Scenes from the memory of a native Beijinger

By staff reporter Chen Jun
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China Today, September 21, 2017
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Liao Zengbao, 72, was born in a hutong in Xinjiekou, Beijing's Xicheng District. He has been witness to many of the city's vicissitudes. For him, these transitions are not historical tableaus, but rather memories of his everyday life. An amateur painter, Liao has used his brush to recreate scenes from his life over the past few decades.

The Forbidden City in Snow. 



Under the theme Beijing's Hutong Memory, dozens of Liao Zengbao's works went on exhibition recently in Meiliyuan Community square in Hai-dian District. Picturing such aspects of Beijing life as hutongs, temple fairs, and the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City, each painting reflects Beijing's historical features at a certain time.

Depictions of People's Lives

Mrs. Liu, 80, admired Liao's painting of Jiangyangfang Hutong. Portraying bygone scenes of the hutong (today's Xinjiekou East Street), it brought back many memories. Liu often walked past the hutong on her way to a nearby barber's shop. Once, after suffering a bone fracture, she cut through the hutong to Jishuitan Hospital. "Many of the shops that used to be there are long gone," Liu said. The exhibition also includes paintings of Beijing's temple fairs, of the Rusticated Youth Campaign, when young people were sent to work in rural and mountainous areas, outdoor cinemas in the 1960s and 70s, and storing cabbages for the winter. All are aspects of bygone daily life in Beijing's hutongs.

The Shibei Hutong.



Among Liao's works are a series of 18 oil paintings entitled Changes to Shibei Hutong. Originally located in Liubukou, one third of it housed the quadrangle dwellings of magnates and merchants. The remainder was occupied by warrens of workers' family homes.

These paintings reenact people's daily life after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Urban development brought a mushrooming of new communities which completely changed hutong life. "When I was at high school, we would go to harvest cabbages in the bitter cold winter weather. Even the ground was frozen. But winter in Beijing is much warmer now," Liao said.

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