The courtyard house has its history, has its past, and leaves people with ancient thoughts. But what about its present and its future, it's all questions.
Attached to the past, regretful to the present, and melancholy to the future, the era of the Beijing courtyard is in the past after all, and it seems to be a part of the decline of ancient Chinese culture, and it is also irretrievable by anyone, which is an inevitable trend. In its place came a variety of other ......
The dilapidated situation of the courtyard in front of you has already given some examples in the previous articles. In fact, the list of such examples is too numerous to mention.
Guangheju in the southern half of the Hutong is a very famous old restaurant from the 19th century to the early 20th century, which was patronized by He Shaoji, Li Yueman and Mr. Lu Xun for three days, and was very praised. It is not just a restaurant, it is simply an "old culture club" since Tongguang until the early years of Xuantong and the Republic of China. In 1980, I went to see this old site, and although the small street gate with brick grinding on the east side of the road is broken, it is still typical of the past because it was very delicate in the past. One can imagine seventy or eighty years ago, or even later, when cars were parked in front of the door. When I walked into the courtyard, I saw that the door was vague, and there were several families living in it. The window lattice is silent, and it is still a very standard small Sihe in the south city. This small courtyard is the gate of the east of the road, and the west room has only three doorways, and the doorway occupies half of it. The south and north rooms in the courtyard are like wing rooms, very shallow, and the courtyard is long. At the top is the east room, which is not deep. The kitchen is located on the adjacent street of Xitou Beitou, and there is a tall skylight on the roof of the house, which can be seen as a sign of a restaurant in the past. From this tall skylight, people are reminded of the famous chefs of the past, and it seems that they can also smell the fragrance of famous dishes such as "Pan Fish" and "Casserole Tofu", but this can only be used for the reverie of those who talk about the story, although the residents of the small courtyard look at this skylight every day, I am afraid it is difficult to think of the lively situation of the tinkling of pots and spoons in the past. The houses on the south, north, and east sides, from the windows and doors, have three rooms in the north and three rooms in the south...... Each has three doors and six panes, which shows that they were all divided into three small rooms. This is the guest seat of the year, its narrowness, the big round table can not be placed, the old banquet guests only sit six seats, eight seats, only eight immortal tables, high tables...... And such a narrow hut, it is rumored that the emperor of Tongzhi came back then, which is really incredible...... However, in 1980, the appearance of the ancient small Sihe was still preserved. When I went back in 1981, this old little Sihe was also like an infectious disease, and a red brick hut was built under the window of each house, and the original narrow yard was gone, only a small winding road remained. The adults and children who live in this kind of mecca are pitiful, and I am afraid that their hearts will no longer be spacious, and they will be as narrow as these mezzanines.
At present, all the courtyard houses in Beijing, except for the courtyards where a very small number of special people live, almost all the courtyards, whether large, small, relatively neat, or very dilapidated, are covered with huts of various styles, and none of them have a courtyard. The courtyard of the courtyard basically does not exist. I went to see my friends in a very fine high-step courtyard house in Nanxiao Street, I don't know who built this house back then, the door in the north of the road, the grinding brick joints, the hanging flower door, the big yard, I want to be in the heyday of the year, the first to build, and for a long time, it is very magnificent. Although it is not three into five together, but only this one is enough to show the momentum of the large quadrangle. Now that friend lives in the Great North House, with a hallway, a screen window, a floor in the house, and heating in winter, which is also very good. But what about the yard, the original cross guide left the four begonias, lilacs and other flowers and trees, respectively built four flat-roofed red brick houses that do not rely on each other, each of which is a square zhang, is a neat square. If you look at it from the air, this courtyard happens to be tiled with a Red Cross flag of the opposite color. The "cross" in the middle is made of white-gray bricks, and the four small rooms are made of red bricks.
This is the present of the Beijing Courtyard House. I think there are many reasons for this. Generally speaking, there are no more than the following points:
First, the population swelled, the population density was too large, and the original courtyard house was one family, and then two or three, and then gradually increased to four, five, and then to more than a dozen. And the population of each family is also increasing. In the sixties, the couple had a family with two children, and now that the children are adults and have started a family, this is no longer accommodating.
The second is the lack of the courtyard itself, which is based on the courtyard, not the room. Every family has the minimum supporting facilities, there is no place to cook, and people have learned to build a small house, a kitchen, and a small house for their son to get married over the years. One in the east and one in the west, all kinds, because of the ugliness, they are simple, and they are poor. In the neat big yard and small yard, there are stitches and needles, just like the "rolling dragon" in Shanghai's shantytown. Messy and uncoordinated, the ancient courtyard could not even be recognized by people with its aging appearance, and the courtyard disappeared, leaving only an inexplicable miscellaneous courtyard.
Third, people's economic capacity and actual economic ability cannot be compared with the years when they lived exclusively in the courtyard house, and the land surface cannot accommodate the courtyard house that has increased several times or dozens of times according to the actual figure. Even if you have money, you don't have so much land, old builders, a lot of wood, and so on. Not to mention that there is not so much money yet. The state can't take it, the local government can't take it, and the individual can't take it. According to the prices of the thirties, renting five south houses also cost 10 yuan, a penny of gold, or 1,000 eggs, or more than 80 catties of pork...... How can such a monthly rent be affordable for ordinary people today? Therefore, today it is only a dilapidated "courtyard house" that has not become a courtyard house, and the old tenants are dealing with it, tearing down one building and one less building, and naturally they will not build new ones.
In January and February of this year, I was on a business trip in Beijing, and I often went out, and I saw some of the more exquisite Sitai courtyards in the hutongs, which were nailed to the brand of the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit, as a cultural relics protection, from the perspective of protecting exquisite ancient buildings, this is still the only way to do it. It is said that in the future, it is also considered to demarcate a range, retain a number of alleys, and retain a courtyard house, which is the largest and best plan to retain the courtyard house in the future.
However, any way to retain the courtyard house is generally afraid that it can only preserve the "shape" of the courtyard, and cannot preserve the "god" of the courtyard. It is the kind of quiet atmosphere, quiet atmosphere, stretched living, spacious courtyard, calm four seasons, large and small hutongs that Beijingers lived in in the courtyard in the past...... Standing on Baita Mountain in Beihai or in the Jingshan Pavilion, looking down, "the double phoenix que of the imperial city in the clouds, and the trees in the rain are ten thousand homes". With such rows of roof tiles, the situation of this magnificent and ancient imperial capital is bound to disappear. From the personal feeling, from the overall situation, it will be replaced by the new.
The old tenants who live in the "courtyard" that is not a courtyard house, even if the older generation still has a little nostalgia, the new generation is eager to live in a unit building as soon as possible.
To be honest: the future of Beijing's courtyard houses is probably just a "cultural relic", and there is no future!
Source: Deng Yunxiang "Beijing Courtyard"