Beijing Hutong - Nanluoguxiang

Last weekend Margot and I walked through a Beijing hutong or neighborhood called Nanluoguxiang.

This vendor is selling roasted sweet potatoes. I have never tried one but they are pretty popular.

This hutong is one of the few large sections of Beijing that have not been bulldozed and rebuilt with modern buildings.

The main street is very commercialized with restaurants, bars, shops, etc. but the side streets are pretty old school.

This guy is made to look like a statue and is pretty convincing when he is holding still. People are shocked when he speaks to them and invites them to come into the restaurant behind him.

This guy is a silversmith handcrafting jewelry outside his shop. I'm not sure what he is making. We didn't wait around to see.

On one of the side streets we see this hanging from the fence. At least part of it is pork. Not sure who it belonged to but there was a restaurant across the street. Not sure if they had out there to thaw, dry or just to refrigerate. It was about freezing that afternoon.

Here I see chicken or duck, some fish, and maybe ox tail.

These next few shots are from a side street some distance away from the main thoroughfare. Just regular Beijingers going about their business.

Lots of small entrepreneurs selling food.

By the way Nanluoguxiang means South Gong and Drum Lane.

You can buy presumably fresh and frozen fish there, also.

It is full service fish vendor, too.

Be sure to click to enlarge for the full effect.

Houses in the neighborhood are what are called siheyuan. These are basically a courtyard surrounded by 4 buildings. These are surrounded by a wall with one main entrance.

This one and the one above have very similar entrances.

These were mainly single, or rather extended family homes, originally. Now most of these have been subdivided many times. If you click on this picture you can see that there looks to be about 20 electrical meters inside this door.

The round, black items are compressed coal bricks used for cooking and heat. You don't see these that much anymore. They seemed to be a lot more common when we were here 6 years ago.

You can learn more about siheyuan at this link.

Siheyuan

Be sure to click on this one and check out the name of this restaurant's specialty.

This guy was selling Chestnut Cake outside the subway system.

We didn't try it.

Here are a couple of just miscellaneous pictures.

These are Chinese New Year decorations in a shopping mall.

This mass of humanity is in the crossover between Line 1 and Line 10 on the subway system. Line 10 has gotten a lot busier since it's length was doubled at the end of last year. Line 1 is almost always a zoo.

This is from my lunch at work today. I saved this piece of chicken for a picture.

Click to enlarge.

I think I've mentioned that nothing goes to waste in China. Also, you rarely see chicken served in body part pieces (leg, thigh, wing, breast). It is served in bite size pieces. It doesn't take much time to prepare when you just go at the whole bird with a meat cleaver.