Hutongs Beijing

Erin says:

Hutong Tour

Today was a half day of touring and then we were off to the ancient northwestern city of Xi'an. We started off the day by heading to one of many hutongs, or winding alley ways that used to cover all of Beijing. They are unique to this city and are quickly disappearing to make room for new, modern high rises …

Met the crew last night... Like the first day of school trying to remember names and what you know about each person! Some great people and some **** people as it always goes but we think we got a pretty good group. Up this morning and we all met in the lobby for our tour of the hutongs. The original china, winding alleyways and traditional …

Hey all!!!

So about a week ago now we arrived into Beijing after a 24 hour train ride from Mongolia.

Our first impressions coming in on the train were mixed - we passed some stunning mountain ranges but quickly hit some real industry, very different from what we'd been seeing in Mongolia. For what seemed like an age before we …

Not to be outdone by my super-studious husband who has three weeks to get as much Mandarin in his brain as possible with the help of Capital Mandarin School and my kids who are going to language and culture camp there, I had to find something productive to fill my Beijing time. Studying Chinese is not on my personal bucket list, but becoming more …

I apologise in advance. I have taken 341 pictures over the last two days, and I have not yet decided which ones are worth showing or not! Obviously I won't be uploading all 341, but even so. SO MANY PHOTOS!

Beijing has all of a sudden got REALLY hot. 34°C with 52% humidity hot. That gives a RealFeel of 41°C. It's horrifically hot. I just …

Traders Hotel in Beijing is beautiful, extra clean and we woke up to an amazing breakfast. They had everything I could think of and more… Breakfast was by stations so every morning I went to the egg station and the very nice Chinese man made me a delicious omelet and of course I had hash browns with tons of ketchup… YYYummzzzie! I tried …

Ni hao, everyone!!

Today was the longest day ever but it was so fun. In the morning, we went to Tiananmen Square. It's huge and in the middle there's this big statue that's a monument to all the soldiers that died in the revolution. On one end there's like eight buildings that are a memorial to Chairman Mao, and apparently people come and …

We had the best breakfast of our lives today. This was no "continental breakfast" with a croissant and some jam. There was American food with eggs, sausages, all types of pastries, toast, and even a cook that will make an omelet for you any way you like. In addition to that, there's the Chinese breakfast...or it may be more accurate to call it a …

Today has been a long day and it's only 4 pm. A long and extremely interesting day; a stimulus/sensory overload. We walked past emperors' palaces, to impoverished shanty courtyard neighborhoods, then back again to Confucian temples where the brightest of the bright studied and taught, then to come full circle, we finished in the Hutongs of Beijing …

Beijing was completely different to what I remembered 10 years ago. There are LCD TV screens in Tiananmen Square, very tight security screening at every subway station and also when you want to enter the Square. The amount of Chinese tourists is phenomenal as well. The Chinese are very good
at being tourists in their own country but oh my …

... or issues. We are surrounded by traditional Chinese addon dwellings. "The Qianmen Hostel is in the heart of Old Beijing's traditional hutongs and small lanes. The hostel's three two-story buildings date back to 1850, featuring traditional inner open-air ...

... China in quite some time... all construction is stopping at the end of this month, and that has been a part of life as Beijing has built the equivalent of NYC in the past five years... they are deporting millions of migrant workers and telling them to ...

... flank the square, we were back on our bikes and headed home. The ride back brought us winding through some sweet hutongs, which are small traditional neighborhoods that wind around tiny streets that cars can barely fit through if at all.  When ...

Surrounding the Hutongs is the new Beijing--the concrete skyscrapers, the neon advertisements, the glitzy hotels. Like most Chinese cities, construction continues unabated, and with the Olympics around the corner, Beijing is preparing with gusto. ...

... the charts: "Honkin', Spittin', Smokin'." A new soap opera called "Daily Life of a Family Restaurant" is a daily event in the Beijing Hutongs. Or is that the actual name of the restaurant? (the food was as good as the ambience) Nearby is my ...

... , the places to walk, bike, and relax. During my seven day stay at the Far East Hotel, in the southern hutongs of Beijing, I met many interesting people from all over the world--England, Denmark, Malaysia, Austria, Australia, France, and the United ...

... wander around and fully immerse yourself in the "traditional" life.  In the rush to prepare for the Olympics, the number of Beijing hutongs has dwindled from 6000 to 2000.  That's 4000 less alleyways for people to live in and makes me wonder ...

... and clean three-star establishment. We checked in at noon and after a two hour rest we decided to hit the streets. Beijing's symmetrical grid system of modern boulevards is a constant and noisy flow of traffic, while, in the blocks in between the ...

... houses.  Formerly the homes of officials and the well-to-do, most are now state-owned.  As Beijing has modernized, only a few of the hutongs remain. We started our excursion at the Drum and Bell Towers and then walked through the alleyways of ...

... We ate some street food - I had a vegetable wrap for 3 Yuan - 20p which was really good. Street food is everywhere in the hutongs, it's fried up in temporary carts and is popular with locals and travellers alike. We found the girl's hostel and had a good ...