Liu Jielian isn't exactly impressed with the facelift the government gave her home in central Beijing as part of efforts to spruce up the city for the Olympic Games next month.
The courtyard to the one-storey building where the retired school teacher lives has had a fancy doorway installed and its facade has been encased in a thin layer of dark grey cement, with lines etched to resemble bricks.
Inside the rooms, little has changed.
"It's all superficial," said Liu, in her mid-fifties, gesturing to the new outer wall, parts of which were already chipping.
"Behind this, it's all old bricks. It's not sturdy at all - this can easily be peeled off," she said.
Liu's is just one of many traditional homes that have been brightened up by an army of workers in recent months as part of a billion-dollar campaign to "beautify" Beijing ahead of the Olympics.
Their efforts, which come on top of the tens of billions of dollars being spent on venues and infrastructure, have contributed to a stark contrast of colors in the city's old "hutongs," or lanes.
Many "siheyuan," or courtyards, have been painted in clean-cut greys and brick reds, the hues of imperial Beijing.
But a peek inside many of the often cramped mazes of rooms reveals the orange-colored bricks they are built of, along with staples of hutong life such as stacks of coal briquettes and roofs patched up with tin.
Indeed, some homes in poor states of repair have been torn down and hastily rebuilt. Architectural experts say that does not amount to proper preservation work.
SPRING CLEANING
Zou Huan, an expert in urban heritage preservation at Tsinghua University's architecture school, said it was understandable authorities would use a temporary fix to present a good image during the Olympics.
"It's just like before the Lunar New Year: every family has to clean up their house, even washing the curtains and changing the sofa covers," Zou said.
Still, Zou said he hoped putting on a good face for the Olympics would not detract from a longer-term project that is bringing more thorough preservation work to selected parts of the old town.
