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Zhao's little acre

A Beijing homeowner finds that nowadays you can fight city hall, as long as you don't count on winning.

AUGUST 9, 2000. The situation is clear enough: An 82-year-old man lives in a centuries-old courtyard home that sits on a piece of prime real estate in downtown Beijing. Directly next door, a developer is erecting an office building for the China Construction Bank, and the district government has promised to give the old man 2.9 million yuan as compensation for the destruction of his home. If the old man does not want the money - and at $354,000, it's a small fortune here in China - then the government can force him to leave. The development company is owned by the government. The bank is owned by the government.

But this particular old man is not owned by anybody. He is a retired English professor named Zhao Jingxin, and he is as strong as a horse. He plays tennis twice a week. He is a patriot and an iconoclast, and he hates developers, and he hates the massive crane that looms above his home, working day and night on the uncompleted bank. Even the promise of all that money does nothing but make professor Zhao (pronounced Jow) angry.

"I could buy a very good apartment," he fumes, sitting inside his living room on this sultry afternoon. "But I don't want that. Why not? Because I'm Chinese - I want to protect this place. This courtyard has at least 400 years of history."

Zhao's anger has inspired him to hire the lawyer sitting next to him, Wu Jianzhong. In recent years, the Chinese legal profession has boomed, and a few of the bolder lawyers have tried what Wu is now engaged in: suing the government.

"Most people are afraid of trouble, so they don't file lawsuits," says Wu, who has sued two city government departments, the Cultural Relics Bureau and the Housing Bureau. To the surprise of many observers, the Beijing courts accepted the cases, although they have already decided against Zhao in both instances. But Wu has filed an appeal of the case against the Housing Bureau, and the Number Two Intermediate People's Court has agreed to hear it, which is why Zhao and Wu are hopeful.

Their hope, of course, is misplaced. The Number Two Intermediate People's Court, like the developer and the bank, is controlled by the government and the Communist Party. This story, like so many tales of quixotic challenges to government power in China, has a predictable ending: In exactly 78 days, Zhao's ancient home will be reduced to rubble and dust.

But the ending is only part of this story. There are other plot twists: the unusual public support for Zhao, the flawed intricacies of the Chinese legal system, and the tragic disregard for cultural relics in a country with 5,000 years of recorded history. And there's the determined old man who, sitting in his living room on a hot August day, refuses to see the writing on the wall.

"The court can come, the police can come, the ambulance can come," he says. "They can force me to leave, but I won't sign my name and agree. For them I have just two words: 'Not moving.' "

His eyes are striking. They are brown, hooded, tortoiselike; calm and deep and ageless. They flash when he is angry or impatient, and sometimes they are hidden behind gold spectacles. The white hair is swept neatly back. At 82, there is nothing frail about him - even sitting down he conveys vitality and strength.

Zhao, who lives with his 81-year-old wife, Huang Zhe, belongs to a generation of the Beijing elite that is quickly disappearing: the mandarins of the late Republican period (1911 to 1949), a privileged set that grew up in a world that was both Chinese and Western. His father was a Beijing native and a member of the Baptist Church who received an honorary doctorate of divinity from the Princeton Theological Seminary, and Zhao left China as a young man to attend the University of Chicago. During World War II, he worked in Honolulu for the US military, giving Chinese lessons to troops preparing for an invasion of Japanese-controlled China.

That invasion never happened, and shortly after the war Zhao and the other expatriate members of his generation had to make a life-changing decision: whether to return to China after the communists came to power. Two of Zhao's brothers decided to stay in the United States and became American citizens.

"My father wanted us to come back," Zhao remembers. "He said that China was our home." Zhao's sister was the first to return, flying to Shanghai immediately after completing her PhD in literature at the University of Chicago in 1948. She hoped to continue to Beijing, but the Chinese civil war had cut off all flights to the capital. "Finally, through connections, she got the last C-46 in Shanghai and flew to Beijing," Zhao remembers.

