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The centre of Beijing is criss crossed with a grid of many hundreds of small lanes and alleyways. These are called hutongs and their layout dates originally from the Yuan dynasty in the 14th century. The number of hutongs in the city peaked in the 1950s at around 6000. Today, however, there are considerably less and more are disappearing each day because of the high premium on land and the rapid redevelopment of the city as it reinvents itself in time for the 2008 Olympics.

However, it is still possible to find and explore many fine hutongs. Several areas of the city that contain historic siheyuan - courtyard house - have also been deemed cultural treasures and hopefully will be preserved.

The following extract from the book Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron provides a wonderful and entirely accurate description of the hutongs.

"I abandoned the avenues and slipped down side-streets into a maze-world of alleys and courtyards. These hutongs are still the living flesh of Beijing, and once you are inside them it shrinks to a sprawling hamlet. The lanes are a motley of blank walls and doorways, interspersed by miniature factories and restaurants. Each street is a decrepit improvisation on the last. Tiled roofs curve under rotting eaves. The centuries shore each other up,. Modern brick walls, already crumbling, enclose ancient porches whose doors of beaten tin or lacerated pinewood swing in carved stone frames. Underfoot the tarmac peals away from the huge, worn paving-slabs of another age, and the traffic thins to a tinkling slipstream of pedicabs and bicycles".

I have recorded the demise of several hutongs in gallery 6. In particular, I have included several photographs of Zhugan Hutong (Bamboo Pole Hutong), one of my favourites, which was demolished in 2002. You can also find several photos of this hutong in other galleries, taken when it was still full of life.

Iain Masterton, March 2003