Beijing Hutong
Hutong is a kind of typical ancient city alley in Beijing. Many of them were built during the Yuan (1206-1341), Ming (1368-1628) and Qing (1644-1908) dynasties surrounding the Forbidden City. During these dynasties, the emperors planned the city and arranged the residential areas according to the etiquette systems of the Zhou Dynasty to establish supreme power.
What is Hutong --
Beijing's hutongs, lanes or alleys formed by lines of siheyuan (a compound with houses around a courtyard) where old Beijing residents live, witness the vicissitude of the city.
Hutong means a lane or alley, in fact the passage formed by lines of siheyuan (a compound with houses around a courtyard) where old Beijing residents live. Be care not to lost in it! It was recorded that in the Yuan a 36-meter-wide road was called a standard street, a 18-meter-wide one was a small street and a 9-meter-wide lane was named a hutong. In fact, Beijing's hutongs are inequable ranging from 40 centimeter to 10 meter in wide. The longest has more than 20 turns. Either in east-west or north-south, Beijing's hutongs varied as slant, half or "blind hutongs" cul-de-sacs. The gray-tiled houses and deep alleys crossing with each other in identical appearance like a maze, you will find it much fun to walk through but be care not to lost yourself
History of Hutong
The name of a hutong implicates its origin, location or history. It is in the gray-tiled deep lanes that families play, travel, buy goods, gossip and connect. In Beijing' eyes, hutting means a period of history, a cordial lifestyle and even an " encyclopedia of Beijing".
Before Jin dynasty (in the 12 century), there were no Hutting in Beijing, just streets, roads and district. In the early 13 century, a Mongolian tribe from the north became very strong. Led by Genghis Khan, the Mongolians occupied Beijing. In 1260, Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan established Yuan Dynasty. Kublai Khan set Beijing as the capital city. Unfortunately, the old city was destroyed during the war. So they had to rebuild it. In old China, all the structures and roads were required to be symmetrical. First, they had to find a center, and then built a regular square city. After construction was completed, they asked all the residents who lived in the old city to move to the new one. Thus the Hutong was formed.
During the period of the Republic of China (1911-1948), Chinese society was unstable, with frequent civil wars and repeated foreign invasions. The city of Beijing deteriorated, and the conditions of hutongs worsened. Quadrangles previously owned by one family became a compound occupied by many households. Beijing's hutongs accounted for 3000.
In the 20th century, with the development of metropolis, hutongs are gradually replaced by skyscraper.
Name Source of Hutong
--Why it was called Huong
The word "Hutong" is said to originate from the Mongolian language, which is one of China's minority language. In the northern grasslands communities tended to live around wells, so “hot” (almost the same pronunciation of “well” in Mongolian), came to mean a town. And Hudu or Hudun are variants of it. Later it was applied to Small Street. The sound gradually changed to hutong.
Small streets in Beijing began to be called Hutong after the "Nuzhen" people from the northeast, who founded the Jin Dynasty, captured the city in 1127 and make it their capital. (Their language has similarities to Mongolian.) The custom became more widespread when the city was the capital of the Yuan Dynasty after the Mongol conquest
Hutong name and Beijing history
Discover the relation between Hutong name and Beijing history
Beijing’s history is preserved in the names of its hutong. Some retain the name of some famous persons who once lived there, such as Yongkang Liang. Others are named after well-known craftsmen or shops, such as doufu Chen Hutong for a bean curd seller named Chen, and Fenfang Liu Jia for the home of a maker of bean vermicelli Liu. There are also lanes with names like Jinyu (Goldfish), Dengcao (Light Rush), and Shoupa (Handkerchief). Generally speaking, when one of the winding Hutong makes a major turn, it takes on a new name.
Culture of Beijing Hutong
Discover abundant culture of Beijing Hutong The name of a hutong implicates its origin, location or history. I n many people's minds, Beijing is associated with the hutongs. They are an important part of the culture and the way of life of Beijingers, especially the older generationIt is in the gray-tiled deep lanes that families play, travel, buy goods, gossip and connect. In Beijingers' eyes, hutongs means a period of history, a cordial lifestyle and even an " encyclopedia of Beijing".
Old Hutong custom
Walking through the hutongs, it is common to see groups of elderly citizens sitting together playing cards or Chinese chess. In the early mornings and evenings, they gather to practice traditional forms of exercise such as taijiquan as well as to dance and sing folk songs or Peking Opera arias. Also important to hutong life is the traditional foods being sold in carts or small stalls. These change according to the season, from flavoured ice in the summer to long kebabs of crab apples covered in sugar in the autumn and winter.
Hutong and literature
So important are the hutongs to the culture of Beijing that there have been many operas, plays and films about them. And in numerous hutongs are scattered the residences of famous personages, and these places are repositories.
