The fate of the former home of Cai Yuanpei, one of the most famous reformers in the early years of the Chinese Republic, was plunged into confusion yesterday after developers who had bought the site suggested preserving it from demolition.
Cai, renowned for organising student protests against the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that humiliated China, lived in the house between 1917 and 1919 while president of Beijing University.
The house, detailed for preservation as a listed building in 1986, stands in the Dongsitang Alley off Dongdan, one of the busiest commercial streets in Beijing, in the Dongcheng district.
Earlier this year, the district Government sold the site to Fu Wah International (Hong Kong) for a commercial development, and on October 28, authorities ordered the 10 families living in and around the house to leave, promising each up to 25,000 yuan (HK$23,500). By November 26, the last family had left.
An official in the housing and land bureau of Dongcheng district Government said yesterday that it was in the process of knocking down the house, although a spokesman from the district's cultural relics bureau earlier this week said it intended to move the house to a new site in order to preserve it.
Meanwhile, the China Daily yesterday quoted Chan Laiwa, from Fu Wah, as saying that the company would preserve the house in its current location and restore it as a museum for visitors and Beijing University staff. He said that it was not in the company's power to decide the fate of the home, however. 'It is the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau or National Cultural Relics Bureau that decides. No final decision has been made up to now,' he said.