Disappearing Hutongs

Nicolai Ouroussoff has an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Beijing’s old hutong neighborhood. It covers much of the same ground as other pre-Olympics articles about Beijing’s architecture, but it’s a good introduction to the hutongs and their history. 

View of Hutong neighborhood from the Drum Tower

I climbed the Drum Tower this past weekend, which gives a panoramic view of the relatively well-preserved hutong neighborhood north of the Forbidden City. Walking around Houhai later that day, we were constantly harassed by rickshaw drivers shouting, “Hutongs! Hutongs!” Beijingers are definitely trying to capitalize on Western tourists’ interest in the hutongs’ history. I was interested to learn from Ouroussoff’s article that some are also emulating the Western obsession with living in antique houses.

The question of how to preserve the hutong way of life as well as the buildings themselves is problematic if only wealthy people want to live there (following renovations, of course). Ouroussoff doesn’t have the answer, but he leaves us with this “provocation” from Rem Koolhaas:

The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who seems to be everywhere in China these days, has argued that designating specific buildings as landmarks creates a distorted version of history. Rather he has proposed carving out a protected wedge through the city in which all of the city’s historical layers, from hutongs on through the Communist-style projects, would be permanently preserved. The result would be a sort of living museum, a place fixed in time even as tumultuous changes unfold around it.

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Tagged as: Beijing