Hutong

This was probably my favorite part of our tour in Beijing.  Visiting the Hutong.  A Hutong is an alley that in the old days were found all over Beijing.  Now there are very few left and I felt privileged to be able to see this Chinese living first hand.  We rode through the Hutong in these Paddy Wagons, I felt so bad that this poor old man had to haul our fat butts through this alley. Don't worry we tipped him good at the end.

 This is the doorway to a home in the Hutong.  Prior to the Olympics the government went through and redid a lot of these doorways, etc.  I thought that was kinda sad that they disrupted the historic alleyway.  But we soon learned that the Chinese care a great deal about how they look to outsiders.

 Our tour guide set up for us to have lunch in a families home in the Hutong.  It was the best food I ate the entire time in China.  This is Jackie and John having lunch with us.  They served us so much food we felt bad we couldn't eat it all.  I liked the Kung Pao chicken the best.  They did serve us shrimp with all the legs and eyes on and you just bit the head off and then take a bite out of the body and spit out what you don't want to swallow.  I sucked it up and tried one and it was delicious but so much work.  In China people don't use heat so we opted to leave our coats on as we froze through our yummy lunch.

 The Chinese haul so much on their bikes I took a couple of pictures on our trip but it was amazing how they could balance and stack so much stuff to haul.

It was kinda dirty in the Hutong but mainly just from such limited space and it appeared to be continual construction to keep things up.  The people were friendly and hard working and were grateful for their homes because so few can afford a place to live other than shared apartments, etc.  Homes are for the very rich because the land is so expensive.   

So much information I wish I had a brain that could remember it all.