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June 11, 2005
Day Two - The Hutong Tour
Hutongs, as Lara mentioned earlier, are the old neighborhoods of central Beijing. The houses are typically arranged four buildings around a central courtyard, with front and rear auxiliary buildings across two smaller courtyards. Prior to the cultural revolution, these compounds were typically owned by a single family three or four generations together. Since the 60's, though, the compounds are usually split between three or four families.
These compounds are situated along narrow alleys six steps wide, which open onto larger streets 24 steps wide. The narrowest hutong still extant in Beijing is 14 centimeters -- so small that if two people meet in the middle, one has to reverse gears and let the other through.
Hutongs were once the most common form of residential housing for common people in central Beijing (near Forbidden City). Now, though, younger people tend to prefer high-rise apartments, what with the central air and heating and such (imagine that). Until the 1990s, many of the hutongs were demolished to make way for newer housing, but a public outcry resulted in the preservation of 45 hutong districts totaling about 1300 individual hutongs.
Incidentally, our guide says that "hutong" was originally from Mongolian, and referred to the lakes around which these communities were built. When the Han displace the Mongols, though, the word was adopted into Chinese, and came to refer to the small houses, rather than the lakes.
Our pickup is late due to an "unexpected traffic jam." How in the world a traffic jam could be unexpected in Beijing is beyond me, since the whole city pretty much looks like 277 at rush hour to me. But we hop in the van when it arrives. I manage to snap a few street-scene type photos on the way, but they all have the unfortunate reflection of the van's navy and white checkered seat covers. Imperfect, perhaps, but serviceable.
We arrive at our embarkation point near Houhai Lake in north central Beijing after about 30 minutes. Turns out the main part of the group has gone on ahead. We pick driver #28 at random, and saddle up. The rickshaw is a battered black steel affair with a red fabric top, gilt trim and red velour seating. The "bike" part on the front is heavy welded steel, with a secondary straight handlebar mounted above the usual bike-style bars (I notice that the driver uses this on long straightaways), and a pull-handle welded at right angles to the seatpost. This he uses to help push-start the whole contraption to get up a little momentum.
One thing that catches my eye is the steel cable running from the downtube up under the cab. I am completely mystified -- until we have to stop in traffic. Looking down, I see the driver pick up a foot and step on the cable. Evidently, the cables control brakes on the rear wheels. A little cool, and a little scary all at once.
Entering the hutongs is a bit like stepping back in time. Everything is old. Even the newer technological bits manage to accumulate enough grime and grit that they blend in quickly. The buildings are all low one-story structures -- a second story might appear briefly in some wealthier area, but we saw only two or three the whole afternoon. Most are painted a dark gray, and most have dark and slightly decrepit tile roofs.
Remember that the youngest of these buildings are about 200 years old, and the residents are typically not wealthy by comparison to greater Beijing, so when I note the condition of the buildings, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Just a fact of age and social status.
After a few minutes of frenetic pedaling by the drivers, we reach our first stop -- the Beijing Bell Tower. This tower and its companion drum tower were the markers of time in years past. The 6-meter-or-so bronze bell was rung at 5am and 7pm, to signal the opening and closing of the city gates. The 25 drums in the adjacent drum tower were beaten every two hours during the night to mark the passage of time. Now, though, the bell is only rung at Chinese New Year (108 times, in fact) and the New Moon Festival.
The view from the top of the tower is amazing. It would be more amazing if Beijing had anything like clear air, but you take what you can get. Looking out, we can see the towers of the surrounding city, festooned in every direction with self-erecting cranes and construction scaffolding. Looking down, we get a bird's eye view of the hutongs, gray walls and broken, dark tile roofs interspersed with large patches of trees and shot through with narrow alleys.
After a few minutes of background information from our guide Wang Nan (Melissa), we descend the tower's 75 steps and return to our rickshaws. It takes a few minutes to locate our driver, and when we do, he's standing right in front of me, and I've looked right past him. I don't think I've been so embarrassed in quite a while. Nevertheless, he has a sense of humor, and helps us into the cab. Again, we're off into the hutongs.
Cars are rare in the narrow hutong alleys, and those that do venture down have to negotiate a nearly impenetrable mass of pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws. Sidewalks are nonexistent. The outer hutong walls that face onto the alleys are punctured here and there by doors, which range from plain, gray-painted wood to fancier jobs with red and gold paint. Those walls facing out onto streets are usually lined with shops and beer joints, catering to the basic needs of the community.
What's behind each door is a bit of a mystery. Many open into the hutongs themselves -- the individual homes. One opens onto a small workroom, where a man sits amidst tumbledown stacks of papers, boxes and raw materials, beading something that might become either a necklace or a seat cushion for a car -- we go by so quickly it's hard to tell.
Rounding a corner, we come upon a small lorry backed up to a pile of cardboard, plastic bottles and scrap metal. A woman and two men are piling the cardboard onto an industrial scale and bundling it. A recycling operation. As we pass the truck, our ears are ripped by the high, grinding whine of a circular saw ripping a piece of foam-backed metal roof. The line of rickshaws gets stopped here as a Volkswagen squeezes by in the alley. During the pause, the saw becomes deafening, but I do get time to look up and notice the blue corrugated-metal roof being added to this hutong, its styrofoam backing sure to provide better insulation than the tiles it covers. The roof is topped with a modern solar water heating system, something we later learned is common in the hutongs.
