Hutongs in Beijing
Saturday, October 16th, 2004
Quin-dynasty Beijing was redesigned with mazes of mud and brick walled courtyards after Genghis Khan’s army reduced the city to rubble and is “now the stomping ground of a quarter of Beijing’s residents. According to Lonely Planet, those that stay in hutong pooh pooh the dubious charms of the city’s new high rises claiming that hutong preserves a powerful sense of togetherness where everyone helps each other out…as the Chinese say “close neighbors are better than distant relatives.”
A foreign tour group to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics will be driven down smooth recently-built wide boulevards where these hutong are fronted by glass and steel with no idea of what lay behind. A glimpse across the city reveals thousands of cranes…a building for each…against a grey smog-filled sky. Just before we got to Beijing the Chinese were marking the 40th anniversary of the estalishment of diplomatic ties by celebrating the French Cultural Year in China and a joint French-Chinese fly-over by stunt pilots had to be cancelled because of lack of visibility.
For many hutong, the Olympic bid was the kiss of death…get here before the next phase of road-widening schemes again reshape the city, says Lonely Planet.
Zoe