Page 168 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE FAMILY 155
explicit reference to the curled, cascading tiled roofs of old housing compounds, while the
houses inside display such ‘foreign’ decorative motifs as sweeping semi-circular entrance
stairs and moulded baroque architraves. In another wealthy village, regular grid pattern
streets and uniform rows of tall town-houses reflect the power of the local planning
authorities and the urbane ambitions of the inhabitants. In a third locality, planners have
ignored the usurpation of farmland and fishponds by walls that encircle free-standing
villas, paved courtyards, water features and rose-beds (see Plate 7.2). In the poorest
village, the completion of even simple cubist brick structures awaits the receipt of
remittance payments from itinerant family members. Yet here, too, one hears of plans for
future ornamental flourishes. In so far as villagers seek alternatives to the residential
orthodoxies presented by planners and marketed by construction firms, their quest leads
them to look to foreign soap-operas and suburban developments for models of their dream
mansion.

Plate 7.2 Contemporary ‘European-style villas’ in the Zhejiang countryside, 2000 (photograph by
the author).
The global and national cultural flows propelled by the construction of mansions have
local economic and political impacts. Regionally distinctive building skills have been
supplanted by construction methods and materials marketed by corporations
headquartered in cities. New houses primarily are built by extra-local contractors of
prefabricated concrete slabs, steel beams, kiln-dried brick, ceramic tiles, and aluminium-
framed plate-glass windows. Although construction standards and sanitation regulations
are observed only rarely, they serve as an institutional touchstone in local governments’
resolution of the many disputes that arise between owners and builders. The necessity to
investigate and adjudicate conflicts between neighbours over the height, orientation and