Beijing Hutongs

Hutong is the name of the thousands of old and narrow streets and alleys, which was a very typical scene in Beijing before. Now, they are unfortunately disappearing more and more. Many were built during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1200-1900 approx.) and they are located around the Forbidden City which was the imperial palace and the center of Beijing.

One sort of hutongs, usually called common hutongs, were neatly aligned along the Forbidden City on its eastern and western sides. On those streets lived mostly upper class people and aristocrats. A simpler kind of hutong was located on the north and south of the Forbidden City, and there lived mostly merchants and ordinary people.

The main buildings in a hutong were almost always in the form of a quadrangle, ie four houses positioned as a square around a center courtyard. The houses and the courtyard could vary greatly in size depending on who lived there. The rich obviously had much larger and taller houses with lavish architecture and sculptures. The ordinary people’s courtyards were much smaller and simpler, narrow aisles and low houses. Hutongs are in fact the aisles and corridors formed between these groups of buildings of different sizes. Most courtyards have their gates towards the south to get as much light as possible and that makes the biggest hutongs go from west to east. Between these are the mostly small aisles.

After the Qing-dynasty ended in 1911, it was very unstable in China with both civil wars and invasions from other countries. The city of Beijing began to decay and the hutongs deteriorated. Courtyards with all four houses previously owned by a single family was now often shared by several households.

After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 the conditions became better for the hutonges, but they are still disappearing. Many houses are demolished to build new modern high-rises and the former residents have moved. However, there are still very much hutongs detained in Beijing and half of the population in the city is said to still live in hutongs.

It is very popular for tourists to go around in a bicycle taxi among the hutongs around the Forbidden City and if you are really lucky, you can be invited to some family living there and treated for dinner. Many people can actually speak a little English.