We love our hutong house. What is a hutong, you ask? Well, it’s the old name for an alley between the courtyard residences, but nowadays, “hutong” is used to refer to a type of neighborhood or house in the old hutong alleys north of the Forbidden City. We live on JiaoDaoKou Bei Tou Tiao (JiaoDaoKou North First Street), just east of Andingmen Nei Dajie (Andingmen Inner big street).
We’ll talk more about hutongs later because they define Beijing as a unique world city. But, in the meantime, here is a video walk to our front door from the main street.
And now we enter our “hutong” courtyard to get to our front door. This was my mom’s favorite part.
Lastly, a view from the roof deck looking over the old courtyard.
These were taken in the winter, so no leaves, and it’s a bit bleak. It’s taken me a bit to figure out how to deal with the GoPro. Sorry about the finger in the videos.
We’re counting down our 100 favorite things in Beijing and China. See what else we like here.