Can an Ancient Chinese City Pursue Preservation Without Disney-fication?

One of China’s last intact walled cities is undergoing something of an identity crisis. Pingyao, in China’s Shanxi province, has endured for 2,700 years, escaping the destruction of the Cultural Revolution because the city was too poor and too remote to be trashed by the Red Guards.

But the city that escaped the purge under Mao’s regime struggles today against two different and disturbing futures. The first: Pingyao’s aging infrastructure could crumble into the dust of the coal-mining region, beset by pollution, rain, hoards of tourists, and a population trying to carve out living space inside 2.4 square kilometers.