HAVING rescued and master-planned such cultural legacies as Pingyao, Lijiang and Zhouzhuang since the 1980s, Tongji University Professor Ruan Yisan is praised as “the guardian of Chinese ancient towns.”

Though now 80 years old, Ruan is far from retirement and continues to work on projects. That may be because he feels much regret over the fact that more ancient legacies have been ruined during China’s rapid development. He knows there’s no way to go back.

“In the 1980s, there were around 2,000 ancient towns like Pingyao, and do you know how many of them are left now?” Ruan prompted the question at a seminar during the Art Deco Weekend Shanghai where he delivered a keynote speech last Saturday. But he didn’t give a specific answer. Ruan knows people can imagine what the legacies have gone through during the past half century in China.

He says that governments and real estate developers care only about economic interests, and in almost all of his projects he has dealt with confrontation and humiliation.

The Pingyao Ancient Town in northern China’s Shanxi Province, 2,700 years old, was Ruan’s first project. It has now been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and Ruan still remembers how he was fascinated by its beauty when he first visited it in the 1960s. He was there to study the country’s history of construction after he graduated from Tongji University and became a lecturer.

Pingyao was not the only ancient town in the province at that time. Others, equally beautiful, included Taigu and Jiexiu. “The planning of ancient Chinese towns was magnificent,” says Ruan. “The planners and architects considered the integrity and harmony of the whole town, rather than just considering the house they were responsible for, like today’s architects and developers tend to do.”

About two decades later, Ruan revisited Shanxi and was astonished to find that the grand courtyards were gone and the town walls were nowhere to be found. Taigu and Jiexi towns had been replaced by wide highways and modern buildings.

Ruan immediately rushed to Pingyao. The town was also under reconstruction. A wide gap was drilled in the town wall for building a road, and more than 100 buildings from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties were torn down. Fortunately, the dismantlement was much slower due to lack of funds.

Ruan went to the county government, begging them to stop the “destructive project.” He suggested that Tongji University help them devise a new city plan to protect the ancient town. The government eventually promised to give him a month.

“I have to say that many officials in China at that time were not well-educated,” he says. “And the country didn’t have the sense of protecting the legacies left by the ancestors. In the 1980s, people only thought of so-called modernization while before that, it was the ‘cultural revolution’ (1966-76).”

Ruan and his students immediately started surveying and mapping, and the job was not made any easier by local government that apparently held a grudge against Ruan. About a month later, a new city plan was done.

Ruan went to Beijing to report the issues of Pingyao to Luo Zhewen and Zheng Xiaoxie, members of National Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, who were also experts on Chinese ancient construction and city planning.

The two officials went to Pingyao and supported Ruan. Under this influence, the old town was finally preserved.

Ruan always praises Shanghai, saying that it is doing much better on old construction protection than most cities.

But it does have its issues. In the 1990s, Ruan heard that the old residential complexes in Hongkou District that held Jewish refugees during World War II were about to be dismantled for a North Bund development.

“They had started to relocate residents, and I told the district government that the houses cannot be torn down,” he says. “After a huge fight, I was nearly detained for interrupting government’s work and provoking conflict between the government and citizens, because when residents heard about protection, they refused to move out.”

Ruan’s petition aroused the concern of consulates general in Shanghai. Wives of consuls general joined the petition and the campaign made its way into media coverage in the United States and Canada.

“So that’s how the old houses were preserved,” he says.

In 2006, some of the Jewish refugees visited the houses they stayed in during the 1940s. Some still had the Star of David on their rooftops, marking their history.

“Many of them were so touched to see the old houses and lanes where they spent their childhood,” says Ruan. “And I feel that my efforts and the wrong I suffered were worth it.”

Ruan says although he has done much, there is always more work to do.

“There are places, such as Datong in Shanxi Province, tearing down real ancient towns to build fake antiques,” he says. “And there is our education system that throws away the fascinating construction ideas our ancestors created, like Tongji University not giving lectures on timber structure study anymore.”

Ruan says there are disciplines for repairing old buildings, a process more complicated than keeping the original look of the buildings.

“We don’t adopt modern ways to repair old constructions, or it would be meaningless,” he says. “We use the original material and technology to do our best to keep the structures and integrity of them.”

Ruan has established a foundation to carry on his work. His students and other professors with the university are involved.

Founded in 2006, the Shanghai Ruan Yisan City Heritage Foundation has set up regular programs on surveying, repairing and protection of old Shanghai buildings, and it trains government officials on cultural heritage protection.

“It’s a long way to go, but I believe more people will join us to carry on our cause,” the professor concludes.

Projects that benefited from Professor
Ruan Yisan’s involvement

• Pingyao, Shanxi Province

Pingyao is the best-preserved town of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties in China, and its history can be traced back to 2,700 years ago.

As an excellent example of city planning of ancient China, Pingyao has the earliest bank and one of the oldest timber-structure temples in the country.

• Lijiang, Yunnan Province

Lijiang is known to the world for its survival of a massive earthquake in 1996. After the earthquake, almost all the modern buildings there were damaged, but the old houses were not severely damaged except for fallen tiles and collapsed cob walls. The main structure of the houses remained intact.

The miracle caught the public’s eyes, and after the restoration, tourism started to develop in the town.

• Zhouzhuang, Jiangsu Province

The town with more than a millennium’s history is considered one of the most beautiful ancient water towns in east China. More than 60 percent of the houses there were built during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The town is also known for Shen Wansan, who was the richest businessman of regions south of the Yangtze River during the early Ming Dynasty.

Now the ancestral house of Shen’s family is well protected in the town, and the menu of his family banquet also passes down to today.

• Sinan Mansions, Shanghai

The complex in Huangpu District gathers European-style residential buildings built in the 1920s and 1930s. About a decade ago, countless families were squeezed in the buildings and the complex became a filthy settlement with fire hazards.

The restoration revealed the original look of the houses. Almost all the details regained their original look, including bolts on the doors, the cobblestone walls, the fireplaces and the handrails of the staircases.

Now with proper commercial development, the complex has become a new cultural landmark in the city.