“Migrant workers from the countryside have a different way of thinking
and it’s not okay. I can’t accept it. They are not very educated, nor are they
cultured. They are backward and uncivilized,” explained Uncle Cao, the
pot-bellied, chain-smoking, spiky-haired owner of a noodle restaurant in the
old city of Nanjing. He shrugged and threw up his hands. “Meibanfa,” he sighed, shaking his head. Meibanfa is a frequently used Chinese phrase that
means there’s nothing that can be done.
My
face tingled as I slurped my steaming bowl of knife-shaven noodles with beef.
His 7-year-old daughter shyly poked her head out from behind the kitchen door
and retreated instantly when we made eye contact. She was curious to see the
first foreigner that had ever eaten at her father’s restaurant. Uncle Cao added,
“I’m not willing to be friends with peasants because you simply can’t be
friends with someone who is on a different level economically with you. It’s
not balanced. It’s like the old Chinese proverb: ‘Things
of one kind come together, and people of one group crowd together’ (wu yi
leiju, ren yi qunfen).” He coughed and spit on the
ground, blowing smoke in my face.
This is the story of what happens when
people of two groups crowd together in the old city of Nanjing.
After market-oriented economic reforms were
initiated in 1978, household income, rather than the work unit, began to
determine residence in Chinese cities. As more city officials gradually began to embrace
free-market values in the 1980s and 1990s, the property market became
semi-privatized and local governments began leasing land to property
developers. The resulting housing boom in China gave rise to the popularization
of gated communities, widespread demolition and eviction campaigns, and urban
zoning policies that encouraged
socio-economic spatial segregation. As a result, sections of
traditional urban areas that remained untouched by property developers
became dilapidated and largely inhabited by low-income and marginal
populations, namely migrant workers and lower-status urban residents.
These remaining sections of the old city are
the Chinese equivalent of slums, known as “urban villages,” where neighborhoods
of neglected housing await demolition and redevelopment. One such
community is Old Nanjing, where the
original urban fabric of the Ming dynasty remains. The charming,
meandering alleys of Old Nanjing are too narrow for vehicles. The streets are
lined with laofangzi, or old houses, as the locals call the
one-story dilapidated homes that lack toilets and showers. The laofangzi
usually feature central courtyards, slanted roofs, wooden frames, concrete
floors, and ladders leading up to lofts.
In
December of 2011, I moved into a laofangzi in Old Nanjing in order to conduct
field research on urban redevelopment, socio-spatial segregation, and local
identity during a 10-month research grant from the Fulbright US Student
Program. Despite my initial cultural shock with the public squat toilets and
the crowded, communal bathhouses, and the neighbors’ disturbance with my
preference to drink cold water and eat sunny-side up eggs, I have become part
of the local and the migrant communities in Old Nanjing. The two communities,
however, are distinctly separate from each other.