Laoshe (1899 - 1966)
Laoshe , a well-known playwright is just one of them. He is one of 20th century China's greatest novelists and playwrights. Laoshe was born in a small lane, in the west part of the city. The memory of his childhood was so dear and impressive that after he'd been away from Beijing for more than 20 years, he still clearly remembered his birthplace, and he made it the backdrop of his novel "the Four Generations Under One Roof". Many famous operas and dramas are based on the themes of the " hutong life". His "Teahouse" is set in what is often the focal point of a hutong community and brings together several characters from the old streets of Beijing to discuss the problems of traditional society.
A more modern love song for the hutongs is Zhang Yang's "Shower" (1999) about a tradtional bath house where men from the community gather to drink tea, receive massages, fight crickets and escape their marital problems. The film laments the loss of such old ways of life as the hutongs are being knocked down to make way for modern blocks of flats.
The following extract from the book Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron provides a wonderful and entirely accurate description of the hutongs.
"I abandoned the avenues and slipped down side-streets into a maze-world of alleys and courtyards. These hutongs are still the living flesh of Beijing, and once you are inside them it shrinks to a sprawling hamlet. The lanes are a motley of blank walls and doorways, interspersed by miniature factories and restaurants. Each street is a decrepit improvisation on the last. Tiled roofs curve under rotting eaves. The centuries shore each other up,. Modern brick walls, already crumbling, enclose ancient porches whose doors of beaten tin or lacerated pinewood swing in carved stone frames. Underfoot the tarmac peals away from the huge, worn paving-slabs of another age, and the traffic thins to a tinkling slipstream of pedicabs and bicycles".
Formation of the Hutong
Announceing the formation of the Hutong
Hutong means a passage between rows of Siheyuan courtyard house, the traditional residence of Beijingers, each consisting of rectangle courtyard surrounded by one-storeyed tile-roofed houses. The quadrangles varied in size and design according to the social status of the residents. The big quadrangles of high- ranking officials and wealthy merchants were specially built with roof beams and pillars all beautifully carved and painted, each with a front yard and back yard. However, the ordinary people's quadrangles were simply built with small gates and low houses.
In fact, Hutong is passageways formed by many closely arranged quadrangles of different sizes. The specially built quadrangles all face the south for better lighting; as a result, a lot of hutongs run from east to west. Many small hutongs went north and south for convenient passage between the big hutongs. Thus Hutong formed.
Since then, Beijing has quite many Hutongs with different shapes, Lengths or directions. The shortest one is just 10 meters' long, and the narrowest Hutong is only about 40 centimeters' wide. some Hutongs have more than 20 turns. And slanting Hutongs also appeared due to the terrain. The majority of hutongs run straight from east to west, some from north to south. That has resulted from the need for houses to face south so as to take in more sunshine and resist cold wind from the north. Even though the city wasn't symmetrical, it promoted the development of the economy. In the inner city, all the places were designed for their functions. For instance, the Forbidden City was the court, and behind it was the market. The left side of the center was the place to worship ancestors, while the right side was for worshipping all kinds of gods. Later in the outer city free markets appeared due to the needs of the local people. Such as markets for furs, jewels, silk, hats and shoes, grain and so on. Gradually, some of these became shopping centers like Qianmen ( or the front gate ), Dongdan and Xisipailou (Xisi Archway).
However, transportation was not as convenient as today, so street peddlers emerged. They wandered from lane to lane selling various goods or providing all kinds of services. People could judge their goods from their singing or the sounds of their special instruments. At sunset, the peddlers selling food were among the first to come. The food they sold include Youzhagao, which is deep-fried twisted dough sticks, baked pan-cakes, seasoned millet mush, armen tea and so on. A little bit later, peddlers who sold vegetables of daily necessities would appear. A barber never shouts, his instrument is a big pair of scissors and an ironing stick. But now it's unusual to hear such melodious cries of sounds.
Beijing's hutongs are not only an appellation for the lanes but also a kind of architecture. It's the living environment of ordinary Beijingers. It reflects the vicissitude of society. Most of the Hutongs look almost the same with grey walls and bricks. Hutongs are a happy kind of place. There are often 4 to 10 families with an average of 20 people sharing the rooms of one courtyard compels. The main attraction of Hutong life is a friendly and interpersonal communication. Children living in one courtyard play together and grow up like one family. For the eldly, the charm comes from each other's company.
Well, is Beijing denying 700 years of its history by destroying many of its hutongs? Recently, a new style of apartment building has been built in Beijing. Even though, it has four stories, it is built in the same way of Siheyuan and it has a very traditional name: Ju'er Hutong or the Chrysanthemum Lane. People who live there enjoy the convenience of modern facilities while maintaining good relations with their neighbours.
Variety of Hutong in Beijing
How many kinds of Hutong in Beijing?
