China: Beijing Hutongs

Ancient Beijing residences were built along narrow, twisting alleyways called hutongs.

Originally one family, often including several generations, lived in a house built around a central courtyard. As the population grew, the residences were subdivided to house several families. Eventually even the courtyards were divided into two or three residences. After 1948, a lot of the “hutong grid” was torn down to make room for high-rises and wider streets, but areas of hutongs still exist.

A big downside of living in the hutong neighborhood is that there is no sewer system, so everyone uses public showers and public toilets placed every few blocks or so. The homes do have all the rest—running water and heat and air conditioning. 

We were told that many who could afford to move elsewhere have stayed in the hutong area because of the sense of community there. Despite the inconvenient bathroom situation, the property is very desirable and high-priced because of its central location in Beijing. A tiny house (3 rooms?) goes for $1 million (U.S. dollars). Locally they call such tiny places, even if they are modern condos, "birdcages.” 

Our bus took us to the edge of a hutong area, then about 15-20 pedacabs (bicycles pulling a carriage for two people) were summoned, and the pedacabs took all 39 of us through the hutongs to a residence where an older lady lives with her dog. Her home consists of three rooms that had previously been part of a large residence owned by her family for generations. Her kitchen had at one time been a storage area of the big house. The owner's niece lives nearby and was on hand to welcome us. We were served tea, and most of us found places to sit. 

This family is one that has a long tradition of the art of painting scenes on the inside of glass bottles with watercolor paints. Yes, it's true. The niece gave us a demonstration of the painting technique, in which the bristles of a paintbrush are bent at a 90° angle from the handle. 

China Diary: The Summer Palace

BEIJING: THE SUMMER PALACE

Another 40-minute bus ride, another historical marvel. The Summer Palace is on a lake that was enlarged to be about three times its size and has nice breezes. The emperor and then the Dowager Empress spent 6 months there each year when the other palace was too hot. The dowager empress, also known as the Dragon Lady, wormed her way into power for 48 years, and along the way she had two people poisoned and one emperor put on house arrest for years while she ruled instead of him. Quite a lady.  

These are some sculptures outside the palace:

 

Every day the empress walked along a beautiful covered walkway, about a half mile long, that parallels a canal with pond lilies. The setting is tranquil and serene.

The walkway is decorated with rows of stones made into flower and tree designs. The roof line of the walkway is decorated with 14,000 (!) paintings depicting scenes, including many scenes from well-known children's stories and legends.

 

At the end of the terraced walkway was a boat structure made of marble.

China Diary: Beijing landscaping and the Temple of Heaven

FIRST MORNING IN CHINA
Beijing

What a great first day. Perfect weather. Our tour guide for all of Beijing, Frank, is wonderful--affable, and provides great history about Beijing and each excursion we go on. Get this: He got a university degree in electrical engineering at a fairly elite university here, and then was assigned by the government (no choice) to the tourism bureau because there were openings there and not in his field. He is no longer with the tourism bureau because he took  classes on the side and started free-lancing.

I’m very impressed with all of the greenery, landscaping, and parks everywhere in Beijing. Roses are in bloom and many of the roads and freeways have long rows of rosebushes along the way, as shown in these photos taken from the bus.

The Temple of Heaven

We went to the Temple of Heaven, where the emperor went twice a year to pray to the ancestors for good harvest. This main temple (below)  was rebuilt 1880ish after it was struck by lightening and burned. They imported logs from Oregon for the main timbers that support the 3 roofs. No metal used in the entire thing, and it withstood a 7.8 earthquake later.  This round temple is on the top level of a huge terrace, with rectangular  buildings on the lower levels. 

Each circular terrace shown above has carved posts along the top of the railing and stone dragon heads along the base (below).

 

Below are some details of the tiles and decorations of the temple.

At Countdown

Here in LA, I'm ready to launch. We are here 2 days with family before catching the flight to Beijing on Saturday. The plan (now referred to as the "wise plan") was to break up the total flight time, reduce the jet lag (by only 3 hours, I know, but it all counts), and chill a little.

Hooray for the chilling part. Unusual for me, I had a lot of tension, preparing to go. Hell, it took me 30 minutes just to write out the cat-sitter instructions, and she already knows the cats, waters the garden, feeds the fish, fills the pond, tends the plants. But all of that was before the dreaded give-Moss-a-pill-every-day period. But I digress.

While we are here in LA, we are kicking back. I am writing a blog post. Tom? He is learning Mandarin. I am not making this up. Ni hao (hello). Ching (thank you). He's having a little trouble with "my wife is bugging me, and did you know she is a CIA agent sent here to foment dissent?"

I do hope we don't crash. Some of you know I am afraid of flying. Not a legitimate phobia, but an irrational panic, whenever there is turbulence, that we will crash  A wing will fall off. The plane will flip over and then nose-dive to earth. We will just rattle to death.

Take-offs and landings are also very difficult, and don't even start me on landing with turbulence. This China trip will reveal the stuff I'm made of. Or not. We have one connecting flight between LA and Beijing. Two connections on the way home. But INSIDE CHINA we will have three different flights, on those little, teeny tiny, foreign airlines that you can't trust to have anti-turbulence tactics or counter-turbulence equipment. (OK, on the bright side, not Malaysia Airlines.)

So, farewell, until I write you from the other side. No, no, not the other other side. I mean the other side of earth. Because we won't crash. We won't crash. We won't crash.