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Shichahai & the Hutongs

China · 8 stories · 1–2 hours

A slow evening walk through the old back lakes and the lanes behind them: the harbour where the Grand Canal ran out of road, the most corrupt official in Chinese history, a street named after a tobacco pipe, the towers that told Beijing when to sleep until 1924, and the gate a sixteen-year-old empress walked out of. Around 3.5 km, 60 to 90 minutes at a wandering pace. Route inspired by a walk shared by @beijingsocial.

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Stories along the way

  1. 1. The Lake That Was a HarbourYou are standing at the edge of three connected lakes — Qianhai, Houhai and Xihai — and together they are called Shichahai, which translates roughly as the sea of ten temples. Sea…
  2. 2. The Richest Man Who Kept NothingThe mansion behind these walls went up in the 1770s for a man named Heshen, and Heshen has a reputation that has survived two and a half centuries essentially intact: the most…
  3. 3. Silver Ingot, Viewing the MountainThis small stone bridge sits at the pinch point where Qianhai meets Houhai — the front lake and the back lake. It is called Yinding Qiao, the Silver Ingot Bridge, because the…
  4. 4. The Street Shaped Like a PipeTwo hundred and thirty-two metres long, narrow enough that two people with umbrellas have to negotiate, and running at a stubborn diagonal across a city built on a strict…
  5. 5. The Towers That Lost Their JobTwo towers, one behind the other, and the one you probably assume is smaller is not. The Drum Tower is the southern one — a brick base carrying a timber upper storey, a little…
  6. 6. The Word Is MongolianYou have been walking through hutongs for half an hour, so it is worth knowing where the word comes from — and admitting that nobody is certain. The popular answer is that hutong…
  7. 7. Eight Lanes East, Eight Lanes WestSeven hundred and eighty-six metres, north to south, eight metres wide. Eight hutongs run off to the west and eight to the east, in a pattern people describe as a fishbone. That…
  8. 8. The Gate the Last Empress Walked Out OfTurn west off the main lane into Mao'er Hutong — Hat Alley — five hundred and eighty-five metres of grey wall and red door. This one hutong holds an unusual concentration of…