His own return was less dramatic. He came back to Beijing in 1950, a year after the communists came to power, and offered his services to the new government. That same year, his father purchased their courtyard home, which is about a mile north of the Forbidden City, in the center of Beijing. Over the next half-century, the Zhao family experienced its share of turmoil - like many Chinese intellectuals, they were persecuted during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution - but they survived, and the courtyard was always their home. Zhao lived here while teaching English at the Institute of Foreign Trade. In the complex's eastern wing, his sister translated the definitive Chinese version of Walt Whitman's verse, a task that took 10 years. Like Zhao's father, she is now dead, and their memory is part of what makes the 82-year-old so determined to hang on to his home.

The complex consists of two small courtyards surrounded by single-story buildings, their roofs topped with tiles. A red-pillared veranda fronts the main entrance. Some details have been modernized - the windows are glass instead of traditional paper, and Zhao long ago had modern plumbing installed. But the layout still follows the simple lines of tradition: large open rooms with few internal walls, ancient wooden doorways that lead outside to other rooms across the courtyard. This open space is what gives the home its character, and it calls to mind the Beijing of old, when the courtyard was the heart of the city.

In the past, the capital was composed entirely of such courtyards, all of them arranged along walled streets in intricate neighborhoods known as hutong. Kublai Khan introduced this city plan during the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), when the capital was reorganized into neighborhoods centered on communal wells (hutong is a Mongolian term meaning water well). In some parts of the city, the Yuan layout is still apparent. Less than half a mile from Zhao's home is a hutong neighborhood called Dongsibatiao, whose narrow streets are all exactly the same width, an echo of the regularity that was decreed by Yuan emperors.

But Dongsibatiao is a protected neighborhood, a rarity in a city whose population has exploded from 700,000 in 1949 to an estimated 13 million today. Modern demands of efficiency are hard to reconcile with Beijing's original layout, and most hutong neighborhoods have been replaced with widened streets and faceless tower blocks. The pace of destruction has accelerated, alarming preservationists, and in March of 1999, city authorities passed a law protecting 25 historic hutong. But the total area of these sections is less than 3 square miles - an estimated 7 percent of the city's remaining hutong.

For residents like Zhao, who doesn't live in a protected zone, the only hope is that their homes will be officially designated as cultural relics - a distinction that is rarely granted. In 1998, when local officials first told Zhao that his home would be destroyed, he requested that experts from the Cultural Relics Bureau come and evaluate the complex. He hoped that their inspection would verify that the buildings dated to the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), which was what the previous owner had told Zhao's father.

According to Zhao, the experts spent only a few minutes in the courtyards before declaring that the buildings dated to only the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and therefore didn't warrant being landmarked. In response, Zhao filed suit.

"There are some very simple tests that they could do to check the dates, but they didn't use them," says Wu, his lawyer. "Obviously, the government told them to say that it's not a cultural relic so they could tear the place down."

Wu invited experts on Chinese history, architecture, and preservation to make independent evaluations. Although the experts couldn't say for certain that the courtyard dated to the Ming Dynasty, they testified that the complex was at least early Qing and should be designated a cultural relic. In response, the government's lawyers submitted as evidence a Beijing city map dating to the reign of the Qing emperor Qianlong (1735-1796). Noting that Zhao's home didn't appear on the document, the lawyers declared triumphantly that the complex wasn't even 250 years old.

However, they were misreading the map. A closer inspection by Zhao's team proved that the courtyard was indeed clearly marked, and the judge acknowledged that the government officials were wrong. Nevertheless, the court decided against Zhao.

So the lawyer focused on his other lawsuit, against the Housing Bureau, charging that the developers were breaking property rights laws by not offering adequate compensation. Even though Zhao had always maintained that he didn't want to sell his home at any cost, Wu believed that suing on the basis of inadequate compensation was the best method of delaying and possibly preventing the home's destruction.

