The history of Hutong

1 The history of Hutong

First of all, I would like to start with the term …Hutong‟, H-U-T-O-N-G what does Hutong mean?

According to experts, the word Hutong originated from

Mongolian language meaning …Well‟. In ancient times,

people tended to gather and live around wells. So the

original meaning of Hutong should be …a place where

people gather and live.‟ Another explanation says that

during the Yuan Dynasty, about 13th century, residential

areas in the city were divided into many divisions.

Between the smaller divisions were passageways for

people to travel through. And those passageways also

functioned as isolation belts against fire risks. In

Mongolian language, passageways of this kind were

called Hutong. But no matter what Hutong exactly

means, one thing is for sure, that is, Hutong first

appeared in Beijing during the Y uan Dynasty.

In the early 13th century, a Mongolian tribe

from the north became very strong. Led by Genghis Khan,

the Mongolian occupied Beijing, the capital of the Jin

Dynasty. In the year 1271, Kubla Khan, the grandson of

Genghis Khan, ounded

Yuan Dynasty and set Beijing as the capital city

in the following year. Unfortunately, the old city was

completely destroyed during the war. So they had to

rebuild it. In old China, all the structures and roads

were required to be symmetrical. So the city was well

designed. First, they had to find a center, and then

built a regular square city. The layout of the city was

very much like a chessboard. About 50 residential areas

were constructed, with straight roads and Hutongs in

between. At the time, there was a clear

definition for avenue, street and Hutong. A

37-metre-wide road was called an avenue, an

18-metre-wide one was called a street, and a

9-metre-wide lane was called a Hutong.

Most of today‟s Hutong were formed during

the Ming and Qing Dynasties that followed. Nobody

knows exactly how many

Hutongs there are in nowadays Beijing. But

one thing is for sure, if we connected all the

Hutongs together, their total length would even be

longer than the famous Great wall, which is about

4000 miles longer. Or to make it clear, it could

build a highway from Seattle to Boston, all across America!

Today you can find various Hutongs with

different shapes, lengths or directions.The shortest one

is only 40 centimeters wide, which means a person like

me has to walk sideways to get through. And some Hutongs have more than 20 turns.

With the growth of the population, many old

Hutongs have disappeared to make way for high-rise apartments. Today I‟m very happy to show you some

well-preserved Hutongs, and to let you experience the typical Chinese life. Are you ready? Let‟s go!

As we walk through the Hutongs, you may find

most of them look almost the same with gray-colored walls and bricks. Actually inside those walls are the courtyard houses, where people live. In Chinese we call them ...siheyuan‟. (i)

literally means four, …he‟ means to surround,

and …yuan‟ refers to the courtyard. So a rectangular

wall enclosing four houses, one built on each side

facing into the center, is called a Siheyuan. When they were first built, usually one Siheyuan was owned by only one family, but nowadays, with the growth of the population, most Siheyuans are shared by 4 to 10 families.

The gate building of each Siheyuan is the

only thing that we can see along the Hutongs.

Chinese people used to try to

protect their privacy from being intruded

by strangers. So the gate building, in old times,

was a symbol to show the position of each house owner. You don‟t have to go inside the courtyard.

Just look at the gate building, you can already

tell whether it‟s an influential family or not.

Look at this one, the gate building is big and

tall. The head and eave of the gate are well decorated

with brick carvings. See the design? Plum blossoms and bamboos. It indicated that the original owner of this courtyard must have been an official serving in the emperor‟s court. But look at that one nest door, it has