1 The history of Hutong
First of all, I would like to start with the term …Hutong‟, H-U-T-O-N-G what does Hutong mean?
According to experts, the word Hutong originated from
Mongolian language meaning …Well‟. In ancient times,
people tended to gather and live around wells. So the
original meaning of Hutong should be …a place where
people gather and live.‟ Another explanation says that
during the Yuan Dynasty, about 13th century, residential
areas in the city were divided into many divisions.
Between the smaller divisions were passageways for
people to travel through. And those passageways also
functioned as isolation belts against fire risks. In
Mongolian language, passageways of this kind were
called Hutong. But no matter what Hutong exactly
means, one thing is for sure, that is, Hutong first
appeared in Beijing during the Y uan Dynasty.
In the early 13th century, a Mongolian tribe
from the north became very strong. Led by Genghis Khan,
the Mongolian occupied Beijing, the capital of the Jin
Dynasty. In the year 1271, Kubla Khan, the grandson of
Genghis Khan, ounded
Yuan Dynasty and set Beijing as the capital city
in the following year. Unfortunately, the old city was
completely destroyed during the war. So they had to
rebuild it. In old China, all the structures and roads
were required to be symmetrical. So the city was well
designed. First, they had to find a center, and then
built a regular square city. The layout of the city was
very much like a chessboard. About 50 residential areas
were constructed, with straight roads and Hutongs in
between. At the time, there was a clear
definition for avenue, street and Hutong. A
37-metre-wide road was called an avenue, an
18-metre-wide one was called a street, and a
9-metre-wide lane was called a Hutong.
Most of today‟s Hutong were formed during
the Ming and Qing Dynasties that followed. Nobody
knows exactly how many
Hutongs there are in nowadays Beijing. But
one thing is for sure, if we connected all the
Hutongs together, their total length would even be
longer than the famous Great wall, which is about
4000 miles longer. Or to make it clear, it could
build a highway from Seattle to Boston, all across America!
Today you can find various Hutongs with
different shapes, lengths or directions.The shortest one
is only 40 centimeters wide, which means a person like
me has to walk sideways to get through. And some Hutongs have more than 20 turns.
With the growth of the population, many old
Hutongs have disappeared to make way for high-rise apartments. Today I‟m very happy to show you some
well-preserved Hutongs, and to let you experience the typical Chinese life. Are you ready? Let‟s go!
As we walk through the Hutongs, you may find
most of them look almost the same with gray-colored walls and bricks. Actually inside those walls are the courtyard houses, where people live. In Chinese we call them ...siheyuan‟. (i)
literally means four, …he‟ means to surround,
and …yuan‟ refers to the courtyard. So a rectangular
wall enclosing four houses, one built on each side
facing into the center, is called a Siheyuan. When they were first built, usually one Siheyuan was owned by only one family, but nowadays, with the growth of the population, most Siheyuans are shared by 4 to 10 families.
The gate building of each Siheyuan is the
only thing that we can see along the Hutongs.
Chinese people used to try to
protect their privacy from being intruded
by strangers. So the gate building, in old times,
was a symbol to show the position of each house owner. You don‟t have to go inside the courtyard.
Just look at the gate building, you can already
tell whether it‟s an influential family or not.
Look at this one, the gate building is big and
tall. The head and eave of the gate are well decorated
with brick carvings. See the design? Plum blossoms and bamboos. It indicated that the original owner of this courtyard must have been an official serving in the emperor‟s court. But look at that one nest door, it has
