Seen from sky, the city is a brownish patchwork of modern buildings, crisscrossing highways, and ancient architectural marvels. Among them, an astonishing maze of narrow streets: the Hutongs ¨C the thousand-year-old Chinese residential areas.
Hutongs are this Beijing feature which connects both past and present. Every day on the outskirts of these alleyways, where tradition meets modernity, a live drama is played: more simply put perhaps, these older parts of town clash with the relentless push toward urban development.
FenSiTing Hutong
We start this Hutong tour from the west. A shaft of morning light slants across the Drum Tower area, waking it up from a long, sleepy night. And everything comes to life again: dogs bark, vendors cry, bicycle bells jingle, and joggers greet each other. In a far corner, several cart pullers are already waiting for their first customers. It is a fresh new day, but for them, it is just another routine day.
It is their life. For as long as their grandparents can possibly remember, they have already lived in these shabby, tightly-packed hutongs, under the dominant structure of an imperial palace of a striking splendor. These streets are plentiful in number, crisscrossing in pattern, and probably very confusing as you dive further in their maze. Along each side of the alleyways lie small grocery stores, casual eateries and barbershops, and clustered with them the local resident houses. Doors are adorned with painted deities and auspicious couplets. Suburbia in downtown.
Few places in the city are more rooted in tradition than the Hutongs. The history of the neighborhood I am walking in dates back hundreds of years. There, traditional Si He Yuan ¨C literally, ¡®Courtyards Surrounded by Houses on Four Sides¡¯¡ª still house extended families. Many native Beijing locals are long-time fans of Peking opera, and will routinely sing a song or two for their own entertainment. The young generations tend to look down on them, deeming their grandparents¡¯ family values stereotyped. As day-to-day life goes on, the Hutong residents seem to strike a happy balance between the tradition they have lived by and a fast changing world they have to adapt to. As you walk past them in their streets, you cannot but observe the carefree dimension of their daily lives.
Modern life does not make itself felt as much in this specific area as in other neighborhoods, but change is on its way however. In the ¡®New Great Beijing¡¯ that is being erected everywhere, Hutongs are chipped away at by the day, giving way to high-rises and modern buildings. Some residents are also moving out to seek better living conditions. Some native Beijing arts and crafts are getting rarer and rarer, and it becomes harder to run into some renowned local snacks while strolling around.
Viewed from the Hutong¡¯s standpoint though, it seems there is no need to worry, at least for today. Everything goes as usual: the young go to work; older people stay home to take care of the household. Sitting near the entrance of a Si He Yuan, a handful of elders chat leisurely. And I just take the chance to stroll back and forth, pretending to be one of them.
As the Hutong¡¯s name changes to DOUFUCHI, I stopped here to figure out the direction, only to find myself standing in front of a clean, simple residence. A tottery old man tells me it was once boarded by Chairman Mao Zedong during his brief one-year stay in Beijing in 1918. The house was where Mao met his first, beloved wife Yang Kaihui, the only daughter of a well-educated family.
Given a history reaching far back, this neighborhood secures an ancestry which runs deep. As the road soon turns to its ending, it arrives at the Drum and Bell Towers, towering the area for over 700 years.
As you admire the works from up close, you cannot miss the footprints of time in the mottled gates, bricks, stairs, and thresholds. Their grandeur however is no less imposing. These were constructed at a time when the city was emerging as a potential candidate for China¡¯s capital. A Yuan emperor ordered the construction of the towers to ring the time to the local residents. A gigantic bell and 61 extra-huge drums were mounted high up into the towers, their sound carried as far as 20 miles away.
Both towers have ceased to function as time-announcing facilities since then, but ravish tourists with one of the best city views. Standing on the top floor of the Drum Tower, I could not but rave over the splendor of the Forbidden City to the south, and the sedateness of the Hutongs just below. Both complement each other, fitting together in a wonderful landscape, themselves being one of the wonderments of the landscape.
As my walk is about to end, I find myself reluctant to walk off. Retracing my steps back, I keep picturing myself living in one of the deep Hutongs here, with no noise humming around, no hustle-bustle, living just a natural and simple life. |
