The Brown Fox Dynasty: A Brief Trip Back in Time

OK, picking this up 8 months later…because while my schedule may not allow much free time, my OCD won’t allow me to leave anything unfinished either. ;P So if you’re interested, travel back in time with me and I’ll try and describe what the end of our China adventure was like…at least as well as I can remember it at this point. J

8/9/15

Sadly, after a mere 48 hours in one of the most AMAZING cities I have ever visited and one which I am dying to return to & explore, it was time to leave Xi’an. We departed for Beijing at the butt crack of dawn and upon landing, were immediately bused to another restaurant for another lavish meal. As you well know, I love food and rather enjoy eating my way around the globe, but this trip has definitely challenged the extent of this beloved hobby. We eat so frequently and there is so much food (portion control not being one of my super powers) during these hours-long meals that it all starts to run together and I find myself looking forward to returning to the “fast casual” dining experiences of the U.S. But don’t get me wrong, while I may not be able to remember what I am eating or start to feel the joy of eating tarnish a bit for me, I do remember that almost everything has been crazy delicious! ;) The upside to this, however, is that I’m starting to see food more from Nick’s perspective: food as a simple fuel and an often annoyingly time consuming one. [NN: Ha ha.]

Bell Tower

Drum Tower

Ceremonial Drums

Top of Drum Tower

Stupefied by the heat; taking a break in front of a pharmacy's A/C unit

Street-side gambling

But I digress (again). Once in Beijing, the first place we headed to was one of the few remaining hutong in the “old town” part of the city: a century-old neighborhood of small, tightly packed, haphazard courtyard homes, joined by shared, narrow alley ways. Most have been torn down to make way for all the new construction and high-rises, as a result of which, the ones that remain have come back into fashion – being rare and now extremely expensive – and are now highly prized real estate and tourist destinations. It was very cool though: like a brief trip back in time to pre-industrial China.

Hutong walkway

The tour group has a relationship with a local resident of the hutong that generously allowed us into his home for tea and “imperial” snacks. He was a 60 year old, former factory worker who chose to retire rather than sell his home when the government relocated his factory outside the city to reduce urban pollution before the Beijing Olympics. [NN: Wow if this super thick smog is much better than before the Olympics, wow!] He gave us a cultural/architectural history lesson (which our tour guide translated) that touched on life as a senior citizen in China, for which the government pays for everything. The home itself was 4 very small mismatched rooms, built into each other around a small, central courtyard that had been in his family for over 100 years (Wow!). Normally many families would come in and take sections of the house (a single family living in a single room), all sharing the central courtyard, but no one but his family members lived there now. He explained that like most in the hutong, he is very poor but could be very rich if he chose to sell his home (the buildings not being worth much but the land being worth $20,000/m²!!). [NN: This hutong was definitely outside the norm, as Cat already mentioned in most hutongs 4 full families share the 4 rooms off the courtyard, while this gentleman had lived alone, but also he had indoor plumbing and a bathroom. Most hutongs share a communal bathroom which apparently was recently repaired by the government, as since no one owns it, it was in great disrepair as no one wants to do any maintenance as they don’t feel any ownership.] He said that eventually, the government will buy his house for the land and resell it to a wealthy family, which we could see had already been done to a few other homes in the area (gentrification is everywhere!). There are some that are trying to turn the neighborhood into a world heritage site, as many Chinese are worried they’re losing their culture to modern advances. Our tour guide being one of these people: he was born in a hutong neighborhood and while he now lives in the suburbs of Beijing, is very nostalgic for that kind of close, friendly neighborhood. But who knows if the government will allow cultural preservation of the hutong, since they clearly have a significant real estate goldmine there. [NN: You can tell some very wealthy people have bought hutongs (or maybe two together) and remodeled them. The easy way to tell the person is extremely wealthy is because they have built a garage into their hutong.]

Our hutong host in his courtyard

Opposite side of his courtyard

After tea, we took a bicycle rickshaw ride through the neighborhood, which was a trip in and of itself. It didn’t seem possible that such narrow streets could have such crazy tight traffic, but the amount of squatters with makeshift plywood rooms built into every available corner of the street, all of the narrow, cramped shops and restaurants, lots of bikes and scooters parked in every possible open space (many broken bikes served as parking spot savers), made it quite the adventure. J