467 Old Beijing

Key words:

threshold n. 门槛

delineate v 详细描述

sip v 小口喝

cramped adj 狭窄的

So, you passed this threshold where this bigger alley became a smaller alley that basically became, like, the pathway to someone’s door, essentially. 

And there was no marking to delineate that. But that’s exactly what it was. And of course, for me, all of this was really charming and interesting. But that’s always the case for an outsider. And things can be different for people who live there. And when I was researching this afterward, I learned that in some cases, for example, a large number of these very small households don’t have enough space to have their own bathroom. And so, they have to share a communal one. But some dwellings alongside the hutongs are still quite expansive and luxurious, too. Like in most places, there’s a huge range in terms of the quality of life and the cost of living there. 

Yeah. I mean, so you researched all this after the fact. You didn’t know this at the time. But what made you go down a hutong to begin with? 

Yeah. No, it was so many things. There were all of these little grocery shops, cafes, and bars. And there were residents just relaxing, playing chess, and sipping tea. There was laundry strung up above the hutongs, bikes leaning against the walls, and basically any niche that hadn’t been filled by something else had plants in it. And so, it was like the closeness and the density of this space pushed everything out into a shared public sphere. And again, it’s easy for me to say, “Oh, that’s cozy” rather than “cramped” because I don’t have to live there.