THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Beijing - page 95

COURTYARD HOUSES
Beijing's hutongs are lined with siheyuan ( 四合院 , sìhéyuàn), traditional single-storey
courtyardhouses . These follow a plan that has hardly changed since the Han dynasty, and
is in essence identical to that of the Forbidden City.
A typical courtyard house has its entrance in the south wall. Just outside the front door
stand two flat stone blocks - sometimes carved into lions - for mounting horses and to
demonstrate the family's wealth and status. Step over the threshold and you are confronted
with a freestanding wall; this is to keep out evil spirits, which can only travel in straight
lines. Behind it is the outer courtyard, with the servants' quarters to the right and left. The
entrance to the inner courtyard, where the family lived, would be in the north wall. The
most important rooms, used by the elders, are those at the back, facing south.
With the government anxious to turn Beijing into a showcase for Chinese modernity,
and barely a thousand hutongs left however, it seems unlikely that many of these houses
will survive; the most extensive remaining areas are around the Shicha lakes and in the
Dazhalan area , southwest of Tian'anmen Square. A wander around the latter area will
show the houses in their worst light: the dwellings are cramped and poorly maintained, the
streets dirty, the plumbing and sanitation inadequate; it's only a matter of time before their
inhabitants are rehoused in the new suburbs. Responding to increasingly vocal complaints
about the destruction of Beijing's architectural heritage, city planners point out that hutongs
full of courtyard houses are unsuitable for contemporary living: besides the plumbing is-
sues, the houses are very cold in winter, and with only one storey they're an inefficient
use of land. Anyway, they argue, the population of a modern city ought to live outside the
centre. For all this, in the hutongs you'll also see how the system creates a neighbourliness
absent from the new high-rises - here, you can't help knowing everyone else's business.
While the hutongs around Dazhalan Lu may be under attack, in the last decade some areas
around the Shicha lakes have undergone something of a best-of-both-worlds transforma-
tion. It all started with a scheme on and around Nanluogu Xiang , under which residents
were sold a deal by the government - with both sides paying half each, properties were
smartened up, roof tiles replaced, walls mended, and public toilets improved. The financial
burden was offset, in many cases, by tenants leasing out the front rooms of their hutongs -
these are the shops, cafés, galleries and bars you see lining Nanluogu Xiang today. While
not a perfect solution, it has been wonderful to see Beijing moving forward with some of
its own tradition in mind, and the scheme has been successfully employed elsewhere -
Wudaoying Hutong, near Yonghe Gong is another good example.
East of the Forbidden City, property restoration has followed a different pattern, with
housing bashed down and rebuilt in a faux-traditional style - notably, you'll see many so-