But if the Chinese definition of a cultural relic is difficult to pin down, the issue of property rights is even more so. In the period immediately following the communist takeover, private citizens like Zhao's father could still purchase property, but this became a moot point during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Outsiders were encouraged to move into the property of "class enemies," and part of the Zhaos' courtyard complex became a home to squatters. Today, many Beijing courtyard residents trace their origins to this period, which makes it easier for officials to force them out of soon-to-be-razed hutong. Because so many people moved into ancient homes during what was essentially a lawless period, they tend to meekly accept any government settlement, relocating to tower blocks in the far reaches of the capital.

For the few who do have longstanding legal claims on their property, the issue was complicated by the passage of a 1982 law declaring that all land in China belongs to the government. Land-use rights, however, can be bought and sold privately, although the government always has the power to occupy land that is important for the national interest. Imagine the American concept of eminent domain combined with the all-powerful but often decentralized control of the Communist Party - and then add fledgling notions of privatization to the mix.

The result is a perfect environment for corruption. Local officials have rigged the sale so that land-use rights will be transferred three times: from Zhao to the district government to the developer to the bank. This allows the developer, which is under the jurisdiction of the district government, to act as middleman and increase the final price by roughly 1 million yuan ($122,000), according to Wu's estimates. Essentially, the local government hopes to sell the land-use rights to another government branch at a massive markup.

Zhao and his lawyer say that a particularly frustrating part of their battle is the fact that nobody intends to actually build anything on the property. Because a neighboring road may eventually be widened, the government has prohibited new construction in the area, and the bank already has all of the space it needs. But the bank is required to pay for the use of all land where buildings are destroyed, which means that the local government has an incentive to destroy as much as it can justify.

With the various tentacles of the Communist Party often acting with little coordination, this sort of Catch-22 situation is common in China. In fact, there's a possibility that the bank building isn't even needed. But none of the parties - the bank, the developer, or the district government - has any true accountability.

"They've already built all of these new buildings [in the neighborhood], and most of them are empty," says Wu. "So why do they want another one? Because it doesn't matter if it's full or not. As long as it's built, they'll make money. It has no connection with the market."

AUGUST 10. Ms. Fu is a pseudonym. She won't allow her real name to be published, and she won't say where she used to live. All she says is that she is a Beijing resident who grew up in a courtyard home that was destroyed, and she has been following Zhao's case. "You can describe me as somebody who is concerned," she explains. "I'm a citizen who doesn't want to see old Beijing destroyed."

There are quite a few others like her. Zhao's lawsuit has attracted public attention, and it has even been covered in some Chinese newspapers. By Western standards, these reports have been cautious - they don't openly criticize the government or explain the construction project's twisted finances, and the capital's largest dailies have steered clear of the story. Nonetheless, some smaller newspapers have run articles, and anybody versed in Chinese politics can read them accurately: The media are clearly supporting the old man. And somebody with power must support him as well; otherwise, the reports wouldn't appear in any newspapers, which are all government-run.

Fu is particularly surprised that the appeal is being heard in court. Earlier this year, she joined 10,356 other former courtyard residents who filed a class-action lawsuit against the Beijing government. Giving themselves the name of Ten Thousand Citizens Suing Officials, the petitioners charged the government with violating resettlement laws.

"The group was first started by people who lived in Xidan," says Fu, referring to a section of downtown Beijing. "They had some very beautiful courtyards that were basically stolen by the local government. The residents weren't compensated. Some of them resisted, and the government sent in police and soldiers, and some people were hurt."

While such treatment would hardly seem an invitation to pursue a lawsuit through official channels, the boldness of the Ten Thousand Citizens reflects a small but potentially important trend in Chinese law. Since 1991, China has permitted class-action lawsuits, a right that is explicitly given by only a few countries outside the United States.

And in China, this right isn't entirely empty. A number of class-action lawsuits against the government have been successful, especially in cases involving environmental damage. Many of these victories occur in situations in which higher government bodies are willing to see corrupt local officials punished. And because the Chinese press often covers these cases, the average citizen is gaining a better understanding of his legal rights - knowledge that is further aided by government publicity, which at times is surprisingly open. For example, in 1993, Beijing authorities published a detailed description of the legal protocol that should be followed in moving citizens out of buildings that are to be demolished.

