My name is Matthew Williams. This past fall (2015) I read Michael Meyer’s The Last Days of Old Beijing for my NCTA seminar class at the University of Pittsburgh.
Before I get into my review I should provide a little background about me so that the perspective from which I am reviewing this book is fully apparent - I am a ninth-grade World History I teacher at an all-girls Catholic high school in western Pennsylvania. At my school, World History I covers the contributions of global mankind from the Stone Age to approximately 1000 CE, with a major focus on the original river valley civilizations and some of the civilizations that sprang up near these origins, including Greece and Japan. Teaching at a single-ed private institution I am fully aware that my review and my ideas for how to utilize this material are somewhat different from many other educators. That said, hopefully my recommendations are still useful.
Meyer’s The Last Days of Old Beijing is a book about a city (and a country) undergoing massive modernization and, in the process, removing much of its history and traditional culture. Essentially, it is a book about eminent domain and the people it benefits and marginalizes. Meyer writes to us as an expatriate American living in a Beijing hutong, the traditional Beijing neighborhood structure characterized by density, mixed use, and ‘human scale,’ daily threatened to be replaced by the relentless advance of ‘modern’ skyscraper and highway Beijing. The majority of Last Days is a narrative of Meyer’s interactions with a cadre of hutong inhabitants and the ways each is shaped by residency both within the hutong and the ‘modern’ communities to which each is ultimately displaced.
If you are teaching an upper level course that involves modern China, urban planning/law/policy, or the power of place in relation to human memory and identity, this has the potential to be an excellent source. Meyer’s interviews with residents and his descriptions of schools, restaurants, and other institutions within Beijing provide vivid, entertaining examples of the life led by the lower and middle classes of urban China. They give the reader a thorough explanation of how the neighborhood in which one lives can influence almost every aspect of life.
With regard to the issue of eminent domain, I could see the book or segments from it being great for comparison within a discussion on the urban renewal efforts of 1950s – 1970s America. Meyer unabashedly draws much of his philosophy about urban renewal in Beijing from Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a book about the same topic only in 1961 New York City, making that book a possible companion piece.
That said, as a resource in a history classroom, especially in a ninth or tenth grade class, where you might only cover up to the Han Dynasty, Last Days is much less appropriate. Meyer does include four chapters, all entitled “A Brief History of Razing: Part _ “ interspersed throughout the book that step away from the main narrative to provide an historical overview of Chinese civilization and the development of Beijing in particular. And, it is feasible that they could be used in lieu of or in complement to other curriculum sources; these chapters succeed in providing context and also include some interesting myths and explanations. I found this especially true of the first history chapter in which Meyer discusses the mythical, geological, and archeological explanations for the development of Chinese civilization. Using these chapters, however, might be more work than it is worth. At least for me, they were somewhat hard to follow – Meyer’s narrative style works much better describing people he has interviewed and places he has been that it does in describing past people and events.
Matthew David Williams
3 January 2016
Review
