The other day, I looked up to the city skyline on my way to work and thought - that skyscraper over there wasn't there the other day...

And that's why I have a picture of a big, ugly, unfinished building for today's photo. It sums up the excessive speed that Kuitun is developing. The building in that photo, for example, is now plated in very fancy looking glass, and across the road, there is another tall building going up.

In the UK, towns expand outwards. In China, towns seem to either be built from scratch, or built upwards. There are numerous building sites all over Kuitun, each with adverts promising shiny new apartments or shopping areas, with fantastically designed gardens all around them.

I imagine that every other building in Kuitun was built with the same promise however, so I will be impressed if all these buildings will be as picture perfect as the town planners suggest.

These new buildings certainly aren't representative of Kuitun as a whole. One area far out east, stretching right out of the main part of the city is where the 'bingtuans' are. I think that is what you call these buildings, but i've never seen the word written down. The first time I saw the bingtuan communities, I thought I had walked into some horrific slum. The houses are made of very rickety looking bricks that look like the could collapse under the weight of the roof at any moment. Despite most of the roofs being a piece of felt like material held down by bricks. Of course the other proof that the walls aren't very strong on these buildings, is that many houses are indeed lacking a wall or two.

I went through this part of town thinking grimly that many of my students probably live in this part of town. I must have cycled the length of the main part of Kuitun again in this bingtuan region of town, so there certainly aren't only a small number of people living like this in Kuitun. The bingtuans were accompanied by a backdrop of abandoned and dilapidated factories, just to add to the miserable feel of the area.

So perhaps you would expect the people living in this area of town to be the poorest of the poor in Kuitun? I must say that, in my ignorance, I found it very strange to see that the people along this street were just as well dressed as the people in the fancy areas of town (and that is saying a lot, as the Chinese put some serious effort into always looking their best). Despite The people of this community living in houses often without doors and with open fires for ovens, they did appear not to be completely struggling in life. How could this be? I wondered as I fought my way through the bustling market that ran along the street. (I will talk about the markets in another post, as there is plenty to write just on bingtuans).

My questions were answered by Kai, who explained to me in the first place that these communities were called bingtuans. Apparently, these buildings are the surviving buildings that workers used when Xinjiang was being developed 60 or 70 years ago. The people living here don't live here because they are necessarily poor, but because it is their family's house and they don't want to lose the heritage of being from a settling family. I can only guess this is partly to do with Chinese traditions of respecting ancestors, but I'm not entirely sure.

Yet there is more! Considering how important heritage is to China, is it not a little strange then that one area that clearly was a bingtuan community has recently been knocked down to make way for shiny skyscrapers? I am still in two minds to whether this development is a good or bad thing. On one hand , to build over the bingtuans is to destroy houses and people's heritage. On the other, the bingtuan communities could clearly have much better homes, and there must be severe health risks to living in falling down houses, particularly considering the bitter xinjiang winter. What do you think? write in the comment section if you wish!

This clash of old and new is really something that appears to be characteristic of China as a whole and it seems that new is winning. China does now look back at the cultural losses of the cultural revolution grimly, but it seems that now the war between new and old is between old-new and modern-new. One must remember that in Xinjiang, many towns are no older than 70 years old, developed to help secure Han control in the area. This means you don't see too many old-old buildings about, especially in the desert majority of the province. This, in my opinion just ends up highlighting the conflict between old and new in Kuitun. Buildings of 70 years old or less appear ot be considered of no cultural significance, but a mind set of 'modern is best' remains. This seems to lead to constant demolition and rebuilding.

It seems wasteful to me, but it is the way of Kuitun and I definitely feel for the bingtuan communities - both for having to live in nasty looking conditions, and for the possible pressure of losing their homes in the future to modern developments. Perhaps the main bingtuan region has some sort of legal protection I don't know about, but nonetheless, I imagine there is a sense of pressure there.

I understand that those to reasons for for feeling sorry for the bingtuans are contradictory, but that is something that must be understood about China. There are so many contradictions, that sometimes it feels like there is a genuine need for a less extreme version of '1984's 'doublethink' concept.

The fight between the slightly old and the very new is one of the most striking parts of of living in Kuitun, so i'm glad i've finally got round to writing about it properly. For now, i'll leave writing more until tomorrow.

Until then!