Memories of apartheid forced removals here in China

Around where we live there used to be a real “China Town”. That is to say, wonderful bric-a-brac of small shops selling everything from toilet seats to services such as getting new keys cut, shoe repairs and tailors, from the Chinese version of take-away omelettes wrapped around a stick of dough for breakfast to tiny cubicle-size selling stationery…oh anything from leather-bound notebooks to Christmas wrapping paper in July. (There are a dozen or so photos later in this blog.)

Often, either behind the shop or on top of it, was the family-run business’s living quarters. The business and home are often passed on from generation and you get to live with your neighbours in the same spot from generation to generation. That’s all gone here on Changde Road just off Beijing West Road because of the revamp of Shanghai for Expo 2010. Our road is one example of many in China. “Where did the people go?” I often asked a year ago, and got tangential answers from Chinese friends and nothing — that I could see — from the newspapers.

They were forcibly removed. I wondered about all the dire consequences; from the trauma of being displaced to trying to get a new business going to finding food for sons and daughters’ mouths. All for the sake of the new face of capitalism and world trade.

People never matter, only money does
Now, a year later, some of the ugly truths are being aired. You can surf to this article on China Daily and, perhaps more poignantly and definitely more horrifically, here: “uprooted family of burned man seeks justice”.

To arrive home or wake up one day to find a sign glued to your day saying you have a few weeks or months to get ready to leave for another location would be most traumatic. Of course it reminded me of the hells of apartheid. It would not surprise me that the family — whom I stress again have often been living here for generations along with their intergenerational community — are also informed that they will be told where they are being moved to at a later stage.

I am certain the suicide mentioned above is only one of many tragedies distressed families suffered. Now the roads and little lanes are empty. They no longer peal with the laughter of children. There is just a blank wall surrounding a World Expo 2010 site. Where once teemed endless stalls selling anything from pottery to bracelets is a construction site for an expo platform that will showcase some of the world’s goods, and a bus terminus.

My words cannot do the justice my camera did. Here are about ten or so photos I took about two years ago and I am grateful I did. At the time I had no idea as to what was to transpire. None of these people did either. Many of these people I knew and bought goods from them, played with their children, offered them snacks under mama or grandma’s watchful eye. What you are about to see is all gone. Please take a look, and this blog carries on after the photos.

Click the thumbnails to enlarge

And all that teeming life has been replaced by this, taken Friday December 18 2009:

How much is changing, how little I want it
I once wrote in a blog about the changing face of Shanghai. I realise the old adage says that “change is the only constant” and we should not resist it. But I find my pictures above most moving as that thriving community vanished all so quickly.

A vibrant district, a kinship, deep and safe in it sense of being there for generations, gone like leaves after a storm. But the main issue I wish to take is the openness of the China Daily in writing about the distress of these displaced people. We are talking about China where censorship is an ancient, time-honoured tradition. I am surprised and impressed by the openness of the articles (see my links above) in a newspaper like the China Daily which is sneered at by us ex-pats as a propaganda rag. Sure, writing and publishing articles about it a year later and only now getting “legal experts” to examine the legislation that does not protect the people is far too late — bitterly so, irresponsibly so.

But the articles are suggesting that China is overcoming her collective denial and her willingness to start dealing with the various truths in a responsible manner. May she at least go from strength to strength in that regard. Looking at these pictures, I was overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia. All those bright, happy faces, abruptly gone; the smells of cooking, chattering, bartering, all gone; card players at their tables whooping with delight at a won bet, up in smoke; the sound of buckets of dirty water swished into the culverts of streets, swept away.

And grandma hollering after her granddaughter to be careful, xiaoxin, as she rushes out into the lane to play… At the time of those photos, there was the biggest snowfall Shanghai had had in about five decades and the last snowfall shrouding those families’ rooftops and those tiny lanes so steeped with memories. The memory of that huge snowfall shudders through me now like a premonition. At the time I wrote a short, very bare poem about nostalgia for old love which I offer you in closing.

Snow
I used to warm to the light in things,
Even to the way it gave ash to love.
Under my hand was her shoulder;
The other held her head.

Now things like that are still lives:
They are in this snow that has not swept down
This hard in decades, grubby as children’s hands
As in fistfuls they cling to trees, streets, faces.