Touring Beijing’s Historic Hutongs
Economic Pressures Threaten Traditional Homes
Beijing's hutongs (narrow lanes of traditional one-storey houses) are destinations for tourists, but now development threatens the lifestyle the historic areas represent.
On a clear day, the observation platform atop Beijing's ancient Drum Tower affords the visitor a panoramic view of the city, including the nearby Bell Tower and the district's famous hutongs (narrow laneways of traditional one-storey Chinese homes).
The charming hutongs are popular destinations to visit among tourists to Beijing, who navigate the labyrinthine collections of traditional homes by pedicab (bicycle-powered rickshaw). Seemingly far from Beijing's notorious thoroughfares of unyielding automobile traffic, real people still live in these ancient hutongs. Those districts that remain offer a glimpse into what life was like in a Chinese town or city before the advent of the mega-metropolis.
Many tours offer visitors the opportunity to see inside hutong-dwellers' homes, to share a meal with residents or to visit the local school. The single-storey homes and winding streets of the hutongs are beautiful, but a quick pedicab ride doesn't demonstrate the threats posed to the traditional way of life that the hutongs represent.
The rapid expansion of the Chinese economy means that in a single generation the standard of living has drastically improved for many Chinese, although China's human rights record and environmental conditions remain poor in spite of economic prosperity. However, wealth itself has also created new challenges.
China's traditionally rural population is becoming quickly urbanized. As millions of rural Chinese move to cities like Beijing, the cost of urban living and real estate skyrockets. The traditional single-family homes of the hutongs may now house up to twenty or thirty people.
Furthermore, as blocks become overcrowded, more inhabitants may share inadequate bathroom facilities. Western female visitors are forewarned by tour operators to plan to avoid the latrines - which also afford little privacy - altogether during a hutong visit, but modern young Chinese also increasingly aspire to a different lifestyle, one that was scarcely imaginable only one or two generations ago.
Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC are everywhere in China, and European fashion labels and cosmetics are trendy. Take a stroll along Dongchan'an Jie to visit Tienanmen Square and you will see a Porshe dealership on the street that witnessed the massacre of democracy activists in 1987.
For those who live there, the hutongs are home, but to China's youth and growing middle class (and to foreign tourists) they are at best merely quaint and at worst a primitive, third-world ghetto.
In the spirit of overall modernization, and in anticipation of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing - both government and their partners in real estate development - is bulldozing what remains of the hutongs and replacing them with sleek, efficient highrises.
Some hutongs are being preserved rather than destroyed. Around hutongs located north of the Temple of Heaven for instance, a wall has been built to mask views from the street and new public washrooms have been installed. In fashionable districts, ancient single-storey houses have been remodeled into luxury homes and boutiques in a process of gentrification that drives out the poor.
The highrise model allows urban density (and land value) to increase and the clean, new apartments would seem to represent progress. However, the traditional lifestyle and sense of community are being lost and the question remains whether former hutong dwellers can afford to live in the new developments.
One hopes that cultural tourism and sensible management of urban development in the future will allow Beijing to preserve and improve the standard of living of its citizens without destroying the integrity of the historic hutongs.
Sources for this article include observations gathered during the author’s March 2007 visit to Beijing and conversations with Beijing tour guides.
