Disappearing legacy

A couple of times I've made reference in the blog to "Hutongs" and one day writing a post about them. Well, no time like the present, a very early Saturday morning.

Hutongs derives from an ancient Mongolian term "Hottog" meaning water well. Centuries ago, as towns and villages grew, the wells dug by villagers formed the centers of new communities. The Hutong actually refers to the alleys formed by rows of traditonal courtyard residences called "siheyuan", alleys tending to be no wider than 30 feet and some as narrow as 1.5 ft. As one siheyuan is joined to another it results in a hutong or alley, though the word has now become commonly used for the neighborhoods themselves.

Siheyuans provide space, comfort and privacy, they were designed according to traditional 5 elements concepts, the gate at the southeast corner representing the wind, the house faced the south while the main building was on the north, representing water, an element to prevent fire. The courtyard itself provides an open-air living space drawing heaven and earth into people's hearts.

I saw reference in my research to the Siheyuan, with it's tough outside but open inside courtyard resembling the character of the Chinese people.

The recent focus on Beijing for the 2008 Olympics has given way to a sad story about making way for the future at the expense of the past.

Since the middle of the last century, hutongs have dropped in number dramatically, some sources indicate one third of the land once occupied by Hutongs in Beijing have now been wiped clean to make way for the moderization of Beijing. The Beijing Municipal Construction Committee stated in 2004, some 250,000 square meters of old housing – 20,000 households – would be demolished in 2004. To say that this is solely a result of the coming olympics would be incorrect. It's been widely documented that the disappearance of the Hutong way of life actually started in the 1950's.

History of the Hutong
Emperors planned the city of Beijing during the Zhou Dynasty (1027 - 256 BC). According to etiquette systems the Forbidden City was in the center, surrounded in concentric circles by the Inner City and Outer City. Citizens of higher social status were permitted to live closer to the center of the circles.

The large orderly and lined siheyuan of these high-ranking officials and wealthy merchants often featured beautifully carved and painted roof beams and pillars and carefully landscaped gardens. To the north/south, were merchants, artisans and laborers. Their siheyuan were far smaller in scale and simpler in design and decoration, and the hutongs were narrower.

Siheyuan's were laid out so main buildings and gates faced south for better lighting; thus a majority of hutongs run from east to west. Between the main hutongs, many tiny lanes ran north and south for convenient passage.

As the Dynastic period came to an end during the early 20th century and the cultural foundation of hutongs was affected. During this time, Chinese society was unstable, I've written about this in some of the book reviews, especially the one called "Wild Swans". Civil wars, foreign invasion all took their toll on China, Beijing's luster deteriorated and hutongs were caught up in this evolution. Family Siheyuan's were subdivided by the government and shared by many households.

When the People’s Republic of China was founded (1949), hutongs disappeared, replaced by the high rises and wide boulevards of today’s Beijing. The traditional Family Unit and Feudal culture disappeared as citizens left the lanes where their families resided for generations for more modern dwellings. In one district along, Xicheng, 200 hutongs remain out of the original 820, this figure closely represents the overall % left across all of Beijing.

Though far from ideal in terms of saving the past alongside the future, there is a silver lining in the cloud. A number of Beijing’s ancient hutongs have survived the purge, designated protected areas, offering a glimpse of life in the capital city as it has been for generations. The areas best preserved are in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Shichahai Lake, some several hundred years old.

So as you visit China, perhaps Beijing specifically for your adoption or the Olympics or just 'because', you may want to take a few hours to visit the old world, to see centuries of tradition that still stand today, there is no guarantee they will be there tomorrow. The Hutongs, a way of life, a symbol of a nation.