C O N T E X T 1 4 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 7 37 During the Southern Song Dynasty, the street, with its many shops, restaurants and teahouses, was always at the centre of the city’s politics, culture and commerce. Many renowned, centuries-old buildings are located there (such as theWangxingji Fan Store, Zhangxiaoquan Scissors Store, Sheep Soup Restaurant, Zhuangyuan Hall Restaurant, Huqingyutang Pharmacy and Baohetang Pharmacy). All these buildings are fronted by old gateways or brick walls, behind which are concealed a variety of displays or galleries. Qinghe-Fang Street is 1,350 metres long and, on average, 12 metres wide.The buildings presently lining the street, dating from between the 16th and the 19th centuries, are in many ways typical of commercial buildings in southern China. Most of them are of generally ‘Chinese traditional’ design, featuring whitewashed plaster gables, grey pantile roofs, wooden frameworks, mesh-pattern windows and carved decoration (combining stone, brick and wood carving). By the last decade of the 20th century, many ancient buildings on Qinghe-Fang Street were shabby and illmaintained. In 2000 the government of the Shangcheng District of Hangzhou put forward a restoration plan for Qinghe-Fang.This envisaged the protection or rebuilding of all the historical buildings. The proposals focused on three aspects. The first comprised reinforcement of the building foundations, walls, pillars and beams.The second comprised redecorating the buildings’ facades, painting the walls, and replacing or strengthening the doors, windows and roof tiles. The third comprised redecorating the internal spaces, including the wooden staircases, inner walls, ceilings and floors. As revitalised, Qinghe-Fang Street exudes an atmosphere of historical richness, while catering successfully to the street-culture, commerce and tourism demanded by both its inhabitants and by visitors fromhome and abroad. Among the preserved buildings lining the street is a McDonald’s chain restaurant, which began life earlier in the 20th century as the ZhangYongsheng Department Store. Built in 1926 and constructed of brick and concrete, it had an overall area of 600 square metres, with commercial and storage premises on the ground and the first floors, and domestic accommodation and workshop above. The ground floor was of dressed stone, with the main door in the centre. Six regularly disposed windows lighted the first and second floors, with decorated balconies as highlights, breaking up the otherwise blocky wall design.With the balconies, pilasters and the moulded lintels, the facades of the building are clearly of aWestern classical style. In 2006 the McDonald’s restaurant moved into the by-then-redundant ZhangYongsheng Building, with the approval of the city’s heritage council. At the beginning of the conversion, the restaurant owners went through an intense process of negotiation with the heritage council, as a result of which both the exterior and interior of the restaurant still retain an early-20th-century feeling. In particular, the central hall strongly evokes that era, with its wooden staircases, stained glass and other surviving fittings all well preserved. Externally, too, some protective measures were stipulated. For example, to prevent damage to the outer wall, the yellow M golden arches McDonald’s symbol was designed to be removable. To reduce pollution, fumes are expelled through a filtered exhaust system.As a result of this negotiation process, an 80-year-old commercial building was successfully transformed into a modern, globalised chain restaurant without significant detriment to its historic fabric. More generally, in today’s QingheFang Street ancient shops co-exist harmoniously with western restaurants, old buildings with fast-food shops, and the traditional with the international. A very different, more radical transformation occurred in the case of the Drum Tower of Hangzhou, which is located close to Qinghe-Fang Street, and houses both a huge bell and nine drums. The bell and drum were originally devised as musical instruments in China, but as far back as two millennia ago, they began also to be used as a public means of telling the time.As early as the Han Dynasty (206BC–220AD), town gates often featured a ‘morning bell’ and a ‘sunset drum’. Telling the time by bell and drum played an important role in making possible regular work and life schedules among urban. Bell and drum towers became a ubiquitous feature of public architecture, and were widely constructed in almost every city throughout the country from the Han Dynasty onwards. The ZhangYongsheng Building has become a branch of McDonald’s, its wooden staircases, stained glass and other surviving fittings all well preserved (Photo: Sun Peifang)
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