Hutongs

When we talk about Beijing, we should also talk about the hutongs which can still be visited today. Hutongs, which are also a memory of the past, are barely surviving in the growing Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. For foreigners they are very charming to visit because as it helps us to imagine how such big towns looked like many, many years ago...

The word "hutong" comes from a Mongolian word meaning lane or alley. It is a narrow (most of them are no more than 9-meter-wide) passage between rows of traditional houses such as the "siheyan" courtyard house. The "siheyan" courtyard house typically consists of a rectangular courtyard surrounded by one-store tile-roofed houses. How were they designed? In the old times, these narrow streets were part of a well-planned city design. They were supposed to be symmetrical: the center was first decided and all roads and structures were build around to make it a regular square design. Hutongs first appeared in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) but most of the ones we can still visit nowadays go back to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. At that time and even nowadays, Beijing's hutongs were not only alleys but were also a typical kind of architecture (for instance, you can still observe nice antique doors) and were the center of Beijing life for the last 700 years. Hutongs were (and are still !) very crowed as often 4 to 10 families, with an average of 20 people, share the rooms of one courtyard house. In addition to housing, the hutongs attracted many shops and restaurants too. People, still today, gather in the hutongs to talk, eat or play mah-jong around a table. It is unfortunate that nowadays hutongs are fast disappearing to give way to modernity and progress, in the form of modern shopping centers, thus dimming a memory of a prosperous past. Hurry and take a stroll or ride a bike through these typical street of which a few still exist not far from the major thoroughfares.