The result is a strange combination of openness and repression. Increasingly, Chinese citizens are both aware of their rights and know that there are unwritten limits to any direct challenge to the government's authority. Filing a class-action lawsuit thus becomes a sort of game: People rely on legal knowledge to evaluate the written law, and they turn to experience to gauge the political sensitivities, and then they take a deep breath and file the suit.

Often, this game is lost. The Ten Thousand Citizens filed suit in February 2000, charging officials with violating the 1993 protocol. The courts responded with silence. High-ranking officials did not answer petitions. The media was muzzled. Half a year later, people like Fu use false names, because they know authorities have arrested Chinese citizens who file class-action lawsuits.

But Zhao's case could be a breakthrough. His suit is more cleverly structured than that of the Ten Thousand Citizens: By focusing strictly on the issue of compensation, he is posing less of a direct challenge to the government. Still, it's the first time a courtyard-destruction case has gone to court, and Fu says that it could set an example. She is cautious but also has a touch of hope.

"If it's according to law, he'll win, of course," she says. "But we don't know what will happen. We're waiting."

SEPTEMBER 21. An argument breaks out after the verdict. The two sides in Zhao's appeal against the Housing Bureau shout at each other outside the main gate of the Number Two Intermediate People's Court, a distraction after the drama of today's decision.

The verdict itself didn't take long. At 9:15 a.m., the judge entered the courtroom, told everybody to stand up, and promptly read the decision.

In addition to Wu and three representatives from the opposing side, there were three observers: two newspaper reporters and one elderly man who is fighting to save his own courtyard home. Until recently, common citizens couldn't attend a Beijing trial. But in 1999, the city implemented an open trial system for all court levels. Politically sensitive cases are still closed, but a trial like Zhao's is open to anybody who registers.

Today's decision is blunt: Zhao must leave his home within five days. If he refuses, the construction company has the right to force him out and tear down the buildings.

The elderly observer leaves the courtroom immediately. "There's no hope," he says.

Wu tells the judge that he would like to appeal the verdict in the earlier court case against the Cultural Relics Bureau. That case was decided two months ago, and there is a rule that an appeal can't be filed for three months. But if the home is to be destroyed in five days, how can he file the appeal next month?

Nobody has an answer to that. An argument breaks out between Wu and the other side, with Wu promising angrily that he will appeal to higher authorities. A Beijing camera crew happens to be standing outside the court. They film the argument. The videotape will not be shown on tonight's news.

SEPTEMBER 25. Tennis is one of the few remaining distractions for Zhao, and this morning he wins a match, 6-2. He is upbeat and confident. His legal battle, however, remains in doubt. Zhao still refuses to leave, hoping that due process will create enough delays to lodge another appeal.

"They can come and destroy it right now if they want," he says. "But they have to follow certain procedures. They have to register with the court, the police station, and other bureaus."

Public reaction to the verdict has been impressive. "After the decision, my phone rang for three days straight," the professor says proudly, holding up a condolence letter signed "A Citizen of the Capital." His younger brother has also expressed his support, telephoning from the United States. He goes by the American name Edward C. T. Chao, and he spent his career as a geologist with the National Geological Survey.

Thirty years ago, he was one of four geologists selected to inspect the moon rocks collected from the Apollo 11 landing. "He was quarantined afterward for two weeks, because they didn't know if the rocks would have any diseases,' says Zhao with a smile. Divided by the Cold War, the two brothers had no contact from 1950 to 1972.

When the first demolition order came in 1998, Zhao's brother offered to help him move to the United States. The offer was firmly refused. "Neither of us has any regrets," says Zhao. "He took his road, and I took mine. I don't want to go to America now. I'm a Chinese, and even if I went to America, I'd still be a Chinese."

