Welmer

For centuries the people of Beijing have dwelt in neighborhoods defined above all by the hutongs, clusters of small, brick houses built around a communal courtyard, surrounded and connected to each other by a labyrinthine network of narrow alleys. Hutongs are usually enclosed by brick walls, upon which broken glass is set in a thin layer of concrete to deter intruders. For outsiders - and particularly those who have never been in a hutong before - moving around through the enclosed neighborhoods requires a guide. It is very easy to get lost in an unfamiliar hutong, and the high walls make navigation by landmark nearly impossible. One must instead rely on small signs and clues that are easily missed by the unfamiliar visitor.

As Beijing has transformed itself over the last few decades, the city has set about purging the “old” and replacing it with the “new.” Part of this process has resulted in the destruction of countless hutongs, torn down brick by brick to make way for office buildings, apartment blocks and shopping centers. Although Americans and Europeans may find it difficult to understand what they view as the wanton destruction of cultural heritage, it is important to keep in mind that the old China, full of hunger, war, poverty and bitterness, is still remembered by many Chinese. Spending cold nights in a little brick house, hovering around a sooty coal stove, eating old fried cabbage and rushing to and from a communal toilet is not as romantic as it may appear from the outside.

By the time I lived in Beijing, native Beijingers had already been fleeing hutongs for years. Most of the time I spent in the common hutongs (as opposed to the classier ones inhabited by the privileged) was for the purpose of buying pirated VCDs and such from the rural migrants who scrape by in Beijing through whatever means they can. Hutongs, confusing and impenetrable as they are, were great for black market dealing. After I would meet the dealer’s associate - usually a young farm boy with a dirty face and thin, shabby clothes - he would guide me through the crumbling brick neighborhood, and along the way I would be exposed to frame after frame of unadorned humanity, cooking over a coal stove here, reclining on a blanket on the floor there, washing clothes, talking, all the while living entirely out of view of the rest of the city.

Given the state of the hutongs I saw, many of which were ancient neighborhoods in a state of disrepair and largely inhabited by squatters, it is little wonder that they are being torn down to make way for highrises and apartment buildings. The problems with the olds hutong go beyond mere delapidation; they pose a sanitation problem as well. Until fairly recently, much of Beijing’s human waste was not flushed through sewers, but rather scraped out of a trench in public lavatories and hauled off in carts to nearby farms as a fertilizer. Understandably, Chinese no longer wish to live this way, so for many old neighborhoods lacking the necessary infrastructure there is no practical alternative to razing them.

Despite the relief many Beijingers must feel as they climb toward modern urban standards, there will come a time when they begin to reflect on what they have lost in the process. As the memories of coal smoke, stinking toilets and rotten cabbage fade, the pleasant, quaint aspects of life in the hutongs of old Beijing will introduce a hint of nostalgia into the public consciousness. Fresh snow on the courtyards in the morning, late night mah-jong under a gas light, watching the children play in the alleyways — all these things will ensure the survival of the hutong in the collective memory of Beijing.

Eventually, these fonder memories of hutongs will guarantee their physical survival as well, albeit in a different form. In time, Beijing will likely build new hutongs with indoor plumbing, insulation and clean heating. The hutong may be endangered for the time being, but China has not been around for thousands of years because the Chinese throw away all that defines them as a people. Despite the triumphant monumentalism that marks China’s return to its ancient, proper place in the world and characterizes the Beijing we all see today, the very soul of Beijing dwells in a little brick house on a narrow alley, and neither China nor the rest of the world wants to see it shut up in an office building.