When I went to Beijing (Peking then) to study Chinese at the University at the end of World War II, foreigners were advised to stay out of the hutongs. These back alleys were wicked and dangerous where rules of law didn’t apply. Of course, as a young student, I had to visit them and found them more than haunts of evil.
Somehow hutongs managed to hang on down through the years—until recently. To clean up the city for the coming Olympics 2008, these infamous back alleys are being demolished, or at least most of them. For those readers who wonder what a hutong is, let me explain something about them.
    Hutongs are Beijing’s ancient city alleys, or lanes, that run into the several thousand. Surrounding the Forbidden City, many were built during the Yuan (1206-1341), Ming(1368-1628) and Qing(1644-1908) dynasties. The center of the city of Beijing then was the royal palace—the Forbidden City.
   At the start hutongs were orderly and fashionable where imperial kinsmen and aristocrats lived. Buildings were a complex formed by four houses centred around courtyards. The big houses of high- ranking officials and wealthy merchants were specially built with roof beams and pillars all beautifully carved and painted, each with a front yard and back yard. However, the ordinary people's houses were simply built with small gates and low houses.
     With the collapse of the feudal system and during the period of the Republic of China (1911-1949), China entered its time of troubles. Chinese society was unstable, with frequent civil wars and repeated foreign invasions—such as the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 when the US Marines, and troops from seven other countries, stormed into Peking.The city of Beijing deteriorated and the conditions of the hutongs worsened. Houses previously owned by one family became a compound occupied by many households.After the founding of the people's Republic of China in 1949, hutong conditions improved, but maintaining law and order continued to be troublesome. The solution was to pull down the houses in many hutongs and replace them with modern buildings. Many hutong dwellers have moved to new housing.  Nevertheless, hutongs today still exist and provide housing for much of the poorer population. 
Ever since China opened her doors to the outside world some years ago, I wanted to make a return visit but with mixed feelings. I was worried. The China I once knew and loved could not possibly be the same. Would I like the changes I found in the new China? I tried to weigh my re-turning against old memories. After debating the pros and cons for several years, I decided to go back, to see for myself. Getting there was much easier than before. All I needed to do was board a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Beijing—far different than when I arrived by coal-burning train from Tsingtao.
   I was overwhelmed at what I found.
   Beijing, of course, was much different than when I first arrived—the sights, the sounds and even the smells.  Rickshaw and petticab drivers shouted warnings as they padded along; vendors clicked wooden blocks to gain attention; wood-burning lorries tooted their horns; and there was the general clamour of an excited city. In spite of having suffered from the war, shops were bulging with wares; foodstuffs hung in open fronts; meats and delicacies were displayed in glassless windows. Restaurants flew lively banners. Peddlers pushed heavy carts laden with vegetables and produce.
   And there was the dress: men in long black robes, women in high necked silk gowns, and some with bound feet, moving in short choppy steps. School children in national uniforms carried their books in bags hung over their shoulders.
   My home while going to school was Hostel No. 3, in the very centre of the city. It was a grand old stone building with high ceiling hallways and rooms, with no plumbing but with washbasins and pitchers of water.  The communal W.C. was down the hall.
   I had both happy and unpleasant memories of Beijing. Un-pleasant were the cold winters. When winter came the cold was almost unbearable. I dreaded the thought of returning to my room, where the only warmth came from heated bricks brought in by servants. I did all my studying in bed under the blankets.
   In spite of the loneliness, there was something exciting about becoming a student in a strange land. Life in Peking wasn't all studies, however.  I did much wandering around town and in the countryside on my own. If you liked walls, you liked China. We lived behind walls.  There was the massive, 12m thick outer wall that you had to pass through to enter the city. Then there was a second wall which enclosed the Tartar City, and within that a third wall around the Imperial City.  And in the very centre of all these walls was another walled city, the grandest one of them all—the Forbidden City.
   There were still other walls, like the 65 metre circular Whispering Wall of China, a true masterpiece of masonry. You can stand on the inside, close to the wall, and whisper something that can be heard by someone else on the opposite side with their ear close to the wall.  I liked to visit the Temple of Heaven. On the altar in a vast marble courtyard you could stand in one spot and hear your own echo while no one else could.
    That first winter within the walls of Beijing, I learned my way about the city along Hattaman Street (now called Chungwenmen) that gradually spread out into the hutongs. They were great to explore. I had to see them again.
Finally I was going back, aboard a THAI flight, and from 32,000 feet above I could look down at the Chinese countryside. It was late winter and the fields were brown, as I remembered them. And as before, small walled villages appeared.  No lone houses.

