Hutong Men In Their Siheyuangs Poem by gershon hepner

In Beijing’s ancient labyrinths,
the hutongs, lined with terebinths,
siheyuangs the leaders call
dilapidated housing, sprawl,
and in the alleys ancient men
chainsmoke, and sadly wonder when
they’ll be evicted from the homes
where they remain, agnostic gnomes
who hope they will not be abolished
when siheyuangs have been demolished,
replaced by shiny new high rises:
what some call progress for them is crisis.

Inside an old siheyuang
you feel the spirit that once sprang
from ancient China’s primal earth,
the spirit that inspired birth
of poems, paintings, walls and houses,
and babies born to Chinese spouses,
but now is set aside to languish,
despite the ancient men whose anguish
does not concern the party men,
destroying like carcinogen,
to make the powerful more wealthy.
lifestyles that once had been so healthy,

The preservation of the species
depends upon the exegeses
of those who value ancient ways,
interpreting in exposés
the past to show it relevance.
Hutongs’s survival gives a chance
that China’s very ancient glory
will be a realistic story,
and not a fantasy forgotten
in urban sprawl that’s misbegotten.
The hope for modern China hangs
on hutong men in their siheyangs.

Inspired by an article in about the siheyangs that line hutongs in old Beijing, and the ancient men who sit in the courtyards, chainsmoking (“In Ancient Valleys, Modern Comforts, NYT, July 24,2008) :

A STROLL through one of this city’s labyrinthine hutongs — alleys lined with courtyard houses that wind away from the boulevards and public squares — offers glimpses of a back street life mostly hidden behind the gray walls on either side: chain-smoking old men sitting at a checkerboard, a workman intent on a lunch of steamed dumplings, a cobbler hunched over a pair of worn canvas shoes. Occasionally an open door reveals a warren of cramped passageways or a courtyard packed with battered bicycles, caged songbirds and clothes hung out to dry in the hazy sunlight. Just as on the main streets, the air is filled with construction dust and the din of car horns and of wood being cut. But when Liu Heung Shing, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, slips through the red doors of his siheyuan, or traditional one-story courtyard home, off a hutong just north of the Forbidden City, the cacophony ceases. Inside the house — which Mr. Liu spent two years and more than $1 million buying and restoring — the frenzy of the new Beijing gives way to the peace of the central courtyard. Here, the smog seems to have lifted, and all that can be heard is the breeze in the two 130-year-old pomegranate trees above. “Chinese believe that in a siheyuan you can feel the spirit of the earth, ” he said on a recent afternoon, “because unlike in a high-rise apartment, you step on it every day.”



7/24/08