During my stay in Beijing in November last year I took a walk from the Beijing Confucius Temple down to Qianhai Lake and the Bell Tower through what I guess you could call “Hutong Country”.

Hutong literally means alleyway or passageway, and the first ones started to spring up in Beijing during the Yuan Dynasty when the city was rebuilt after being destroyed by Genghis Khan’s Mongol army. By the 1950’s it is estimated that there were about 6,000 hutongs in the city, but in recent years this number has diminished to less than 2,000 as a result of rapid modernization and development.

Thankfully, this seems to have slowed down somewhat as the city authorities have discovered the value of the hutong as a tourist destination and have even begun programs to restore some of them and encourage the opening of boutique shops, hotels, cafés, and restaurants.

Still, while this process of gentrification is bringing much needed investment and business to the hutong, it is also slowly squeezing out the old way of life of the long-term residents of the area – though if you venture deep into the warrens you can still find charming old courtyard houses seemingly untouched by the passage of time.