Monday 18 January 2010

Hutong

I keep forgetting to share these photos, although (or perhaps because) they are one of my favourite sets that I took whilst I was in China. Behind the hostel where I was saying was a hutong – the warren of traditional Chinese one storey houses that have been replaced by new high rise apartments. Apparently there are all sorts of ‘special’ hutongs worthy of sight, and around the Forbidden City rickshaw drivers compete to see who can get tourists to pay the most for a journey. But I wanted to quietly savour my last weekend in Beijing, so I picked a residential street and decided to see where it would take me.


Just a few minutes walk away from the frenzy of Western labels that is Wanfujing, I returned to the China where the presence of a foreigner was met with curiosity and puzzlement. As I photographed such boring everyday items as a bicycle-with-trailer filled with baozi steamers, I could feel benign ‘crazy laowai’ thoughts brewing about me.


I was surprised by how quiet the streets were, used as I was to navigating Shijazhuang’s happy chaos of children playing, adults gossiping or gaming, dogs going about their canine world and impromptu businesses. I guess that people were sheltering indoors or in courtyard gardens, but the impression that remains in my mind is of almost eery shaded quietness, relieved occasionally by a decorously subdued motorbikes seeking shortcuts from the congested main roads.


On a more prosaic level, I was delighted to find that every street had free, immaculately clean toilet and shower facilities, although I imagine that the residents must find venturing forth in the bitterness of winter somewhat less delightful. I also imagine that that is why, despite the destruction of the hutongs being loudly decried in Western media, so few Western residents actually live in them.

12 comments:

  1. Interesting look at the city! Great photos! Hope you have a great week!

    Sylvia

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  2. Really like the red lantern and red houses in the first photo. Quite picturesque.
    I wonder about the pile of dirty shoes. Looks like the entire family was out gardening. Interesting about the older residences disappearing -- but then, I'm sure I'd choose individual household plumbing...

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  3. An eye-opener... thanks for the trip halfway round the world... and glimpses of a totally foreign way of life...

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  4. what a gorgeous and interesting tour of the hutongs - thanks!! I took lots of photos of red chinese lanterns this wknd - in Calle Dolores which is Mexico City's Chinatown - one street only - perhaps I will post them soon...

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  5. Amazing sights in a residential street. A fish put out to be dried! Rare sight!

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  6. An eye-opener and are those lanterns called hutongs? I've seen those lanterns in so many Chinese restaurants in India but are they also called hutongs?

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  7. Wonderful pictures! It's so hard to imagine a quiet street in China though...

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  8. Janie - Those are people's outdoor shoes. It's so dusty that you normally take your shoes off at the door and then wear slippers inside, otherwise your floors become hideously filthy.

    Catherine - I hope you'll share those soon, I'd love to see the Chinese-Mexican fusion.

    Sanand - Hutongs are streets of traditional one storey Chinese houses. The lanterns are called, uhm, OK I don't know what they're called in Mandarin.

    Ladyfi - It probably was quite noisy from a Western standpoint, but after 10 months of living with constant horn blaring, the bangs of trucks and buses going over the broken speed bumps, the clangers and calls of the rag and bone men, children playing in the compound, the school bell - it seemed very quiet!

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  9. lovely captures of everyday, regular life. i remember much of this when visiting many years ago.

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  10. Ahh, lovely. We stayed in a hotel right in the middle of a hutong district when we were in Beijing - I loved it.

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  11. A side of China rarely glimpsed in media representation. Wonderful to wander here in quiet meditation of and in another world.

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