Historical hutongs

If you’ve never seen Qianshi Hutong before, don’t blame yourself: with an average width of 70cm, it is by some way the narrowest hutong in the city, and easy to miss. Located just off Zhubaoshi Jie, it was once the banking capital of Qing Dynasty Beijing (1644-1912), being home to some 26 mints. People also exchanged money here, as the narrow space made it hard for any would-be thieves to evade capture.

 

Equally quirky is Jiuwan Hutong, which is based off Liuxue Lu and lives up to its name, ‘Nine Turns’, by being the most crooked alley in Beijing. With nine 90-degree corners, this winding little street seems to stretch on forever. Be wary, however: entering via the west entrance (on Xiaowei Ying Hutong) is considered to be bad luck, and there are documented cases of people being mugged in its twisty confines.

 

A little bit more bright and shiny is Dongjiaominxiang, located south of the National Museum of China. Once connected to Xijiaominxiang, but now divided by Tiananmen Square, it was filled with foreign embassies from 1900 onwards, hence the Western-style architecture that makes it an unusual example of hutong redevelopment, and a historically protected site.

 

A less salubrious side of old Beijing can be found in Qianmen-area Bada Hutong (pictured), established in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) after folks in the wood industry settled there. As the centuries rolled by, shops turned to brothels and priorities changed from selling wood to giving it. Bada bing! The most famous of the many ladies who served here was Sai Jinhua, who became a concubine for the scholar Hong Jun and subsequently opened a brothel. She supposedly kept a relative peace in the area during the Boxer Rebellion, convincing the allied supreme commander to stop his men from causing a ruckus. How did she achieve this? We wouldn’t like to speculate, but we certainly have our suspicions.

 

Not that the area was all salaciousness, no sir – while brothels persisted as late as the 1950s in nearby Hanjia Hutong (some even had brass signs outside), it was also the birthplace of Beijing opera. In 1790, opera troupe San Qing Ban came from Hangzhou to perform in the area. Though they were hardly the first to do so, they had a special assignment that placed them above their peers: a performance at the 80th birthday of Emperor Qian Long. He liked them so much he encouraged them to settle in Hanjia, planting the seeds for the city’s opera as we know it. Whether or not the opera players had much interaction with their risqué neighbours, we don’t know. But we’re sure they made a racket either way...