Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
traditional: it resembles a cinema auditorium (the stage facade is the only authentic
touch), but it's a gentle introduction to the art form.
RED-LIGHT PEKING
These days, Dazhalan Xijie and the surrounding
hútòng
are Běijīng's backpacker central. But for hundreds of
years, these innocuous-looking alleys were infamous for being old Peking's red-light district (
hóngdēngqū
).
Centered around Bada Hutong, a collection of eight alleys, the area had already acquired a raunchy reputation
in the 18th century. By the time of the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, there were reckoned to be over 300
brothels lining the lanes. The working girls ranged from cultivated courtesans who could recite poetry and
dance gracefully and whose clients were aristocrats and court officials, to more mundane types who served the
masses. It was very much an area for the locals; the small foreign community had its own little zone of brothels,
dive bars and opium dens in still surviving Chuanban Hutong, close to the Chongwenmen subway stop.
Bada Hutong owed its dubious fame to the fact that it was outside the city walls (the emperors didn't want
houses of ill repute close to the royal palace), yet close enough to the Imperial City for customers to get there
easily. But the fall of the emperors signalled the beginning of the end of the old red-light district. Just over a
month after the founding of the PRC in October 1949, soldiers marched into Bada Hutong, closed down the
brothels and 'liberated' the prostitutes working there.
Many of the eight alleys that made up Bada Hutong have been demolished and/or re-built and show no sign
of what went on there in the past. Shanxi Xiang, though, is still standing and the historic building that is now the
hostel Leo Courtyard (
CLICK HERE
) was once one of the most upmarket knocking shops in the capital. But it
didn't do dorm beds back then.
