方 璐 FANG LU

In Guangzhou, or most of other big cities in China, the city is surrounded by small villages. But as the city grows bigger, this layout turned into villages surrounded with city. These villages in the city are neighborhoods for lower income families and migrant workers. They are also the only place you can see “old Guangzhou” now. Eventually these villages are shrinking and replaced by city planning.

The pictures below is taken from the Lie De village near to where I live. The whole area is called Pearl River New Town, which is a new area the government planning to develop into the new city central.

Entry of Lie De Village, now it’s the entry of ruin.

To now, there are still four property owners resist the demolition and hold on to their houses. They become what we called “Nail Houses”.

Temporary housing for demolition workers.

A new bridge is being built in the distance.

The residential high-rise in the background are what Lie De Village will become.

The work had started from October 2007.

Packing, moving and selling.

It looked like this man was trying to recycle use bricks from the chaos.

Pass the ruin, this river separate the remain of the village with the destroyed village.

Village corner store. We got sodas there for 1 yuan each. The store owner lady told us that this part of the village would also be taken down in 3 years.

People like to hang out by the side of the river. Life here seemed calm and organized.

Another world’s tallest viewing tower is being built here.

This is how it will look like in the future. （picture from http://news.enorth.com.cn/system/2006/05/01/001295046.shtml)

New parks by the river.

A small boat community.

4PM in the afternoon. Guangzhou had been in this heavy smog for a long time now. I learned a new phrase from the weather broadcast called: dust-buried.