Tribe’s ‘Ant Village’ will be bulldozed, rebuilt

The members of CPPCC were touched by the squalor in which the ant tribe lives. IC Photo

By Zhao Hongyi

Beijing’s landscape is no stranger to change. This year, that change is coming to Tangjialing, a group of eight small villages outside Northwest Fifth Ring Road.

The village is the notoriously crowded residential community favored by legions of new graduates employed by the IT companies at Shangdi industrial area.

The government of Haidian District released its blueprint for the village’s renovation earlier this week.

The blueprint promises to rebuild the villages into public towers of suites leased to nearby white-collar workers, Lin Fusheng, governor of the district, said.

“Reconstruction of six of the eight villages in the area will be completed this year. The list includes Tangjialing, Xiaojiahe and Liulangzhuang,” the governor said.

Old residents will be relocated to the new towers, leaving 30 hectares of land for new public towers and IT office suits.

The public towers will be in the north, which borders the industrial area.

Tangjialing is one of eight small villages neighboring the Shangdi industrial area and Zhongguancun software park.

The village is home to 50,000 IT professionals, 17,000 of whom are fresh graduates who rent crowded compounds built by local farmers.

Most houses are poorly constructed and the village has earned a reputation as an “ant colony”. Average rent ranges from 300 to 600 yuan per room.

Since the beginning of the year, an investigation has been underway to asses how much land is actually owned by each homeowner so that the current villagers can be compensated with cash or apartments.

Land in Xibeiwang Village, located in the northwest corner of the block, will be auctioned off to real estate developers to raise money for the area’s redevelopment.

“[The demolition] is still far off,” Wang Juan, an IT worker from Henan Province who settled in the villages, said. “It has nothing to do with me.”

But many tenants are concerned about the price of rent in the future towers.

“It sounds beautiful, but the prices will surely soar,” Wang Juan said.

While jobs are plentiful – recruiting notices can be found on every wall, pole and website – the pay remains a low 1,000 t 3,000 yuan a month.

Most of the openings are in sales or logistics.