Beijing - Hutongs

To understand Běijīng, one should at least once take the time to lose oneself in the ragged, but charming Hutongs. The number of these narrow, windy alleyways has unfortunately dwindled from 6500 to a bit more than 1000 in Běijīng‘s quest to create a modern city. But so far still enough of them are left to escape the busy life of the big roads and stroll through these mazes of one-storey houses, enjoying the hospital spirit of the old Běijīng, watching people playing cards or Chinese chess.

Sure, some of the Hutongs have been refitted for touristic purposes, but just taking one of the many side roads is enough to escape the loud hawkers again. So it was no wonder that on my last day in this city I took the time to once again visit them. Umfortunately the air pollution had increased already and even though it was not to bad compared to an average Běijīng day, a PM 2.5 level of ca. 190 – an European city has typically less than 50 – was turning everthing in an unhealthy grey. Well, at least another typical part of Běijīng experienced …

Later that day I went a bit outside the city center to buy some hiking boots to be a bit better prepared for the later parts of my voyage. Here foreigners were a lot more uncommon and since at that time not that many people were using the metro, the very friendly security officer at the subway station took the opportunity to practice her English skills. By the way, the security checks at the subway and train stations seem to be mostly for show anyway. The beeping of the metall detectors are at normally completely ignored and I guess it would be easy to carry almost anything through the checkpoint – at least I have never seen anyone to be inspected more closely.

After having had a friendly talk and travelling for some time I got out of the subway. It was already dark and due to the air pollution, the high buildings just a few hundred meters away were already starting to fade way in the darkness. I had fortunately no problems to find the shop and finding some hiking boots and shortly afterwards I was already on my way back, again having a short talk with a security officer at the other subway station. It must be really uncommon to see foreigners here.

While having some noodle soup at my favorite place, I planned the next steps for my trip. The next three weeks will still be somewhat easy and I mostly had to decide which trains to take. Unfortunately the sleeper tickets often sell out a few days in advance, so you have to buy them a few days ahead if you don‘t want to spend the whole night on a hard seat.