OCTOBER 20. Zhao won a tournament match today. But it has been a tense month; he is irritable and distracted. "If I play 80-year-olds, it's not interesting," he grumbles. "They're too old."

This morning, Zhao's last neighbors moved out. The professor and his wife are the only ones left, and beyond the walls of their home is nothing but rubble and the construction project. The appeal has been refused. Zhao's final hope is that somebody in the government will save him.

But this rarely happens nowadays. In the past, such commands weren't unusual; there were plenty of instances when a high-ranking official like former premier Zhou En-lai ordered the preservation of a relic. Today's China is still authoritarian, but it has become a sort of fiefdom authoritarianism, based on the omnipotence of local officials and district governments. Certainly, higher authorities sometimes overrule these local bodies - thus the occasional successful class-action lawsuit - but this seems unlikely in Zhao's case.

More than 10 experts have said that the building should be preserved, and the National Cultural Relics Bureau has publicly recommended that further tests be done to determine the courtyard's age. But the City Cultural Relics Bureau has chosen to ignore this advice, and this is the government branch that matters in this case - the local rather than the national.

And so Zhao has made plans. Two of his ancient doorways will be donated to a local museum, along with a pair of engraved stones. Friends have offered to help him and his wife find another apartment, because they refuse to accept the government's replacement housing, which consists of a dingy 200 square feet in the distant Beijing suburbs.

In the meantime, he is waiting. And he talks bravely of what will happen if the destruction order comes through. "The law courts will come, the police will come, the ambulance will come," he says. "It will be very exciting."

But three days later, when he makes a hasty phone call, the bravado is gone.

"They're going to tear it down on Thursday morning," Zhao says. "There's nothing more I can do."

He explains that he will move in with his friends. There is no emotion in his voice. He speaks clearly, first in Chinese and then in English. There is a pause.

"That's all I have to say," he continues. "There's no other reason for my phone call."

He hangs up.

OCTOBER 26. The court officials are the first to arrive. There are 15 of them, all dressed alike: black suits, black ties, white shirts. They wear red badges on their chests. They secure the building, making sure that nobody is inside.

Zhao and his wife left yesterday. They went quietly - no police, no ambulance. After two years of waiting, they decided that watching the destruction was more than they could bear. But even without them, the demolition becomes an event.

At 8:30 a.m., a flotilla of police cars arrives. More than 50 officers surround the complex. They string up yellow tape, they clear the sidewalks, they bully the bystanders. They are assisted by plainclothes cops, who keep track of the dozens of reporters, both foreign and Chinese. Photographers have their film confiscated. A few reporters are detained. One Chinese journalist is reportedly injured in a scuffle.

The workers come last. Two dozen migrant laborers from Sichuan Province have been hired for 20 yuan ($2.50) a day. They carry pickaxes. They start on the roof, chipping off gray tiles, kicking up dust. The centuries-old walls are next: brick, plaster, dust. A bulldozer swings in from the southern entrance. Dump trucks follow. It's a beautiful day. The sky is high and blue, and there is not a cloud in sight. By late afternoon, the courtyard is history.

DECEMBER 17. The story's last echoes are the photographs.

This afternoon, Beijing's Hua Lai Gallery features a special exhibition of pictures of Zhao's home before the demolition. Taken by a local photographer named Chen Han, the photos track the last year of the courtyard: springtime flowers and autumn light and the warm haze of summer. More than three dozen people, most of whom followed the case closely, come to the exhibit. Zhao is also here. Having received the promised 2.9 million yuan settlement, he knows that he has no basis for further legal action.

"I'm finished with lawsuits," he says. "I'm playing more tennis nowadays instead." He smiles.

Somebody asks if he has returned to the site of his home since the demolition.

"I've been back once. I stopped by, and the gate was still there. And I still had the key, so I tried to open it, but it was barred shut from the inside. So I looked in through the mail slot."

The old man lowers his head, as if peering through a crack.

"There was nothing left," he says. He grins again, but this time there is a touch of bitterness in his smile. "I haven't gone back since."