Digital BABA

Exploring Daily Life in Beijing and Collecting Impressions of the Common Good

The site visits are aimed at giving the BABA4 leaders a glimpse of what a typical day in the life of a Beijinger is like — from seeing the houses they live in, and how the districts are structured, and tasting the typical Chinese culinary dishes, and the markets they buy the ingredients from, to experiencing the common public transportation. With their own special experiences, BABA4 leaders will then be able to compare notes and tell each other “stories” of how a typical day is like in Beijing.

Since not all of us can visit all 4 sites, we will be divided into groups and be asked to choose which of the 4 sites we will want to visit.

Here’s some fascinating information about these sites to help us choose.

1. Site 1 – Shi Chai Hai: Liu Ying Jie and Nan Luo Gu Xiang Lanes.

Like a rare treasure, hidden inside Liu Ying Jie is Gongwangfu, which has an intriguing little story behind it.

As a young man of 22yrs, Heshen, shown on the left, who began working at the palace as an imperial bodyguard, was quickly noticed by Emperor Qianlong, reputedly because of his attractive appearance, porcelain-like skin and lucious, red lips. Emperor Qianlong’s relationship with the bodyguard is said to have been due to the fact that Heshen had an uncanny resemblance to an imperial maid who had hung herself, after having been unjustly accused of improperly caressing the young teenage Qianlong. Believing that Heshen was that maid’s second life, Qianlong bestowed on him decades of legendary attention and favor, apparently as his way of atoning for his guilt in the maid’s death.

Immediately after Heshen’s suicide in 1799 just days after Qianlong’s own death, all of his illegally-amassed wealth was confiscated by the new Emperor, Jiaqing, Qianlong’s son. Heshen’s ill-gotten fortune was reputedly said to have totaled more than what was at the national treasury at that time, an amount roughly equivalent to 15 years of revenue of the Qing government. It is with this ill-gotten wealth that Heshen built his home, the palace shown below, known today as Gongwangfu, or the palace of Prince Gong, widely accepted to be Beijing’s last princely palace.

Gongwangfu, covering 61,000 square meters, was built in 1776 and is now

Hutongs and Siheyuans

But much more than the story of Emperor Qianlong and Heshen, the site 1 visit is really aimed at getting us to experience, first-hand, two words that best describe old Beijing: Hutong and Siheyuan.

Gongwangfu is just one, but undoubtedly the most famous, among the many wangfus (palaces) found amongst the many, web-like complex of hutongs in the Shi Chai Hai area.

A hutong is a small alley or narrow passageway, oftentimes referred to simply as lanes, measuring not more than 9 meters in width. Ironically, while hutongs have come to represent the traditional Beijing, it is actually a Mongolian word which means “water well,” hinting to us how long ago these small access ways were first built. Although many of the present-day hutongs in Beijing were created during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1911), the most ancient ones date as far back as the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) when the Mongols ruled most of China.

As the Yuan Dynasty began rebuilding Beijing, much of which was destroyed by the Mongol hordes during the invasion, new houses in groups of 4 were built around water wells. Known as Siheyuan (si=4, he=together, yuan=house), or courtyard houses, this architectural model has now come to represent the old Beijing residential lifestyle. It is the spaces between these siheyuans that form the hutongs. Unlike the hutongs, siheyuans were not started by the Mongols, as this architectural tradition went back much further, being traced to as early as 2,000 years ago. The function, space utilization and much of the internal design of the 4 houses in a siheyuan were consistent with the traditional Chinese concepts of the 5 elements and the 8 diagrams of divination.

The Nan Luo Gu Xiang hutongs are lined with quiet, rustic coffee shops and laid-back, mom-and-pop type of stores selling endless varieties of handicrafts and novelty items.

What I find particularly special about hutongs and siheyuans are the stories that have spawned from the life experiences of the people living in these “museums of beijing’s customs,” as one author puts it. The Curtain Storehouse hutong, for example, got its name because the old bamboo curtains used by an Empress were kept in the siheyuans of that particular hutong; or the Silver Bowl hutong, which tells of a banished court official who ended up begging in that particular set of hutongs, but, not getting any food, he dropped dead one day and his bowl was thrown far away by the people there.

I can’t wait to join the site 1 visit and find out more about the “Skewed Tabacco Pouch,” the “Colored Glaze” and the “Brick Tower” hutongs!

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Note: All data and information used in this article were based on various internet sources, including wikipedia, private websites, and government portals. All pictures here are borrowed from these same websites. Where relevant, these sites are referenced as direct links throughout the article.