Since the Time of The Roman Republic

The name Changzhou is actually fairly modern but there has been some city where Changzhou is since around 600-800 BC. To put that in perspective that means that there were people living in Changzhou when the Roman Republic was founded. There were people living in Changzhou when Athens was fighting wars with Sparta. There were people living in Changzhou when Homer was alive. There were people living in Changzhou well before the time of Alexander the Great, or Caesar, or Virgil, or Jesus. But today I don't think there is even one single building in the city of Changzhou that is more than 100 years old. How could that have happened? Washington DC which by world standards is very new city have tons of buildings more than 100 years old. But a city that is almost 3000 years old has none? I'm not talking about a 1,000 or 2,000 year old building just something built in the 1800's. But I still can't find anything like that. There are, I believe, a couple of reasons why there is a complete dearth of history here. First, older Chinese buildings were often built out of wood. The brand new "world's possibly tallest" pagoda in downtown is on the sight of an ancient pagoda, but the old one, actually several old ones, burned to the ground. It seems to be a rule that if you make something out of wood given a long enough period of time it will catch fire.

Also even when wooden buildings survive wood has to be replaced at some point, it just can't hold together forever. Unlike the ancient Greeks or Romans ancient Chinese buildings were usually made primarily from wood which degrades over time. The notable exception being the Great Wall made up of stone. Second, there was the Cultural Revolution. For 10 years people all over China smashed thousands of ancient temples and artifacts. It will never be possible to tell exactly how much was destroyed during all this but there were certainly a lot more ancient buildings in China before that then after it. But what may be even a bigger cause of the loss of old buildings is the relentless "modernization" that's taken place in the last 10 or 20 years. I just read former Wall Street Journal report Ian Johnson's book Wild Grass where he talk a lot about the destruction of thousands of ancient houses in Beijing. These ancient houses or hutong something of a famous tourist sight in Beijing but even last summer when I went to Beijing with my parents there were so few left it was hard to find one. I believe that more than anything most of the reason there's nothing old left in Changzhou is that it's all been knocked down and replaced with something new.

I'm not one of these people who believe that every old building must be kept just because it's old. In fact I think for a city to grow and be vibrant a lot of old buildings have to come down to make way for something more modern. But there's a difference in modernizing a city and burying the past. I can't imagine Rome if one day they decided to take down the Colosseum to make room for a new shopping mall. That may sound ridiculous but it's pretty much what's going on in China. I joke with people that there are no tourist attractions in Changzhou as if that's how it has to be, but a 3,000 year old city could be chocked full of tourist stuff. Changzhou has even had some important stuff happen here in the past. During the Taiping Rebellion in the mid 1800's one of their most important temples was located in Changzhou next to what is now the big hospital. But instead of a push towards preservation today there's nothing. This isn't the sort of thing that can be reversed. The new huge pagoda is nice but it's not the same as a 1,000 year old temple would be. You can't un-demolish a building, not even in China.

This also has negative effects for Chinese culture. Today there is essentially no such thing as Chinese architecture. Every building is just a copy of some Western design with maybe a cheap facade to make it look more Asian. If it wasn't for the Chinese lettering you'd never know that the downtown mall in Changzhou wasn't in any city in the US. Also what are future Chinese people going to look towards as Chinese culture. All the students learn about the long history of China but soon there will be no evidence at all of it. It will be as if the whole country just sprang full formed from the ocean in 1990. Oddly I bet the person who would be happiest with all this is Mao. Years after the violence of the Cultural Revolution ended China is working harder than ever to destroy everything old. This drive toward the modern is how a city with 3,000 years of history can have not a single building from 100 years ago.