My hotel room offered a nice perspective on the demolition of the building next door. The bulldozers were tearing down an old Mao-era building clearing the space for future redevelopment. No doubt the space will become something like the other buildings near it—perhaps a shopping mall, office building or hotel. Off in the distance, across the bridge and to the right is the “preserved” old buildings of the entertainment “bar street.”

I remember when the original Jiuyan Qiao was demolished in the spring of 1990. The stone arches were just downstream of the current bridge