When the Hutong was fist built, you can find streets and Hutongs. At that time, there was a clear definition for a street or a lane. A 36-metre-wide road was called a big street. An 18-meter-wide one was called a small street. And a 9-metre-wide lane was called a Hutong. Later, hutong can be normally divided into two kinds.
One kind of hutongs, usually referred to as the regular hutong, was near the palace to the east and west and orderly arranged along the streets. Most of the residents of these hutongs were imperial relatives and aristocrats.
Another kind, the simple and crude one, was mostly located far to the north and south of the palace. The residents were merchants and other ordinary people.
There are at present some 6000 Hutong in Beijing. In the wider ones two buses can pass. The narrowest spot is the southern end of Gaoxiao Hutong, through which only one person can walk at a time. The longest, Rongxian (Embroidery Floss) Hutong, is two kilometers long. The shortest is Yichi Dajie (One-foot street), which is actually twenty meters long. The gray-tiled houses and deep alleys crossing with each other in identical appearance like a maze, you will find it much fun to walk through but be care not to lost yourself.
The longest alley: East and West Jiaomin Xiang (Alley)
East Jiaomin Xiang (Alley) and West Jiaomin Xiang lie in parallel with Chang'an Jie (Street) to the north. The alley covers a distance from the Chongwenmenwai Street in the east to the Xinhua Street in the neighborhood of Hepingmen in the west. In the Ming dynasty, it was a waterway where the glutinous rice (called jiangmi in Chinese) transported from the South to Beijing was unloaded. Hence, the alley got the name Jiangmi Xiang. After the Opium Wars (1840-1842), some foreign embassies had been built one after another around the area; the name of the alley was therefore changed to Jiaomin Xiang (literally, Jiaomin Xiang refers to an alley with foreign embassies and people from different countries).
The longest oblique street
The longest oblique street in Beijing consists of three parts: Zhaodenyu Road, Taipingqiao Street and Tonglinge Road. It covers a distance from the Xizhimennei Street in the north to the West Xuanwumen Street, crossing the Fuchengmennei Street and Fuxingmennei Street, and.
The shortest street: Yichi Dajie (one-foot Street)
Yichi Dajie is situated to the southeast of the east entrance to the East Liulichang. It is the shortest street in Beijing with a total length of merely more than ten meters. Now it has been part of the Yangmeizhu Xiejie (Red Bayberry and Bamboo Oblique Street).
The narrowest alley: Gaoxiao Alley
Gaoxiao Alley is located in the neighborhood around East Zhushikou in Chongwen District. The narrowest spot in the alley measures only a little more than sixty centimeters wide. Later, it has been found that the Xiaolaba (Little Trumpet) Alley situated near Yong'an Road to the west of Tianqiao measures only some fifty centimeters at its narrowest, while in Qianshi Alley situated in the area of Dazala, Qianmenwai, the narrowest place is merely forty centimeters wide.
The alley with the most turns: Jiudaowan Alley
Jiudaowan Alley located in Beixinqiao in Dongcheng District has more than twenty turns in it. The alley has now been divided into five shorter ones, namely, East Jiudaowan Alley, West Jiudaowan Alley, South Jiudaowan Alley, North Jiudaowan Alley and Middle Jiudaowan A Stories of Hutongs
Stories behind Hutongs
Beijing's hutongs are more than just architecture. They are the people who live there. They are a museum of Beijing's folk custom and they are a witness to the city's history. Many hutongs have a story behind them. Near the Forbidden City in the heart of old Beijing is a hutong called "the Weaving Girl" named after the daughter of a god who descended to the human world with her sisters to swim in a river and then proceeded to fall in love with a cowherd. Her enraged father, the Celestial Emperor, took the girl back and separated the couple with the Milky Way.
On the opposite side of the Forbidden City, there used to be a Cowherd Bridge. Flanked by the cowherd and the weaving girl, the suggestion was that the feudal emperors living in the Forbidden City were the sons of Heaven.
Another example is a bell tower in the north part of Beijing. The bell in it served as a watch for the city. It told people when curfew was, or when officials should go to court. The bell was made of iron in the Ming dynasty about 600 years ago. It didn't sound loud enough to reach the whole city, so the emperor ordered the master who was famous for making bells to make a new bronze bell. The master tried his best, but failed. None of the bells he made was good enough. However, the deadline was approaching. He had to make a last attempt. The master's daughter was worried. She knew that if her father couldn't finish the bell on time, the whole family would be killed. Having no other alternatives, she threw herself into the melting bronze. A nice looking, good quality bell was made. Its sound reached the whole city.
Hutongs are where Beijing people, especially the old Beijing people, live, so they are known as a window onto Beijing folk life. And some people even consider hutongs as the " encyclopedia of Beijing" or the " museum of the history and culture of Beijing".
