Taking flowers for a walk :

Lately, I've been profiting quite a bit from the beautiful weather (finally, after a somewhat "challenging" (humid, hot and smoggy..) summer). I took my camera, my lovely (that is, if she is not hungry..) roomie nina and hit the road. Destination: the hutong of Beijing. Hutongs or 胡同 (just to show how well I can copy paste Chinese characters in the meantime..) are narrow streets or allies formed by lines of siheyuan, which are traditional courtyard residences (still) frequently found in Beijing.


For me the hutong areas of Beijing are like a big treasure box. Take a couple of hours (bike or go on foot) and you will see all these little details that not only make your day but also bring you closer to Beijing life (well, or at least one, traditional, aspect of it). The lady taking her flowers for a walk, the somewhat shy first encounter of a unusual couple, curious kids, the local "Meister Proper", shitty news, etc (I've uploaded some more pics onto my flickr account) are only some of the details that made my day on Sunday 2 weeks ago.


Another experience I associate with hutong is the evening I spent together with Echo at a local taxi drivers' home. He, in the meantime an obliging and nice friend of ours, invited us over for dinner at his house somewhere in a hutong of Beijing. His house was one of several in "taxi driver lane" (a little alley of just about 20 meters in which roughly 20 people live; all of them taxi drivers). Even though it was very small and, seen with the eyes of an average Swiss, rather dirty, his home had this great, homey touch to it. Plus, it was filled with the incredible hospitality and warmth of our host, his wife and two of his friends who decided to join in. What I learnt during this evening are not only some additional Chinese words, but also that friendships are knitted at the help of Baijiu, the infamous Chinese liquor.. One good thing: The more I drank the more my Chinese seemed to work (or the drunker the others were the less they cared about my stumbling.. ;)). I enjoyed this evening a lot and "gan bei"-ed ("bottom up") quite a few shots.


What I'm going to do next week? Take my camera and ... ;)



pictures, chinese culture, daily life, beijing, hutong