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A rubber sandal lies on cracked tile floor, behind it a pink plush animal next to a torn exercise book. Everything else is barely recognizable. The inhabitants apparently did not have much time when y left apartment. There’s junk everywhere, but Jue Hao won’t find it. “We need a table,” says 25-year-old. He’s pointing towards apartment block. The house façade has been demolished. On third floor you can see outlines of an apartment.
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There he lived two weeks ago with his parents and his younger bror, he says. Between glass splinters and rubbish, refrigerator can be seen at top of a corner, and elsewhere frame of a metal bed. The staircase is destroyed, however, bent steel girders are free. The concrete is crumbling. “Too dangerous,” says Jue Hao dry. “We don’t get to our things any more.”
Jue Hao has returned to ruins of his former residential district to look for some of his possessions. When y had expelled him, re was hardly any time for him to take most important things with him. “They knocked at door and told us to move out in three days,” he says. Then excavators came along. Jue Hao is actually repairing computers by profession. Officially, however, he is regarded as a migrant worker, as – so far – countless or workers in city too. Now Beijing doesn’t want you anymore.
Many colorless high-rise buildings
For more than twenty years it has given this settlement in Daxing on sourn edge of town. Most of four-to six-storey houses were run down, offering migrant workers in orwise expensive Beijing but still affordable living space. In south of Beijing re are not as many modern steel and glass buildings as in centre, north or west of Chinese capital. In addition to migrant workers ‘ accommodation, Daxing is also known for its many textile factories, warehouses and handicraft companies. Most of it is now no longer re.
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Demolition work is part of everyday life in Beijing. In a city whose administration, under a modern capital, understands construction of more and more colorless high-rise buildings, re is no place for old. But what is going on in se weeks has not yet existed to extent. Like Jue Hao and his family, re are currently hundreds of thousands. In more than a hundred places in 22 million metropolis, excavators and demolition troops are on road in se days and make thousands of blocks of flats, in which predominantly migrant workers live, equal to ground. Officially, action is part of a 40-day “security campaign”. The social media is talking about “biggest purge of recent decades”.
Only most necessary Jue Hao and his family could take with m what y could carry. He has been with his parents for time being with acquaintances. His bror left Beijing and is looking for work in south of country and a new abode. The family now lacks everything: pots, blankets, furniture – but above all at a perspective as it goes on for m.
Jue Hao is born in Beijing, home of his parents in country he knows only of kinship visits. He has never ordered a field in his life. He knows only city life. With his monthly income of just 5,000 yuan (640 euro) he cannot afford a new apartment in face of horrendous rents. The signal that Beijing city tour is sending out with mass demolition of hiking Arbeitersiedlungen is also clear: you are no longer wanted here.
