Streetcars, the predominant mode of public transportation in Beijing from the 1920s to 1960s, will be back on track starting May 1st. The Beijing municipal government recently decided to kick off a streetcar line in the Qianmen, or the “Front Gate” area right before the Olympics, a move apparently aiming to attract visitors.
“I remember the ticket price was only 3 cents,” said Bai Yuzhen, a retired senior Beijinger, “We call them Diang Diang car at the time, as it runs with the crunching “diang diang” sound. The capital of China used to have seven trolley lines, all in the center of the city. The last line died in the May of 1966 during the Cultural Revolution. “The new trolleys are apparently not for people like me,” Bai noted, “They [the government] demolished almost all the old Gates of Beijing and have rebuilt them in recent years. It’s good that they trying to recover what’s been lost, but what’s the point of destroying them at the beginning? I hope they can focus more on those disappearing old Hutongs (alley ways) and Siheyuans (courtyards) in the city. It’s ridiculous to ignore those old architectures being demolished now and have them rebuilt years later.”
Old streetcars can now still be found in Dalian, Chang Chun and a few other cities in China’s northeast area, which presumably can attract more tourists than their newborn siblings.
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Streetcars eh? They were always a bit too slow to appeal to me. I may have rode on one in Hong Kong, but they have never really appealed to me. As for the Hutongs, I guess culture is something that has to be sacrificed in this case for additional progress. But I do hope that China does protect some of the older villages and traditional housing and not just tear all of them down for more malls.
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