Xi'an Bell and Drum Tower Commercial Street Shops Survival Situation in the Cult

Abstract. This research essay focuses on Bell and Drum Tower District at the center of Xi'an city(China's ancient capital with its city history for more than 6000 years), and tracks the formation and development process of Bell and Drum Tower district. Through analysis and comparison between all the business stores'commercial conditions, the essential elements of today's business development is discovered and how the fashionable and cultural elements to keep a foothold in the historic district is reflected. This essay collects data through a large number of questionnaires and interviews involving different interest of groups, thus wishing to explore the survival methods of shops in the historical and cultural district under the the fashionable culture conflict.

Key words: historical street s; fashionable culture; business conditions; survival situation

Commercial Street is the demonstration of the city's image and window of its development level, and it is an important part during city's business development. Neighborhood and business street development is closely related to people's daily life, business and cultural traditions, commercial fashion, entertainment, tourism and other industries , and the development of commercial street can promote business development, meets diversified consumer demand of the market and passengers .[1] Xi'an historical district is the witness of ancient capital of thirteen dynasties and is a manifestation of the ancient culture of Shaanxi. In today's growing fashionable culture, some shops with a long time, are facing changes, and some are looking forward to be developed, while and some have disappeared.

The basic situation of the survey

Four methods are used in this survey, including data collection, field trips, questionnaire surveys, and discussion visit . Questionnaire's main objects are divided into shops and individuals, including 4 types, shopkeepers, residents, pedestrians (tourists), college students, aiming to get a respectively comprehensive investigation.

Different questionnaires are designed for different groups of people, among which 50 valid questionnaires got by shopkeepers from 68 pieces and 50 valid questionnaires got by residents, from 54 copies, 50 copies of valid questionnaires got by pedestrian from a total of 73 pieces, and 100 valid questionnaires by college students from 120 copies of questionnaires . There are totally 250 valid questionnaires, with a pass rate 83.3%.

Fashion and cultural impact

These historical commercial street is full of historical and cultural atmosphere, but also there have been some fashion elements brought by many stores. These changes looks like incompatible with the surrounding ambiance which will arise all kinds of impact, and different views by different user groups.

First: fashion culture's conflict to space characteristics of commercial street.

The main material of facade decoration: there are three commercial street whose overall storefront decorative forms reflect the inner rhyme culture of the ancient city of Xi'an, and establish the image of the ancient culture. The three streets are the more modern Horse Street, College Gate and Muslim Street by which the plaque or lettering antique way are used. However, the sale of goods depends on their own show, so in order to attract more customers to visit, fashion shop's main material are transparent glass etc.

Different types of shops area: shop area, overall, mainly are less than 30 square meters. Through analysis, we found the following reasons. Most shops were transformed by small residential houses, and in terms of planning policy constraints, walls could not be arbitrarily break, so independent shops were formed. And products sold are mostly relatively inexpensive clothing, small crafts, and the owners are mostly young people at the age of 18-25 operating small businesses, and possible with limited fund, resulting in small shops.

The different interiors styles: in the internal decoration fashion shops, it does not appear antique decoration similar with the surroundings, but mostly, they were arranged according to the personal preferences of the owners, mostly simple, modern decor layout method, and there are a few offbeats and personalized decor. All of them are also affected by the size of shops and shopkeepers age, and level of life.

Second: the fashion and cultural impact on the shop operators.

Historic District. Development should follow the the main characteristics of contemporary, mainly focus on the North Courtyard Gate, Three Science Street, Xiangzi Temple, and attract tourists through antique painting exhibits, antique crafts and historic buildings. [2] By the investigation,we found that historical district is prone to one-sided phenomenon comparing with economic revenue and cultural protection. According to the questionnaire information feedback we found that: most of the operators originally did not make much considering on the surrounding environment, according to statistics, only 10% of the operators emphasized this issue, and 28% of operators said that although considering, but they accounted it for a small proportion during operating, and 20% of the operators did not consider it. In these operators mainly in the age 18-25, some operators believe that the important reason why their shops can survive in this region is the traditional bell tower as the basis attracting a large number of tourists as their customers source.

Third: conversion of consumer groups in the commercial street under the fashion culture environment.