A China Emperor Chin created

Old gate in Beijing, 1948

Back alleys of the hutongs

A lady of the hutongs

Bicycles, main transportation

Shopping at the corner kiosk in the hutongs

Some of the best food found in the hutongs

Old women sit and gossip

Buildings that date back centuries

The walls of Beijing are endless

Photo of an arch taken by the author in 1948

For more about old Beijing read the author's Take
    China

Next week to explore Asia Outdoors

   But unlike the past, as we flew closer to Beijing, the landscape changed drastically. Progress! Buildings began to appear, and finally Beijing came into view. But where was the wall?  I couldn't see the outer wall.
   It was late when I got to my hotel but I couldn't turn in for the night, not with all Beijing beyond my doorstep.  I caught a taxi to Tiananmen Square. 
    I tried to get my bearings.  The new names of streets eluded me.  Where were Hattaman and the hutongs?  The driver stopped at the bridge facing the Forbidden City and to the left was Tiananmen Square.
    Tiananmen was far larger than I remembered. Over the next few days I learned it hadn't always been that big.  The Chinese rulers, in an effort to outdo the Russians, enlarged the square and patterned it after Red Square in Moscow.  
   I walked the streets that night until I was exhausted. The next day I began in earnest my rediscovery of old Peking.
   Beijing, certainly, is not the same place it was when I first came to know it.  From one and a half million population back then it has grown to over fifteen million today.  With the founding of the People's Republic of China, the city entered an era of change. With a soaring population, huge housing estates had to be built to accommodate them. 

I tried to find Hostel No. 3 where I had lived but without luck. Restaurants and shops I once knew no longer existed. The old thieves market was gone. And Hattaman Street was now a busy shopping thoroughfare with a different name.
  With great sadness I learned the great gates and outer wall around Beijing had been leveled and canals filled in to make room for modern thoroughfares.  No wonder I couldn't find them.  That magnificent ancient wall that surrounded the city, where it had once stood there was now a wide busy street.
   After the first day, it became obvious that many of the treasures of the past have been lost. But many still remain and anyone who is interested in the traditional life style of Beijing can still seek out and find what they want. 
There were moments of pure joy as I walked through the city, when I felt the curtain of time fall back. My biggest re-discovery was the hutongs, the back alleys, the side street communities of courtyard houses.
   "You don't want to go there," my guide said.  "There's nothing there." How wrong he was. When I said I would go alone and began studying my map, he agreed to lead me. 
   In the hutongs of Beijing nothing has changed.  There is no vehicular traffic, only cycles and pedestrians. What pleasure to walk again through these crooked, narrow, meandering alleys with no order or direction. They were a maze of narrow lanes with time-worn doors, sagging lintels, shutters hanging on bent hinges, and sunlight filtering down in pencil-thin shafts. And here, warming themselves in the sun, the old people gather and sit. The old women of Beijing, in somber dark clothing, gold teeth that flash when they smile, bouncing their grandchildren and their great grandchildren on their knees. A few older women had bound feet. I found myself sitting with them, talking to them. Chinese expressions came flowing back, expressions that I hadn't used or even heard in many long years. 
   And nowhere is Chinese food better than in the hutongs, in the food stalls and noodle shops, in the small, two- and three-table eateries.  I ate until I thought I was going to burst, dishes I hadn't had since I left China.
   I was thrilled that I had I made a return visit to China. Remnants of old Peking are still there. And for certain, modern Beijing is one of the world's greatest cities, and one of the proudest of cities in the world. It's clean, safe and with little crime.  No graffiti marks the building or temple walls. The cleaning force that maintains the city are the people themselves, school kids, office and government workers, young and old, all who gather with buckets and brushes and literally scrub the streets and monuments.  And once a year, every citizen is bound to plant a tree.  It wasn't that way at all when I was first there. 

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Dear Harold Stephens, I enjoyed your stories on safaris in the Malay jungle, including the search for Big Foot, which you made with my late Uncle Tunku Bakar. In your stories you wrote about your guide Bujong. I would like to inform you that I have located Bujong in his village and invited him to Mersing. He is doing well, still serves as a jungle guide and he remembers you well. I am sending you his photograph. Do come to visit at my resort on Rawa Island. Maybe I can arrange for Bujong to be there at the same time. Your friend, Tunku Mahmood Shah of Johor

Dear Tunku (Prince) Mahmood, Thank you very much for the photograph.  I am enclosing it along with an earlier photo of Bujong and me on the Endau in Malaysia for our readers also so see. Bujong had just cut a vine for me to drink from. I would certainly enjoy meeting him again, and on your island. Perhaps one day soon. --HS

Harold Stephens
Bangkok
e-mail: ROH Weekly Travel

Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited.

Stephens left, drinking from vine cut by Bujong,
right, 1972

Photo of Bujong today, sent by Tunku Mahmood of
    Johor

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