Beijing Beauty, part 3: Hutongs

Whenever you hear or read about Beijing's hutongs in the Western media, you'll be told that the government are taking them down, one by one to replace them with shiny new flats and shopping centres. Well, guess what- they haven't destroyed them all yet. On Saturday night, my crazy friend and I went on an expedition deep into the heart of old Beijing, discovering true Hutong magic.

Some of the oldest Hutongs date back to the BC days and are long and narrow, purpose-built streets, which, with their ... architecture and fragrant trees, really feel like a piece of the olden days right in the middle of this super city. The core of the remaining Hutongs is situated in the east of Beijing, north of the Forbidden City (which, now as then, is the centre of everything), near the lovely Houhai Lake. With much of the Hutongs having been torn down already, their preservation and cultural value has become a key concern of Beijingers (some are even protesting- yes, protesting!), and the old streets have recently received a lot of attention and interest, from locals and tourists alike. The centre of the newly-discovered, hip Hutong area is Nan Rou Gu Xiang, a long street that connects a lot of the smaller alleys and is lined with hundreds of restaurants, bars and small shops that sell everything from handcrafts to art and from clothes to music.

So crazy Ring's and my late night journey took us through half-lit alleys, past hordes of tourists (some of whom are louder than others), into lots of different shops and past an endless amount of corners that had old people sitting outside with their dogs, or playing mahjongg, or having a drink. For, even with the hipping up of the Hutongs, with young designers and artists selling their wares, and with travellers flocking in from all over the world, this is still a place where you can get that feeling of "old China"- of a pure, untouched, un-Westernised culture that has been there for centuries, untouched by any social and political changes of the past decades. The way people sit outside their houses on summer nights, the way they gather to gamble together, and the way they gossip loudly across alleys gives you that warm feeling of finally having found thee real China.

Bis dann,


Nadine

Naturally, my little party camera wasn't the best tool to be capturing the nighttime hutongs with

One of the many funky shops we went into

A group of men playing mahjongg



Red lanterns outside one of the many restaurants on Nan Lou Gu Xiang