Photos and stories about my expat experience in China, currently in Bejing.
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Monday, March 30, 2009

Another walk through a Beijing hutong/slum

Near the subway station of Da Zhong Si (大钟寺) in North West Beijing is a hutong that doesn't look like all the others. It seems to belong to a different place, time and culture. We had spotted the area from the elevated line 13 subway on our way to Wudaokou (五道口), a popular student area with many coffee bars and cheap restaurants, and decided to have a look.

After a walk of about 20 minutes through an industrial area and passing huge sky scrapers that were only half finished, we came upon this curious place.

The small houses are connected by their walls like in other hutongs, and thus forming long walls and a maze of small alleys. The walls of this hutong were all painted in attractive ochre. The people that live there are not used to seeing foreigners, as they all stared at me and called their friends: "Hey hey, a foreigner! Look!" and pointed at me. Other parts of Beijing are so saturated with foreigners that nobody looks up anymore.

The area is full of garbage, and looks more like a slum than like a normal neighborhood in some places. Inside many houses I saw piles of recycled paper, cardboard, plastic and glass bottles. The people walk around the city, collecting these things so they can sell it (for around 10 cents per kilo). This is China's efficient garbage recycling system and works remarkably well. The streets are clean (well, not really, but they are a lot cleaner thanks to these people who collect paper and bottles)

Railroad tracks run straight through the hutong, and some locals told us that sometimes even trains pass by. As usual, surrounding the hutong are huge sky scrapers, but the shacks on ground level are built from wooden boards and old bricks. Cooking pots are standing outside on the ground, and the laundry is hanging out to dry next to it.



Remember the Olympics? The figure on the plastic screen is "Huang Huang", one of the five cartoon mascottes. This piece of plastic once probably hung proudly along the route of the torch relay last year, but has now found its way to better use: preventing the rain from pouring in.


A lot of activity was going on: people selling vegetables, luring big bags filled with plastic bottles around, and kids playing everywhere. Old men were playing Chinese Chess on the street, and dogs and cats were sleeping in the gutter.



School had just gone out (around 4.30 PM) and kids with colorful hats and school bags were swarming around the place.


An old man collecting paper and card boards
The characters on the fence (中国) mean China



Two funny kids playing with their masks



Some discarded traffic signs and a pile of garbage

This bicycle taxi is for sale.

A big contrast between the wide and long avenues of modern Beijing. These little alleyways were small, dark and quiet. I wish I knew more about the background of this place, but perhaps it is better to leave it as a mystery.

1 comment:

jm said...

Some fantastic pictures again!

I once walked through a tiny hutong outside fourth ringroad, and because I was carrying my camera (with quite a big objective), people thought I was a reporter and asked me to write about the nearby factory that was poisoning their water...