Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital's Center

by Harriet Evans

Between the early 1950s and the accelerated demolition and construction of Beijing's “old city” in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the residents of Dashalar—one of the capital city's poorest neighborhoods and only a stone's throw from Tian’anmen Square—lived in dilapidated conditions without sanitation. Few had stable employment. Today, most of Dashalar's original inhabitants have been relocated, displaced by gentrification. In Beijing from Below Harriet Evans captures the last gasps of subaltern life in Dashalar. Drawing on oral histories that reveal memories and experiences of several neighborhood families, she reflects on the relationships between individual, family, neighborhood, and the state; poverty and precarity; gender politics and ethical living; and resistance to and accommodation of party-state authority. Evans contends that residents' assertion of belonging to their neighborhood signifies not a nostalgic clinging to the past, but a rejection of their marginalization and a desire for recognition. Foregrounding the experiences of the last of Dashalar's older denizens as key to understanding Beijing's recent history, Evans complicates official narratives of China's economic success while raising crucial questions about the place of the subaltern in history.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, History, Anthropology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2020

About the author

I was born in London and grew up there. I was very bookish, and had a huge imagination which used to cause me to get rather anxious at times. Now I know it's a good thing for a writer to have. I loved musicals, and playing imaginative games, and my Barbie perfume making kit. Most of all I loved reading. I read everything, but I also read lots of things over and over, which I think is so important.

At university I read Classical Studies, which is a great way of finding out that the world doesn't change much and people make the same mistakes but it's interesting to look at why. I was at Bristol, and i loved the city, making new friends, being a new person.

After university I came back to London and got a job in publishing. I loved working in publishing so much, and really felt for the first time in my life that when I spoke people understood what I was saying. Book people are good people. I became an editor after a few years, working with many bestselling novelists, and in 2009 I left to write full time.

I've written 13 novels and several short stories and one Quick Read, which is an excellent way of getting people into reading more. I've acquired a partner and two children along the way.

In 2019 we moved to Bath, out of London, and I am very happy there. We live opposite a hedgerow, and I can be boring about gardening, and there's room for my collection of jumpsuits and all our books. We have lots of books. Apart from anything else they keep the house warm. xxx

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is structured around 5 interviewees and their families inside various courtyard homes in the district of dashalan, just south of tiananmen square. despite being so close to the imperial seat of power, the living conditions of these low-income and marginalised families are precarious. Their lives are marked by financial and social precarity, most of whom had limited education and opportunities in life.

The stories of these families are told in each chapter that began with a description of their lives, including living condition in the courtyard homes, kinship dynamics, employment, frustrations, employment, and their inevitable re-location. This is followed by the author's more academic/theoretical dissections of the main character that can sometimes be helpful but perhaps a little abstract at times, ranging from a gendered dissection of a single mother and her complicated relationship with patriarchy, while another explored a man's impotence as a husband and son.

Although the stories themselves are interesting and certainly shocking given how recent it is and there is certainly an under-representation of oral history works of the marginalised in China, I would have preferred them to be told more as a verbatim rather than from a third person perspective with seemingly random transliteration of phrases into Chinese. The author also chose to relate certain personal incidents with some of the characters, the intention behind which is unclear and questionable. While I find the dissections sometimes helpful, it would have been more useful for them to be set against a socio-political background in China, rather than a psychological analysis of the interviewee that makes me feel like they had inadvertently agreed to a psychotherapy session without their knowledge, published in a book in a language they don't understand. Overall, the book was a little disappointing and at times repetitive, especially the last chapter.

[astraeus · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best legit sociology book I have read. Dashlar is today one of the landmarks of Old Beijing, and it is very interesting to read about the change of life of the really local residents. History grand narrative is always too grandiose to be applied to individual households, and every individual has their own stories. Very interesting to read.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sympathetic but very bleak and sombre application of Subaltern Studies to somewhere it isn't usually applied - Beijing in the 2000s and 2010s, specifically the 'old Beijing' historic/slum district of Dashalar, and the people who refused to leave it as gentrification took it over.

[Aina N · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing work by Harriet Evans elaborating on those unfortunate stories from Beijing. my heart completely broke during the fifth chapter about li fuying's story about being a migrant and waidiren looking for a job in beijing. also appreciated the first chapter about dashalar's structure and culture.