We recently had some friends visit us in Beijing, an occurrence which was a wonderful reminder of how many amazing sights there are in this city. Instead of the major tourists hot spots like the Forbidden City, our friends enjoyed the smaller, more tucked away treasures. The Llama Temple was a favorite, as was eating street food and walking around in the hutongs. We did hit the main highlights (hey, ya got to!), like the Great Wall at Mutianyu and the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, but the real days of exploration and discovery involved the more local favorites, Jingshan Park after the rain, Houhai on a weekend, etc.

Above (image) a very crowded summer-time Forbidden City. The palace was so packed we had to wait in “line” to peek into each throne room. On the other hand, the Great Hall of Clocks provided air conditioning and an early glimpse at China’s attempts to reverse engineer Western technology.

Above (image) Mutianyu. Surprisingly, this favored section of the Great Wall was not that busy mid-week in late May. It was, however, beautiful and worth the drive up. Our guests couldn’t have dreamed of better weather for their Great Wall day.

Above (image) of a side street off Nanluoguxiang. Our guests enjoyed waking up and strolling around the hutongs in search of coffee and adventure. They usually succeeded in one of the two. People watching in the hutongs is a great way to pass some relaxing time. The little window at 12sqm Bar & Cafe was a great place to peek out at the world.

Above (image) of a very un-crowded Llama Temple mid-week. The guests enjoyed this a great deal. It has easy access, isn’t swarmed with camera-touting tourists in floppy hats and smells like sandalwood.

With the current crackdown on foreigners the guests did have to deal with the raging xenophobia common in China. They don’t have other “races” to deal with so they don’t know how not to be racist. Unfortunately, they project all of this on foreigners, which is a broad term that can mean basically anyone who isn’t Han. We had a hard time getting cabs, even though dozens would screech by empty and looking for Chinese passengers. Our poor guests also had several doors rudely shut in their faces. At the Summer Palace the guard told them to go buy tickets to get into a temple, they went, got in line and when they handed the lady their money she slammed the little window down on them, the guard then shut the temple doors.  The same thing happened at closing time at Jingshan park and again on their last night at the Bird’s Nest. A shame, but then it is also an accurate picture of a broad swath of people who dislike and distrust anyone non-Han. The crackdown had many other adverse effects, including random passport checks and a crackdown on foreigners riding the subway without their “papers.” This added a lot of stress and was a pain in the ass for tourists and was, essentially, a pointless campaign. Still, I doubt it ruined their experiences.

As many of you know, we moved into a Beijing hutong– a traditional single-story home in a traditional maze of houses that makes up a close-knit community. Anyways, its been a bumpy and rewarding ride. I recently painted the interior of the hutong, spending a bit of my own cash to fix up the place. Here are some before and after pictures, which I know everyone loves.

The Office:

Before

Middle

After

The Living Room:

Before

After (same view)

Bedroom:

Before

After

Anyways, life in a hutong has been a bit of a rewarding challenge:

The upside:

• Culturally relevant
• Close to Beijing’s unique culture
• Large and relatively affordable

The downside:

• Vacant and dismissive landlord
• Shoddy construction, ongoing problems
• Expensive utilities

Many of the reasons we decided to live in a hutong include the upsides listed above, but more importantly, the hutong homes in Beijing are so unique and beautiful that they really inspire a sense of living in another time. You can walk through the hutong alleyways at night, when the streets are void of sweet potato salesmen, street sweepers and thousands of meandering elderly folks, and it feels like you have time warped back a generation. Thats the number one reason we live in a hutong, the sense of time lapse and the feeling of being 100% in Beijing, and nowhere else.

As many of you know, we were recently evicted from our apartment in Beijing. This stellar nightmare had a surprisingly happy ending when we recently signed a one-year lease on a hutong ping’an in Beijing. The misery of finding a new apartment in Beijing in the middle of the freezing winter time was hard enough, but looking for a specific thing while freezing makes it hard to stay focused. After a week and a half of searching for apartments I finally found exactly what I wanted—a hutong building.

The apartment has a living room, master bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, dining room and extra guest bedroom and an office. In short, it is the biggest place I’ve ever rented. Additionally, it is in a hutong (a traditional-style courtyard village, where the entire community is in a 1sq kilometer block). One hutong home is called a ping’an. Since the communities expanded and grew, and more people moved in, they went from being the traditional courtyard surrounded by three large buildings, to a scattering of smaller homes and apartments at ground level, usually with a maze of alleys and passageways to smaller homes. Most hutong homes don’t have a bathroom, so public bathrooms are located around the hutong alleys. Ours has a bathroom.

I was so happy when I walked in and saw the ping’an that I knew it was where I wanted to live for the next month. A German fellow and his Chinese girlfriend were living there and the place was trashed! I mean, it was the most trashed home I’d ever seen. Piles of dirt and trash were strewn everywhere, clothes were piled on everything, furniture was piled on top of furniture and one whole room was stacked to the ceiling with unused appliances, furniture, trash and clothing. I had no idea how big some of the rooms were because of all the stuff! Nevertheless, the location was so great (near a bus stop, in a cultural hutong with great access to local pubs, cafes and shops) that I didn’t care about the mess. I made an offer on the spot.

The following day the landlord agreed to my offer (via an agent) and I paid a half month agent fee and watched the landlord pay the other half, everything was upfront. The landlord arrived and we started examining the mess. She said if anything was broken to let her know and she’d fix it. I later found via testing everything that almost all appliances were kaput! As of yet, the landlord hasn’t returned to fix anything, but she assures us she will next week. I have no reason to doubt that.

We signed a lease and paid three months rent and one month deposit. We then learned that we would be paying about another 1,000RMB a month in heating as the heating system was antiquated and the ping’an inefficiently insulated. We were so happy about the home we didn’t care. We spent the next three days cleaning out the mess, and even had a cleaning crew come in to help. After the cleaning crew left the mess was more manageable. It will take quite a while to get the place up to where we want it, but with a bit of paint and decorations the ping’an will be amazing. We’re so happy with the new place, despite the heating costs and multitude of broken appliances, that we just can’t wait to have it totally ready and get settled in!

Pictures will be forthcoming once we get the basics dealt with and figure out where to put everything.