BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- Balancing precariously on a wooden chair, 78-year-old Liu Zhenru carefully wound a cluster of tomato-sized lanterns around the branches of her jujube tree.

    By the chair, a Pekinese and a Charlie hunt dog, with bells around their necks, were nudging a pair of large red lanterns, which Liu's children were about to hang over the gate on the eve of the Lunar New Year.

    This is Liu's 49th Lunar New Year in her Siheyuan - a four-walled courtyard home - but next year she could be looking out on the New Year from floor 18 of a modern apartment building.

    Liu is among the dwindling population in Beijing who still celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival in traditional Siheyuans, as the gray brick houses with tilted eaves and delicate stone carvings are crushed under bulldozers in the capital's rush for modernization.

    Only one third of Beijing's hutongs, alleyways lined with Siheyuan, have escaped demolition or part-destruction, according to a survey by the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

    A report by the China News Service in 2006 said that the number of remaining hutongs only numbered around 400, compared to over 3,000 in the 1980s.

    Luo Boyan, 80, had lived in a Siheyuan for 60 years before moving into his new apartment. Now, Spring Festival is nothing more than a family gathering, he says.

    "Years ago, in our old residence, we could smell the New Year in the air," he recalled, looking into the distance. "We steamed niangao, a special New Year cake and the aroma would seep out through the windows and mingle with the smoke of fireworks in the yard to form the smell of the festival."

    "In the yards, children from different families played together. Their laughter and the sound of fireworks made it difficult to hear the television, even at maximum volume," he said.

    "Living in a Siheyuan was like living in one big family," said 55-year-old Wu, while juggling two walnuts outside the gate of his apartment complex. "We didn't have to lock the door when going out. Sometimes we ran out of salt while cooking dinners. One shout was all it took. Then a pack come flying through the window."

    Those days have now moved firmly into memories. Luo came to Beijing from Hebei Province as a carpenter when he was just 12. He lived in Xizhuan Hutong for most of his life until two years ago, when the government demolished the houses and compensated him with a measly 6,000 yuan for each square meter.

    Now, living alone in a 140-square-meter apartment, Luo doesn't even know who lives next door.

    On sunny days, the lonely grandpa often rides to a square beside his old residence to bask in the afternoon sun and watch people strolling with their birdcages and playing chess. "I sometimes come across my old neighbors there," he said.

    To many Beijingers, a Siheyuan is much more than a roof and four wall.

    "It is, to some extent, a life style, which is a rarity in the expanding 'cement forest' of a modern city," said Zhang Wei, a 30-year-old photographer who grew up in a Siheyuan and is now racing with bulldozers to record old Siheyuans before they are leveled to the ground.

    "Everything is slow, tranquil and harmonious in old hutongs," he said, "even when you wait and chat outside a public toilet, or walk drowsily in the empty street carrying a chamber pot before dawn."

    "Siheyuans are like the cells of Beijing and hutongs are the blood. Now that blood is drained and cells are cankering," Zhang mourned.

    Deep in the hutongs there are always stories. Next door to Liu Zhenru's house is the birthplace of Mei Lanfang, late performing artist of the Beijing Opera. Houses in the Lanman Hutong were once hotels for examinees from east China's Jiangxi Province who came to sit the imperial exam in the Qing Dynasty.

    Several alleys west of the hotels lies a two-story wooden mansion which is the former residence of a patriotic high-ranking official in the Song Dynasty, who starved himself to death there after the fall of the dynasty.

"If the houses are razed, the stories will be buried as well," sighed Zhang Wei.

¡¡ However, for many residents, who often have to share their courtyard homes with more and more other families, the poor facilities and cramped conditions of hutong life mean they are only too willing to move to modern apartments.

    Many courtyard homes that line Beijing's hutongs are ramshackle affairs, with no central heating or bathroom and few other modern conveniences. Stoves that burn coal or wood are the only source of heating in most homes, and a trip to the toilet usually requires a dash down the street to the nearest public convenience.

    A 72-year-old woman, Mrs Zhang, has been living in Xizhuan Hutong for over half a century. Now, she lives with her husband and granddaughter in a 12-square-meter room. Next to her property, brick houses built by her neighbors have transformed her formerly spacious yard into what Zhang describes as a "tunnel".

    "Although I have been living here for many years I hope the place is pulled down as soon as possible," she said.

    "I want to spend the Spring Festival in a clean, wide and bright building. At least we won't need to run down the street to the toilet," she explained.

    Luo Boyan also blamed the privately built shanties for degrading the standard of living. "In our former residence, the yard used to be spacious enough to park a car, but now it couldn't hold a wheel chair," he said.

    Chen Jianjun, Vice Director of the office of Beijing City Planning Committee, claims that the Beijing authorities are trying to preserve the "ancient flavor" of the capital by restoring or building new versions of the traditional houses.

    "We have marked out 33 areas in the inner city where traditional houses and alleys will be preserved, accounting for 29 percent of the 62.5-square-kilometer inner city," Chen said. He added that as the population density has become three to five times of that in major western cities like London and New York, residents should be gradually relocated.

    To Liu Zhenru, however, the Siheyuan is her treasure. "I don't feel any inconvenience living here. Beijing will lose its flavor without the old houses. If someone could have the houses repaired and refurbished, it would be perfect.

    "I'll be going nowhere but here in the courtyard for the Spring Festival."

    By Xinhua Writers Bai Xu, Li Zhihui and Ji Shaoting