Advertisement
Published: April 21st 2012
Hutongs are the typically neighbourhoods that you can find in Beijing.
We were taken to them by rickshaw. Afterwards we walked through the small streets. I found it quite typical. I had never seen something like this before. Inside the streets you can see small shops like bicycle repair but also people on the streets selling hot potatoes,... In one of the shops, I bought some flowering tea: dried flowers are wrapped inside a bundle of dried tea leaves. When you put this in hot water, it looks like a blooming flower. We even saw a shop were you could buy Belgian chocolate, felt like home...
Nowadays the number of hutongs has dramatically dropped. Many of them had to disappear to make way for new buildings. I've got the expression with the Olympic Games coming this was even becoming worse. To preserve this typical aspect, some of the hutongs are nowadays protected areas.
We also visited the Beijing Bell Tower. From there we got an excellent overview above the hutongs. According to the legend, the bell maker's daughter fell into the molten iron before the clock was made. Afterwards we visited the Drum Tower.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 44; dbt: 0.043s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Bicycle repair in Hutong
