01 Hutongs. Catch them while you can
On our first full day in the city we swung into tourist mode and visited a few hutongs near the Beijing Train station. Hutongs are narrow, traditional residential lanes found all over Beijing. Although they are a great place to explore (getting lost is expected and all part of the fun) and offer many great photo opportunities they are synomous with poverty, bad plumbing and decaying buildings and thus have no place in a modern China, the face of which is Beijing. Thus vast areas of hutongs are being destroyed in the push to modernise Beijing, particularly with the staging of the upcoming Beijing Olympics in 2008. Hutong, Qianmen, Beijing, China. February 8th, 2006
