Hutong Neighborhood -- Beijing

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Forbidden City - Former "white house" to the Emporers of China
Great Wall of China - Badaling Section
Great Wall of China - Mutianyu Section
Beijing Hutong - 700 year old neighborhood with rickshaws and labyrinth streets
Ming Tombs - 400 year old excavation of the final Ming Emperor
Sacred Way, Sacred Path - Ming Tomb garden of stately and animal statues
Summer Palace - Former garden of the Emperors on a lake
Temple of Heaven - former Chinese Emperor worship area
Tiananmen Square - memorials, governement buildings, Mao's tomb
Beijing Lacquer and Woodcarving Factory
Suzhou City Traffic
Suzhou City Traffic
Suzhou - Fisherman's Garden, Master of the Nets Garden
Suzhou Humble Garden
Suzhou silk factory
Suzhou, Tong Li - Little Venice water city
funny signs gallery - funny chinese signs
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MickTravels to China - Beijing, Suzhou
Trip Preparation
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MickTravels to China - Beijing, Suzhou
Visiting a Beijing Hutong was a pleasant surprise. This 700 year old neighborhood with labyrinth-like narrow streets is an unlikely tourist destination. You see it via your own personal rickshaw driver and make several stops along the river, at the vegetable market, and even somebodys actual house!

Not all the rickshaw drivers in this Hutong were busy today.

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Off we go. Some streets are wide enough for cars, some aren't.

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This was the most beautifully decorated door in the Hutong by far. If I understood my guide correctly, the buildings here are 700 years old.

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My guide, Yan, was a 21-year-old college student. It was her first day on the job, and I was her first tourist. She spoke some English, but with a very thick accent. There were some things I just did not understand, and some things we had to spell in order to get the point across.\n \nMy driver was about 27 and spoke only Chinese. If I had a question, Yan would translate it into Chinese, the rickshaw driver would answer it, and she'd translate it back into English.

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Me and Yan. Notice her Minnie Mouse shirt? Check out the Funny Signs section of my China Travelog to see the helpful explanation on the back. You can also see her holding a folder presumably with Hutong tourist information inside.

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Future rickshaw driver.

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A typical narrow street. For the life of me I can't figure out who could have thought to conduct tours in this unassuming, unglamorous, quaint, old neighborhood, but there were rickshaw tourists everywhere. It works - I thought it was one of the most interesting parts of my Beijing tour.

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The streets get narrower.

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More rickshaw tourists are carried up and over a 300-year-old bridge.

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The waterway was very pleasant. It gets wider and they have some bars along the picturesque canal.

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Rush hour in the Hutong along the street with all the bars.

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Cars easily mix with wheelbarrows, pedestrians, and bicycles on a main frag in the Hutong.

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The vegetable market. It's the size of a big American supermarket, with a few key differences.\n\nEach vendor is operating on her own. You buy celery from one woman, spices from another, potatoes from a third. You can see there are no walls, only a roof.\n\nI tried several different ways, but I could not successfully ask my guide where they got all of their vegetables.

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Vegetables are only half the story here. The other half is household goods, again sold by independent vendors who get their supplies from who knows where. It is very specialized here. You can see the 2 women on the right negotiating a deal with a vendor that sold only paper towels and toilet paper.

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Lots of activity at the vegetable market.

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No shopping carts here. You get to carry your purchases on whatever you brought with you.

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At least everything is fresh here!

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2 typical ways to carry your goods home from the vegetable market - on foot, or strapped to your bike.

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The busiest street in the Hutong even has busses going down it. I think it took 3 minutes to cross.\n\nCheck out the back of Yan's Minnie Mouse shirt here - "Minnie is well known as Mickey's girlfriend." What a weird thing to put on a Disney shirt.

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It's not as dangerous to talk on the cellphone and drive as long as you aren't on one of the busy Hutong streets.

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Siesta time.

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Yup, it must be siesta time.

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We're making our way to an actual residence to see what it's like to live here. These buildings have a number of rooms in them, but there aren't any indoor hallways. To get to the shared kitchen you go outside. Consequentially, each room is called a house, and they are pretty small.

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Inside one woman's house. This is really a panorama, but I left it unstitched here to address key points in each section.\n\nNo closet - only a nice wardrobe against the wall. The desk on the left has lots of cups of Chinese tea, so I presume I'm not today's only visitor. There are 3 stools in this picture and more to come. The side wall of this house consists of the wardrobe , a nightsand, and the bed. There is a decorative lantern hanging from the ceiling.

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The bed and 3 more stools. There is a heater covered up on the left wall. The picture on the left wall is of the proprietor and a visitor from Holland. The woman who owns this place has probably never left Beijing, but she's met more international visitors than some flight attendants.

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We're going from right to left. The bed ends, there's a liquor cabinet, a really nice water cooler/filter, and the right speaker of the home entertainment system. Another decorative lantern hangs from the ceiling. The window behind the liquor cabinet needs some work. I think those are Christmas lights hanging down the wooden pillar. 3 more stools.

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The entertainment center consists of really decent audio and visual equipment. Soccer posters are overflow decoration from the woman's 25-year-old son who lives in the room next door and works at the post office.

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A private refrigerator is in the corner of the room. There' also another stool.

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Making our way across the opposite short wall we come to a newly reapholstered couch and more soccer posters.

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In the other corner of their house they have a computer. It's about 4 years old. No internet access, though. More soccer posters. Wait, the couch isn't reapholstered, those are just covers.

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This picture represents about 1/3 of their entire house. Tiny, but very homey, functional, and ready for company judging by all of the stools they've got.\n\nThe kitchen is outside and around the corner. Their building has no bathroom - they have to go across to another building.\n\nSome Americans might consider this poor. Some might consider it pretty decent. This is very advanced compared to the family whose house I visited in Peru near Machu Picchu - they had a dirt floor, only a fireplace to cook on, 2 beds for the couple and their daughter, a single electric bulb hanging from their thatch ceiling, and guinea pigs running around on the floor.

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Here's a different room with a shower and wash machine.

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Here's the kitchen. A freezer in the back, propane stove and oven, plus a charcoal grill and microwave all on the left.

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Here's the proprietor. Very nice lady, and a very gracious host.

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Me and the proprietor. If she had email I'd send her a copy of this picture for her to print out and help decorate her walls.

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