Hutongs Part 2 Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong
My Chinese rogue deposited in the middle of Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong (alley). I didn’t know which way was north or south or how far an end was until I walked far enough to work it out. In any event it didn’t matter.
Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong is north of the Forbidden City and east of the lakes. It is a north south hutong of almost 800 metres built over 700 years ago. It was renovated prior to the 2008 Olympic Games. According to one website it was widened by the demolition of rooms from the front of some buildings. Parts of it probably looked like the hutongs around Qianamen in the photos which I posted previously. It has smaller hutongs running off it at right angles. I read somewhere that it is the last remaining such hutong area in Beijing as the remainder are higgly piggly without straight streets.
Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong has become a tourist mecca with the opening of restaurants, bars, handcrafts and knick nack shops. The locals are still there but it’s impossible to know how many when they are secreted behind high walls. The vast majority of tourists anywhere in China are domestic ones with fewer foreign tourists with increasing distances from Beijing or other major sites.
One part of Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong
Another
The red colour is material and makes a colourful display. Not sure how it would cope with rain.
The red cover over the door is common in my city. It is heavy and padded and serves to retain heat inside. All of the others I’ve seen have been army green.
Tourists in the street
A display of double sided embroideries. ie. The technique is such that they can be viewed from either side.
This shop assistant was wearing some of the stock & moving her arms in response to music.
Unrenovated shops
A residential entrance. There was a sign on the wall describing some of its renovation.
Sign on the door requesting privacy. There was one one elewhere too.
Peeping through an unrenovated doorway.
Delivery duty
Garbage services
Entrance to a coffee shop where I rested.
Entrance to a modern, clean toilet block. The cubicles had doors too.
One of the hutongs running from Nan Luo Gu Xiang Hutong.
Another
Car being driven too fast and with excessive horn honking in a narrow street. Driver was also talking on his phone which is normal. Some cars have stickers to customise them. This one also had the leopard skin sticker on the back door.
Another renovated property in a side alley with garages.
Never seen a green door before. They have always been a reddy rusty colour.
Roasted chestnuts in one of the side hutongs.
A bicycle rickshaw which there were numerous in the general area.
Old motorbike and side car parked in a side hutong outside a government building.
Dried chickens hanging over the chess set.
I was photographing this residential building when a young woman emerged from the building beside it. After acertaining that I could speak English she asked if I would provide some advice on the correct answer to a worksheet they were using in the English school. After doing that she then invited me inside where we discussed correct answers and English some more. She would have kept me there for ages if I’d been willing. However, it was getting late and dark and I was still to make my way to a main road, cross it and find my next loctions. Not an easy thing when light is limited or non existent.
There she is in part of the classroom. There was only one kid there and a youngish man. The kid sang me a song as thanks and she offered me a job teaching English.
