Americano Alley

Happy Holidays everyone! This is an essay I wrote for my English final but which I thought might be interesting to post too. My family just left after a wonderful week and a half of showing them around China, hopefully I will write a post that is not for school about what we did but until then, enjoy the esaay...

It looks as if a bomb had gone off. All signs of progress made in the last five hundred years are now obliterated. The two block area had been filled with piles of rocks and dirt. Dying weeds covered in dust dot the flattened ground among stacks of rubble and garbage. Bricks placed on top of a dark green tarp prevent the soil from picking up during heavy winds. In the corner, rusty flatbed tricycles are lined up, ready to haul off debris. Had I visited even a few months earlier I probably would have seen the narrow alleyways and slanted rooftops of the ancient hutong homes. Now the hutong had been demolished and a brick wall erected around the empty lot to hide it from passersby on the street. As I peek around the corner of the wall, I think about the hutong still standing just a few meters down the road and wonder how long they will last.

My friend texts me and we agree to meet in front of the Lama Temple. She arrives and together we ride our bikes down a small road splitting the demolished hutong neighborhood into an area still standing. We are going to explore hutong, looking for places where the five century old alleyways and courtyard homes are being bulldozed to make way for swank malls and offices. During the past week we read part of Ian Johnson’s Wild Grass, an interesting essay devoted to looking at the negative effects of hutong destruction. Mr. Morrison, our English teacher, assigned us to retrace Ian Johnson’s steps with tasks ranging from having a conversation with a hutong resident to climbing up the fire escape of a meat market mentioned in the essay. The point is to see firsthand what is happening to the hutong. I have already found a prime example, a two block hutong graveyard, but we decide to continue exploring the area.

Just a few meters after the destruction site, my friend stops. Coffee drinkers around the world are able to sense when a good cup of Joe is near, and my friend’s Americano alarm had just gone off. Among the bundles of badly wired power lines and camouflaged between the grey walls of a traditional hutong lay an upscale coffee shop that looked like it belonged in New York or San Francisco. The sign identified the shop as Uncommon Grounds Café, and aside from coffee and tea you could also get a plate of spaghetti and some toast. Traditional hutong cuisine. Even though the exterior remained intact, the home had been gutted to make way for a coffee shop. We resist the urge to buy a coffee and we continue on down the road.

My rear wheel squeals as I slam on my bike’s brakes. Hat trick! At an intersection in the hutong alleys we discover two cafes across the street from each other. Crown Coffee’s hot rod red awning sticks out like an exchange student wearing a bike helmet in Beijing. The petite but instantly recognizable “illy” sign hangs in front of the second café named Arts Haven. A fake gold, blue, and red decorative strip trying to emulate the style of Beijing’s ancient wooden gates is situated above the door. The smell of espresso wafts from the undoubtedly warm inside, begging us to enter. It seems that even the hutong that have been preserved structurally are serving completely different functions now. Tempted, but not quite ready to call it a day, we continue down the road, now keeping an eye out for a potential fourth coffee shop.


We did not have to look far. Just down the road from Crown Coffee and Arts Haven we came upon Carefree Coffee. Hutong café owners must all have similar aesthetic tastes because Carefree Coffee was also the third café with a blaring red front (the others being Crown Coffee and Arts Haven). We take note, a bit dumbfounded at the discovery of such a vibrant coffee scene in a 500 year old ancient Chinese neighborhood. My friend and I walk our bikes over to the entrance to an active construction site, debating over whom should start a conversation with one of the workers. We watch as men in dusty winter coats and yellow hard hats pull wheel barrows and hammer at a house shaped concrete structure (probably another café). I approach a worker and ask him if he likes ancient Beijing, but due to his thick accent and my limited vocabulary I am unable to get much out of him. We leave the site, biking a bit faster to warm ourselves up.



At the fifth coffee shop, the allure of a hot caffeinated drink had become too much. We decide to enter Beijing ZhaZha Coffee and finally see what the inside of these surprisingly ubiquitous hutong cafés look like. The inside is dark and cramped. We are seated at a small wooden table facing the counter. Behind us are two tables, and in the room to our right there are two more. In all there are only five tables in the entire café, enough to seat about 15 people. The cramped quarters and ancient décor is intended to imitate hutong living. The tourist appeal becomes immediately apparent; fulfill your caffeine cravings while experiencing life as the ancient Chinese used to. You can even pretend that your feet are bound or that you have a queue! Done exploring for the day, I warm my hands on my vanilla hot chocolate and ponder the day’s discoveries.

The Chinese government often receives criticism for the destruction of hutong. The two biggest issues are that the government has failed to fairly compensate the displaced hutong residents, and that people are angry that the government is showing so little respect for the Beijing’s cultural relics. Often the neighborhoods which are torn down are rebuilt as huge shopping centers and modern office buildings (further angering the protectionists). However, even areas that are preserved structurally still face the threat of mass tourism. Houhai, a once peaceful lake surrounded by hutong, has now been converted into a series of bar streets where foreigners can take drunken rickshaw tours of the hutong and lake area. Nanlouguxiang, a fairly typical hutong neighborhood, has become completely lined with bars, upscale clothing stores, and coffee shops. And then the neighborhood we just explored. Five coffee shops within minutes of each other may be commonplace in downtown New York, but in old town Beijing, things like that stick out like zits on a supermodel. This is all to say that even if hutong can be successfully preserved structurally, the interiors of many will inevitably be converted into stores or bars. As post-Olympic Beijing becomes more of a tourist attraction, the hutong will suffer. Real estate inside the second ring road is high in demand because it is so central. With lucrative shopping districts and bar streets waiting to be built, the government has a big incentive to get rid of the hutong. Even those that are preserved out of nostalgia will draw in the most money if they are converted to stores or modernized and rented out at a ridiculous price. While many will yearn for the narrow alleys, community, and charm of living the ancient hutong, their prime location makes such an arrangement harder and harder to sustain. Their location is their curse and their blessing.