The Hutongs

Today marks a month since I left the US for China! While the weeks themselves feel slow, time is certainly passing quickly. One of my favorite things to do has become walking through the Beijing Hutongs, old, traditional neighborhoods. A lot of them have been destroyed (the quality of life in them wasn't great...) and replaced with skyscrapers and shopping malls. About a third of Beijing's hutongs remain, and many of them have been transformed into restaurants, cafes, bars, and galleries. People still live in a few of them, and some really wealthy people have even bought multiple properties and turned it into a hutong mansion. There's nothing quite like turning a random corner and getting lost in the narrow, windy hutongs and seeing what you find. Here's a picture of a home entrance that I stumbled upon last weekend in one of the hutongs. And, if you want to learn a bit more about Beijing's hutongs and their rocky relationship with the Chinese government and society, this History Channel article is actually pretty good (and short!).

A lone tree in the doorway - Banchang Hutong