Goodbye, Old House - Zhu Yong Cultural Notes

Author: Zhu Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: The understanding of a city should be approached from both spatial and temporal dimensions. Entering the space of a city is not difficult, but entering its time is not. Time is always escaping, and we can only see the "present." The origins and destinations of time are hidden in darkness. The so-called "present" is an abstract concept, impossible to measure its length—is it a second, a minute, or an hour? In this sense, the "present" is abstract, constantly changing, and unstable, while the "past" is permanent and concrete, like a vast warehouse where all things that have disappeared will gather. Therefore, in my view, all cities belong to the past—either the "past" of one minute ago or the "past" of one hundred years ago. Time has no starting point, so the perspective of our retrospect can be infinitely extended. A city provides a space for our vision to run. The longer our vision extends, the more complex and vivid our understanding of the city's history, memory, and imagination becomes. Space is the container of time, and the vanished time will leave traces in the city's space. Thus, time and space can be unified. Theoretically, through the reading of urban space, the reading of urban time should also be completed. Almost all old houses have disappeared, the qilin and crane that once roosted on the beams and frames have scattered like monkeys after a tree falls, and the spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums, as well as the tea trees and pear blossoms, are also gone. Those exquisite houses are like teeth being pulled out, and what we can see now is merely a bloody and mangled jaw. A colossal thirty-story structure will replace the original old houses. I believe it will become a huge false tooth, announcing and flaunting its victory in a gilded and inlaid manner.