Disgusting Toilets and the Future of China

The walk from the Qianmen subway stop in central Beijing to the Dashilar neighborhood, the hub of Beijing Design Week 2013, is a preservationist’s nightmare. One passes a mock Qing Dynasty-era Starbucks, a Haagen Dazs, and a brutalist three-story McDonald’s, plus countless hawkers selling flying neon toys designed mainly to put out eyes. Once the site of Beijing’s most thriving hutongs, or alleyways, which for hundreds of years contained everything from homes to restaurants to tea shops to some less reputable establishments, Qianmen is now a Disney version of its former self, the city’s starkest example of uprooting communities for the sake of modern commerce and replacing them with tacky simulacra. For Design Week attendees, it served as a useful warning.