As we start up again, a young woman on a bike passes us, horn tootling. I comment to Lara that I do believe that's the first time I've ever heard a horn tootle. Minutes later, a stream of Chinese issues from behind us, the tone dark and irritated. The stream continues as a middle-aged Chinese woman on a battered black bike passes us to on the left, swinging out into traffic in front of us and crossing the main drag as we turn left. I couldn't tell you what she's saying, but the tone has unmistakable hints of "Get that thing out of my way, pokey!"
We roll down the avenue and make another left into the hutongs again, crossing a bridge over a narrow stream between two lakes, and passing through an intersection crowded with pedestrians, electronica blaring from a set of cheap speakers outside what obviously amounts to the local watering hole (enough signs for Tsingtao and Corona will put you on to that right quick). Pulling down a short alley past a row of snoozing pedicabbies in their vehicles, we park and dismount.
Suffice it to say we're immediately assaulted by the usual quantity of hawkers peddling shirts, hats, fans and, of course, "Rolex!" Funny how you never hear "Tag Heuer" or "Patek Phillipe." Chalk it up to unimaginative cloners.
We walk a short distance, and Melissa knocks on a nondescript door which opens momentarily to reveal a short, balding man of advanced but indeterminate years. When he sees us, his eyes open a bit wider, and his mouth splits into a grin of pleasure, genuine, but revealing a set of truly bad teeth. This is Mr. Wu, retired archaeologist and the owner of this hutong (or at least the rear auxiliary house of it), and he is our host for the next thirty minutes.
We crowd into Mr. Wu's living room, a space about ten by ten, with grimy walls and bare flourescent fixtures for lighting. A bolt-on air conditioner and a refrigerator share space with a beautiful antique table (worth well over a quarter million US dollars, we're told later) and shelves full of family pictures. We make ourselves comfortable on a motley array of chairs, couches and stools, and listen to Mr. Wu tell us, through Melissa's translation, about his home.
He and his wife use the living room, the adjoining small bedroom and the hot-plate equipped kitchen. His sons own two of the other buildings in the hutong, and use the remaining room of Mr. Wu's building as well. All three families share a toilet in teh far corner of the area.
Because of its positioning, the house is relatively cool in the summer. No doubt the grape arbor out on the terrace helps. Mr. Wu describes himself as "a green thumb," and the small, untidy and very inviting terrace does justice to that assessment, with its pots of plants, spreading pomegranate tree and blue-and-white pottery furniture.
In the winter, the Wus place a coal stove indoors near a window, which provides heat that is at once inefficient and dirty. He reports that his sons use newer outdoor units equipped with insulated ducts and blowers to move warm air into the house. Asked how he heats his water, Mr. Wu reports that he has an electric water heater, though most of his neighbors use the omnipresent solar water heaters. This, as you may guess, is the joy of retrofitting modern technology into a 200-year-old home.
Despite being (like a lot of Beijing) low-slung and a little grimy, Mr. Wu's home is snug and cozy. It seems like a place that would be comfortable to curl up and read a book in. Sitting in the increasingly warm living room, though, I suddenly understand why the hutongs are so full of pedestrians and loiterers -- there simply isn't that much room at home. The public streets become, perforce, one's living room.
The remainder of our visit is occupied by listening to Mr. Wu very politely answer a prying and borderline series of condescending questions from a couple from New Jersey. By way of illustration, I offer this: Picture in your mind a couple from America (New Jersey, no less) almost lecturing the old man about the value of tradition. His answers were polite and informative, though -- Mr. Wu was a volunteer in the PLA during the revolution, and after the war went to work for the government as an archaeologist. The job gave him a chance to attend college, and he spent his career working on dating artifacts. He met Mrs. Wu on a blind date, and they have three children.
By this point, our time is nearly up, so we take a quick spin 'round the courtyard, thank Mr. Wu for his time, and negotiate a return to the rickshaws, again running the vendor gauntlet. Again we make our way through the streets and alleys of the hutongs, riding mostly alongside the lake, then up a fairly large street, where we dismount at Prince Gong's Palace, a smaller version of the summer palace. With its fish ponds, artfully arranged stone walls, and beautiful decoration, the palace makes a most restful stop. We spin through it in short order, and after a brief wait, sit down to a Chinese tea ceremony
During the ceremony, hostess shows us how half a dozen different teas are made, and prepares each for us. In the interim, I discuss iced tea with an Indian family from Houston (but living near Hong Kong right now). The ceremony complete, we hop back in the cabs and head back to our start. It is now 5pm, and the ride back to the hotel takes nearly an hour.
Exhausted and hungry, we succumb to convenience and hit McDonalds. The food is comparatively expensive (among the most expensive in China, I'm told). The whole experience has a weird, hyper-American but-not-quite vibe to it. The menus are labeled solely in Chinese...odd in general in this area, but all the more so because of where we are. With a good deal of pointing and a few halfway words, we make clear that we both want McNuggets to go. I want to eat in the restaurant, but Lara points out that the sodas are made with tap water, and that's the end of my desire. We go back to the hotel, plop down in the chairs and eat.
Sleep comes quickly after, as we prepare for our last day in Beijing.
Posted by brlittle at June 11, 2005 01:30 AM