Chang'an Avenue and the Modernization of Chinese Architecture

Chapter Five: Collage without Planning: Toward the New Millennium

178 Chapter Five Collage without Planning: Toward the New Millennium While detailed plans were prepared for Chang’an Avenue with few structures actually built before the 1990s, in the last decade of the twentieth century the thoroughfare became crowded with monumental façades without any comprehensive planning. Buildings of different historical styles stood side by side with new experiments for the coming millennium, turning Chang’an Avenue into a collage. Behind this architectural collage of façades were struggles among different forces: commercial, social, political, intellectual, and popular. The rise of commerce and the socialist market challenged the longstanding monopoly of political control over Chang’an Avenue’s image. The restoration of the social status of intellectuals added new voices to the discourse on Chang’an Avenue architecture. Not only writers and artists but also the general Chinese citizenry no longer hesitated to express their personal feelings about the image of the “Number One Street of China.” Commercial Patches and Political Patches By the 1990s Deng Xiaoping’s policy of promoting a socialist market economy had been in force for over a decade, and China had become fully integrated into the global market. Under the slogan of constructing socialism with Chinese character, Chinese society was reinvigorated in its struggle for economic success. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose legitimacy had previously rested on its status as a revolutionary party fighting against capitalist imperialism, lost this ideological claim to rule. Official party documents continued paying lip service to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In reality, few people still subscribed to the Maoist ideology focused on revolutionary spirit and class struggle. The relaxed intellectual environment and the conflict between the old political system and the new economic reality gave rise to the democracy movements of the late 1980s that ended with the tragic military suppression of June 4, 1989, known as the “Tiananmen Massacre” in the West and as “political turmoil” by the party. During the spring of 1989, while Tiananmen Square was occupied by protesting Collage without Planning: Toward the New Millennium 179 students and their supporters, Chang’an Avenue was where the real conflict took place.1 To some extent, the term “Tiananmen Massacre” is a deliberate misnomer that takes advantage of the symbolic eminence of the square. Documentation from both the party and the protesters indicate that no one died in the square and that most of the deaths actually occurred along the avenue. According to CCP sources, “counterrevolutionary mobs” killed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers near the Minority Culture Palace and on Jianguo Gate Bridge—both on Chang’an Avenue—and blocked communication on the avenue by burning buses;2 according to some witnesses, by the time troops finally reached Tiananmen Square shortly after midnight, West and East Chang’an Avenues had become bloody trails of death and destruction.3 After the June Fourth Democratic Movement,4 on one hand, the political trauma was diluted by a continued effort to highlight economic development and encourage the pursuit of private wealth; on the other hand, the party redirected its political ideology to focus on patriotism and nationalism. Chang’an Avenue architecture during the 1990s reflects these two tendencies in post–June Fourth China. Architectural projects on the avenue after 1989 can be categorized into two groups: one glorifies the Chinese nation—for instance, the China Millennium Monument, the Military Commission Headquarters (August First Building), the headquarters of various central government ministries, and the reorganization of museum displays; the other is primarily the product of profit pursuit, such as the Oriental Plaza, the Guanghua Chang’an Building, and the Henderson Center. The former group purposefully aimed at certain political goals; the latter is the natural outcome of a commercial market. While the former group has been firmly controlled by the party, the latter has been mostly manipulated by overseas capital, especially investment from Hong Kong. Both cooperation and conflict between political ideology and commercial profit occurred on Chang’an Avenue, creating political and commercial patches. Inserted along the avenue’s hundred li façades, these patches gradually filled in the gaps between earlier monumental structures. On the whole, the political patches are concentrated in the western sections of Chang’an Avenue, and the commercial patches are concentrated more in its eastern parts. The traditional symbolic associations with East and West Chang’an Avenues continued. The Commercial Patches The greatest victory of the free market on Chang’an Avenue in the 1990s was Oriental Plaza, a gigantic complex guarding...