A Note on Use of Verb Tense, Spellings, Translation, Names, and Abbreviations
2020
By the time I was completing this book in early 2018, the circumstances of most of those I had known since 2007 had changed, and Dashalar no longer resembled the neighborhood with which I was familiar.I therefore de cided to use the past tense in narrating my friends' stories.The full value of the characters for Dashalar is Dashanlan.Tourist websites tend to use Dashilar or Da Zha Lan.In previous publications I have used Dashalanr, but here I prefer Dashalar as a compromise between the phonetic value of the characters and local oral usage.Dazayuan is variously translated as "compound courtyard," "big messy courtyard," "big, mixed courtyard," "tenements," or "slums."I use Wu Liangyong's "big cluttered courtyard," from his Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing, out of re spect for an architect who designed a model for the conversion of Beijing's dazayuan into modernized structures that retained a feel of the traditional courtyard.All those who appear in this book wanted me to use their real names.However, I have preserved their anonymity due to the ongoing po liti cal sensitivity around the state's program of urban regeneration.The pseudonyms I have created combine characters from local people's names, some phonetic or semantic ele ment from their "real" name, and the term of address I used with them.The only exception is Jia Yong, whose identity I have de cided to retain, given his prominence as a local businessman and photographer.All direct quotations as transcribed from my recordings or based on my field notes appear in quotation marks or indented paragraphs.The chapter headings are mostly named after the head of the house hold in question.This includes chapter 2, named after the eldest woman of the house hold.Even though in local cultural custom, her gender meant that she could not be acknowledged as "house hold head" (jiazhang), she enjoyed a local reputation as the key figure maintaining the unity of her family.Unless noted other wise, translations from archival and recorded materials are my own.xwdg is my abbreviation for Xuanwu qu dangan (Xuanwu District Archives).