Deep roots

IN RECENT years the sight of historic neighbourhoods, their houses often a century or more old, reduced to rubble to make way for grim new structures has been tragically common in Chinese cities. Officials have often appeared to care little about the architecture they destroy and the communities they scatter. Oddly, however, they have just as often made strenuous efforts to preserve one beloved feature of the urban landscape: ancient trees.

The capital, Beijing, the scene of some of the most brutish flattening of traditional housing, boasts that it has the most trees over a century old of any Chinese city: more than 40,000, of which more than 6,000 are at least 300 years old. Many are in the grounds of former imperial palaces, which are well protected, but those in ordinary neighbourhoods are usually looked after lovingly, too. On new roads, traffic sometimes has to weave around them. So sacred are old trees that concessions are made for them even when tarmac is laid.