Death by a thousand cranes

"The national bird of China is the crane," quipped Hu Xinyu, managing director of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre. Construction cranes are indeed everywhere in China, and so is this joke. While travelling across China to research my book, I heard it in Lanzhou, Xi'an, Taiyuan and even far-flung Kashgar. But in Beijing it took on an especially bitter tone.Now open of Beijing's largest hutongs is facing death by a thousand cranes. Gulou is a poor, ramshackle neighbourhood north ...