In the course of the survey, it is easy to find that participants in surveys generally concentrated in the age 25-35, with the students proportion 41.6% of the total number. From this point ,it is not difficult to find Bell Tower Commercial Street consumer groups of strong bias. And in such a group of young consumers, clothing and food have become the main reasons to attract them in Bell Tower Commercial Street. When asked impact on consumers by fashion elements into Bell Tower Commercial Street, 39.8% of consumers recognized these fashion shops attracted a certain the consumer in some extent. And 84.6% of people believed while Bell Tower Commercial Street was protecting its original historical district, commercial tourism and service industry should be developed too.

Fourth: fashion culture's impact to residents in historic district.

Through visits, we learned that, for the local old residents, although the arrival of new streets are providing them with a great convenience, and improving the region's economic level, because of the differences in work schedules, noise from shops and environment pollution, the living environment of local people has been influenced. Especially some modern clothing stores make noise by modern audio so that residents are hard to sleep. Unfortunately, many tourists did not realize it, they only saw the benefits brought by these business and charm, and ignored protection of the existing environment. That is the deterioration reason of conflicts between residents and street users . More than 70% of the old residents do not want their living environment was destroyed.

Proposal solutions related based on existing problems

From the development of social striking evaluation theory, as well as the practice of building a socialist harmonious society perspective, building a scientific evaluation system for city commercial development project has very important significance.[3]

First: features of "personality" commercial street under fashion and culture conflict.

Bell and Drum Tower Commercial Street, generally speaking, whose own character development has begun to be formed. It is a cultural district mixing young fashion ideas and creative traditional cultures. Although the type of goods, customer groups have their own unique features, many tourists reflect the specialty here is still not clear enough, and types of shops clutter. The characteristics of commercial types of development should be fully guided, so that the traditional culture can play a major role in the Bell and Drum Tower historic commercial district region, and form distinct neighborhoods characteristics.

Second: harmony between fashion business and neighborhood residents.

In the absence of proper guidance and planning, rapid development of commercial activities is very likely to cause huge damage to the traditional street living environment. Residents have reacted that emerging contradictory problem. In the market economic system, people's desire for business development is far more than the traditional living environment protection. Sitting together in the old neighborhood, gossiping and chatting scene has all gone because of noisy hotel and restaurant, and previously harmonious neighborhood becomes dull because of disturbing noise from shops. There should be no conflict between commercial atmosphere and residential neighborhood. How to build a communication bridge between operators and residents is the key solution to coordinate the relationship between the two.

Third: the promoting role of infrastructure development played in business development.

Regarding total retail sales of social consumer as basic indicators, and building commercial development index of provincial unit commercial development level and commercial attractiveness index, and spatial gradient of the commercial development difference .[4]During street planning of Bell and Drum Tower historical commercial street, Xi'an government is more concerned with road renovation and shop repair, but not with the infrastructure construction, or due to the space problem of the traditional historical commercial street, in order not to destroy the image of the original commercial street, infrastructure construction was not involved. As for some of the infrastructure already built have been led into abandoned now because of disrepair or little maintenance, which cannot meet the normal need of commercial street by tourists.

Summary

Seven hundred years of history and culture have taken rich cultural heritage to the Bell and Drum commercial area, thus it become one of the symbols of traditional Three Qin cultures. Although "Bell Drum Sound" has become history, today's bells and drums are highlighting their unique charm and showcasing the essence of national culture. Green bricks and tiles should not be the monotonous theme in historic district. Historic district should have a rich history and culture and at the same time, it should not lose the flavor of the times. Only in this way both of them could constitute a real sense of fresh "old" neighborhoods.

We are looking forward to the Bell and Drum Commercial Area does not only keep long time duration but also resist conflict fashion trend. It can not only arouse melodious melody of history, but also play the dynamic and stylish modern rhythm ...... This is the unique interpretation of tradition and fashion by silent Xi'an, and moreover it is passionate variation by the old "Round of Bell and Drum" full of contemporary taste.

References

[1]Liu Yuping, Commercial Street Development Case Study - Metropolitan Beijing Commercial Street as Example "Henan Science and Technology" [J] 2010 .8;

[2]Bai Jing, Chen Ying, YAN Jun-ping, Tang Imperial Revitalization Planning and Downtown Business Development, "Resource Development & Market" [J] 2010 12;

[3]Hu Quan, Jiang Wenping, Applications of Social Evaluation of Projects in Urban Commercial Development, "Business Times" [J] 2007 35;

[4]Zhang Mingdong, Lu Yulin, China's Spatial Variation Commercial Development Study, "Commercial Research" [J] 2009 10.