Hunting Endangered Species from Nanjing Residency

When I heard that I had been accepted for a writer's residency in Nanjing I immediately thought about going hunting. Ever since I first came to China, in 1999, hunting has been my favourite pursuit. I don't hunt in the countryside, although I am sure that my endangered quarry can be found there. I only hunt in towns and cities, and always by daylight. I hunt alone. I carry no weapons. I am willing to walk the streets for many hours, whatever the weather, seeking signs of my target.

On a bright November morning, in a pleasant haze of jet lag, I walked the streets of Nanjing with no plan. I went west along Jianye Lu between the kind of bright, modern buildings that to a hunter such as myself are like the trees of a forest: no matter how beautiful their shape they are an obstruction. I happened to glance left and saw a stone bridge going over a canal, and on the other side, a small street heading south. I can't fully explain the hunter's intuition that made me walk down Pingshi Jie. Perhaps it was the lure of unobstructed sky. Within a few minutes in that neighbourhood I knew I had found what I was looking for, but also that I was too late.

I am a hunter of old buildings. I enjoy ancient temples, tombs and monuments, but what I really prize are ordinary dwellings where people live. For me, these provide a stronger, more direct connection to the past, a past which is sometimes still a part of the present. When I first came to China, I lived in a small city in Hunan where there were still wooden houses. Over the course of the next two years I watched them being demolished and replaced by white-tiled buildings with blue-tinted windows that looked like a toilet. No one I knew seemed to care about this destruction of the city's past. Most thought they were just dirty, ugly buildings that needed to be replaced. I could understand why they were being demolished - I'm not sure I'd have liked living in these cold, draughty structures - but they were also historically important. It seemed a paradox that a country with such a long, rich history should be willing to let its cities destroy so much of it.

Over the next decade, as China's cities developed at a prodigious speed, it became increasing difficult to find residential neighbourhoods older than the founding of the People's Republic (and soon even danwei, the old work units, were being demolished). When I went hunting in first-tier Chinese cities the most I would find would be a few scattered houses in a peripheral area property developers had yet to reach. The 'nail house' phenomenon, in which a single structure survives a demolition campaign, seemed to sum up the situation perfectly. They were islands in a new sea. And as these small houses became more endangered, my sense of achievement on finding them became even greater.

On Pingshi Lu I found a few elegant grey houses from the late Qing or Republican period. Their bricks had a solidity, a density, that made them seem capable of lasting for another century. But around them was either empty space or fenced off buildings. The district, which dates back to the Ming Dynasty, had once been known for its blacksmiths, fur traders and pickled vegetable merchants - there's a local saying that in the district "to walk three steps is to remember a literary allusion, to walk ten is to encounter an ancient story". But in 2009, and then in 2013, a wave of demolitions destroyed the majority of structures in the area. There was a massive outcry, and a sustained public campaign, but by the end there wasn't much left. The city reversed its plans for the area after the second wave of demolitions, and released a “Plan for Preserving the Appearance of Pingshijie Historic District,” under which residents would be allowed to stay and structurally sound buildings would be renovated. But this hasn't happened yet. Behind their high walls the old buildings are quietly degenerating. As I walked down the narrow alleys, looking at the signs warning people that the leaning structures were unsafe, I could glimpse parts of the roofs, a few sculpted eaves, but this wasn't enough. I felt like a hunter who has only found a pile of bones.

I walked south, towards the old Ming walls, taking in the quotidian marvels of Chinese street life. Fortune tellers squatted outside a hospital. A woman on a bicycle was speaking to a security guard in a shrill voice that attempted to explode a minor grievance into a tragedy. At an intersection a man was selling three large turtles suspended from a pole. I turned onto Zhongshan Nan Lu, kept walking, and then in the corner of my eye I saw some flowing grey lines against the sky to my right. I twisted my head, but still could not tell what I was seeing at the end of the narrow street. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was stupid to expect to find anything in such a large, wealthy city.

It is hard to give up such hopes. I walked down the street and saw an opening in the wall directly ahead. Stepping through was like leaving the present. I stopped to appreciate the long street of small stone houses. Through open doors I saw the narrow, dim passages. I saw bicycles, brooms, mops, tables covered with bowls, cups, cleaning products, jars of preserved fruit and vegetables. These ordinary signs of occupation reminded me of streets I had seen in Beijing, Kunming, Changsha, streets that now only existed in people's memories. I walked down the street, thinking it was probably just this one row of old houses, but when I reached the end I realised it was a whole neighbourhood. The streets seemed like another external room of the houses. Sweet potatoes were drying on tables. Washing was hung out to dry. An elderly couple was drinking tea at a small table surrounded by cages containing vibrant yellow songbirds. Over the following hour I wandered happily through the streets of the Da Bai Huang area. I could see that there had been repairs to the houses and the pavement, but these were only small practical changes. I was also encouraged to see notices outside some of the houses that explained their historic significance. Apart from the educational value of these signs - I was surprised to learn that one of the residences used to be a nunnery - it was a welcome sign that the city sees such places as worthy of protection.

The highlight of my visit to the area was the line of river houses a few blocks to the west of Da Bai Huang. On Tang Fang Lang, along the banks of the Qinhuai, a line of grand, two-storey houses have the grandeur of chess pieces. Though all are impressive, for me the best was not the expensively-restored houses, but the single house in its original state. Inside I met three generations of a family who have lived there for over a hundred years. The ornate wooden carvings of deer and fruit on the balustrade were no less impressive for being festooned with bags, shirts, cables, string, and other household items. From one of the rooms a television was playing music while in the courtyard an elderly woman chopped garlic. They kindly allowed me to look as long as I wanted. For some people the jumble of boxes and sacks in the house might have been a distraction from the remarkable interior; for me this made it easier to imagine the many generations of families who have lived in the house since it was built. I imagined merchants, officials, writers, painters, wealthy people, ordinary people, until my head felt full.

The economic imperatives of Chinese cities - whose finances still depend heavily on tax revenue and construction fees - mean that the position of places like the Da Bai Huang area are likely to remain precarious. Many will end up like Pingshi Lu. But after my time in Nanjing I am a little more confident that some endangered species will be preserved for those strange hunters who do not want to kill.