Hutongs, Beijing

For visitors looking for a fun way to experience Beijing's hutong, you should consider doing a motorcycle sidecar tour. I know someone who recently started a company called Peking-Around (www.peking-around.com) that does small tours and can cater to your needs. Motorcycles can swiftly squeeze into little-seen areas of the city, not to mention race past Beijing's gridlocked traffic. The company does small tours with local ex-pat guides and can cater to your needs! You can read more about it at www.peking-around.com

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There are many advertised bike tours through the Hutongs (traditional courtyard houses) but we found them on the map and walked around them on foot. The buildings were close together and rather ramshackle but this felt much more Chinese than the main roads and department stores did.

There were no crowds here and it was a lot more relaxed. We went to a poorer area but apparently there are some beautiful examples to the east of the Forbidden City. Most people in Beijing now live in ugly run-down high rise condominiums, each with a dripping air conditioning unit out of the window, so it was nice to see the traditional old buildings whilst they still exist.

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Due to just having arrived back in Beijing from a 3 week holiday back home in Gibraltar, I was a little jet lagged. I hadn't helped matters either by sleeping during the day instead if keeping awake till night time! So as the sun came up somewhere between 430 and 500am this morning and the day looked like it was going to be beautiful, I decided to go for a bike ride to one of my favourite areas in Beijing, Hou Hai. Camera in hand, I was ready!

So the next few tips are more a travelogue of Beijing from 6am to 8pm on July 21st 2006!

They will be in themes, with this one being the ' hustle and bustle of morning breakfast buying!'

I hope you enjoy reading and seeing the photos as much as I did seeing it first hand and experiencing a beautiful Beijing morning!

At least that was my view when I looked at these dustbin in the park. Even at other attactions I visited, each have their uniqueness. Amazed that they paid so much attention right down to things that people hardly notice. They were always three side-by-side; batteries, non-recycle & recycle.

The Heart of the Chinese capital - narrow streets which are referring on-chinese "hutong". They are characteristic for ancient city architecture. The majority of streets are constructed in days of board of a Yuan dynasty.

Last years there were also usual for us city buildings, but in the old city the untouched corner of ancient imperial Pekin was kept. Traditional Chinese houses with square court yard are restricted along streets - "hutongs"/

I always believe that if you want to experience the real Beijing, you have to venture into the hutong. Hutong means the lanes. In the old days, all Beijingers lived in the hutongs. You may still find some courtyard houses in hutong around the Forbidden City area and some has been converted into theme restaurant or galleries.

A good experience will be to take a bicycle and move around the lanes.. It is safe and nothing to worry about. You will discover the true local lifestyle in the deepest part of the hutong.

You may also be surprised with some interesting discoveries in it. Things that you will never expect to exist in the middle of a modern city.

The photo here shows a typical sundry shop cum breakfast place in a hutong during winter. A full breakfast here cost only 2 RMB that is less than 0.25 US cents.

In Beijing you must visit the hutongs! It is amazing just passing through a hutong and watch the daily life going on.

Since the 1950s, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. More recently, some hutongs have been selected as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history.

In the hutongs you can find laundries, where you can have your cloth washed and ironed for a very little money.

Hutongs [胡同] are narrow streets or alleys formed by lines of "Siheyuan" [四合院], traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one Siheyuan to another to form a Hutong, and then joining one Hutong to another.

The word "Hutong" comes from the Mongolian "Hottog" meaning "water well." During the growth of towns and cities, wells dug by villagers formed the centres of new communities.

Beijing Hutongs range in width from 10 metres down to only 40 centimetres.

Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing Hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. Wonderfully, the foolishness of this has been recently reversed with some Hutongs designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history.

My Hostel happen to be a refurbished Siheyuan amidst a Hutong so I literally had Hutong living surrounding me. So this isn't a tourist side-show. You'll see families crowding around chatting away in the evenings or sipping tea and playing Chinese chess, each knowing each other. Don't be surprised to see old gentlemen, san shirt, only in their boxers and shorts, chatting the world away. There are also Mahjong Rooms for folks to get together to exercise their brains. There are also plenty of local eateries for me to had fun with.

Finally, on the auspices of one of the owners, I entered a Siheyuan to really see the matchbox style of living so associated with Siheyuan living. It's mind boggling to see so many families squeezed into 1 courtyard with shared toilet facilities.

Beijing's traditional courtyards (siheyuan) still house many of the city's residents within the second ring road, which marks the limits of old Beijing. Siheyuan line the small lanes, or hutongs, that make up most of the central part of the city. However, many of the siheyuan, which consist of four rooms around a central yard, are being torn down at present, and quite a large proportion of those who have enjoyed courtyard living for generations have now moved to high-rise blocks of flats in new residential areas.
The siheyuan is a typical form of ancient Chinese architecture, especially in the north of China. They are designed to make it as comfortable as possible to live in a climate that is at times inhospitable. For instance, the siheyuan are enclosed and inward facing to protect them from the harsh winter winds and the dust storms of spring. Their design also reflects the traditions of China, following the rules of feng shui and the patriarchal, Confucian tenants of order and heirarchy that were so important to society.
Housing is now one of the most difficult problems facing Beijing, a city that is growing both spatially and in terms of population at a fast rate. As such, one siheyuan now often houses several families and many yards have been taken up with additional rooms. This contributes to the "rabbit-warren" nature of the hutongs. The living conditions in many siheyuans are now considered squalid, especially as very few have private toilets or washrooms. To solve the apparent problems of overcrowding, the siheyuan are being torn down and replaced by modern blocks of flats. There are, however, still some grand siheyuan in Beijing that have been preserved in all their former glory. Mainly built for nobles and high officials before the turn of the century, many have been turned into museums, and others are being lived in by present-day governmental officials or used as government offices, go along with shishahai area, you can find the typical Siheyuan.

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I have already posted a review about Houhai, but it is worth adding to that, recommending that the visitor takes a boat trip on the lake at sunset.
Hiring a boat provides a leisurely end to the afternoon. Electric (battery) powered motorboats cost from RMB60 (with RMB240 deposit) for an hour, with rowing boats less.
There are maybe ten different places to rent boats.
Many of the boats have a table in the middle, and whole families and gangs of people rent a boat, head out with a few beers and just play cards, drink or read on the peaceful waters.
The southernmost lake, which for many people *is* Houhai is usually more crowded, especially the bottleneck through the bridge. The much larger northern lake opens out and provides plenty of space to slowly motor or row around.
Watching the sun go down over the lake is just great!