Daily Herald

“But his history of land development in Beijing, from the time of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci to Mao to the present, and of attempts in Hanoi, Havana and other Communist cities to preserve their own sense of place, are just as compelling (and sad) to read.” —Richard B. Woodward, New York Times Travel Section.

“[A] substantive, smart book...Meyer knows the ins and outs of hutong history because he's one of the few Westerners to have ever lived in one.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

“In The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed, longtime resident Michael Meyer eloquently portrays the madness of the city during this period.” —Karl Taro Greenfeld, Los Angeles Times

“Michael Meyer tells the story of Beijing's destruction from the perspective of one tiny hutong (narrow lane) neighbourhood to the south of Tiananmen Square where he taught in a school. A spiritedness shines through among his earthy neighbours, even in the face of what Mr. Meyer calls "the Hand", which, visiting always at night, paints the Chinese character for "destroy" on houses that are to be razed.” —The Economist

“All in all, his record of the dying ways of a city is an impressive feat.” —Kate Sekules, New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher