Backstreet Beijing

 

The Chinese capital may have become synonymous with gravity-defying modern architecture, but beneath the glass and steel lies a fascinating world of narrow lanes and colourful courtyards. Brian Johnston dons his Mao suit and takes to the streets.

“Don’t worry – be happy!” squawks the storekeeper, shoving a skewered scorpion under my nose. “I think you like,” he continues, urging me to consume the spiny arachnid. Call me a killjoy but poisonous animals on sticks – claws still kicking angrily – aren’t exactly my idea of an appetising late-night snack.

I quickly take my leave and settle at a rickety metal table in a dimly lit alleyway, where I order a cold beer with a small side dish of wizened peanuts, sans scorpions. At the next table, a raucous group of locals sends chopsticks flying over dishes of chicken and jiaozi (dumplings). Moths sizzle on the streetlamps; cooks in white aprons screech at passersby, tempting them with squid and prawns; old men sit playing board games in their pyjamas.

If I was to walk 100 metres to the end of the alley, I’d find a different world: the neon-lit mega-malls of Wangfujing Street, arguably Beijing’s best-known shopping strip. Here, locals sashay through boutiques from the likes of Louis Vuitton and Dolce&Gabbana and end the day with a Big Mac dinner at a fast-food joint. This fast living is as much a part of China as its historic sights. And the dramatic contrast between old and new is, quite frankly, beguiling.

While the pace of change in this city of nearly 20 million is most evident in its towering skyscrapers and glitzy malls – many of which were built in the years leading up to 2008, when the city hosted the summer Olympic Games – Beijing’s backstreets offer an equally intriguing glimpse of the transforming milieu of life.

A lot of good things – and a few bad ones – happen in Beijing’s backstreets. The noise of construction reverberates around every corner, and traditional siheyuan courtyard houses are swept away in the blink of an eye, replaced by modern hotels and monstrous mountains of glass. Today, the city’s once-expansive neighbourhoods of old hutong alleyways are mostly demolished, though pockets of history have been preserved around the central lake district known as Shichahai, just north of the Forbidden City. This was once the imperial heart of Beijing, and some families have lived for generations in the same lanes, in dilapidated siheyuan complexes, generally minus sanitation and heating.

Wandering the streets, you’ll come across fragments of Ming-era city walls, a Buddhist temple or two, and restaurants with scholarly names that recall characters in Chinese literature. I join a group of locals playing ping-pong under willow trees and watch old ladies swinging their legs and doing stretching exercises in a playground.

Over a humpbacked bridge, I’m sucked into another alley, where cycle-rickshaw drivers snooze and Tibetans sell bangles and deer antlers. Locals are buying strange medicines and vegetables by the bundle, just as they have for decades. But there are tourist shops here, too, and I can’t resist them. A decade ago, when I lived in China, the street markets I frequented stocked Mao’s Little Red Book, giant maps of China and the odd cabbage. Now, I have my choice of ‘Rolex’ watches, Mickey Mouse wall clocks, bootleg CDs and heated toilet seats.

The next day, I visit the district just southwest of Tiananmen Square, another area of old hutong laneways. A lot of the neighbourhood seems to have disappeared since I was last here: my favourite dumpling shop is a pile of rubble. Everything on sale now seems to be overpriced or fake or both. Still, Liulichang is too cute to engender anger. A popular hangout for scholars during the Ming and Qing eras, the district is now a maze of narrow lanes lined with antique and art shops and cafés that brew dozens of varieties of green tea. “I give you good price okay, hello, you want?” shouts a gnarled storekeeper all in one breath. And yes, I do want: five-dollar designer sunglasses, 20-dollar coats and – oops, maybe I got a bit carried way – a Chairman Mao cigarette lighter.

My next stop is Guanyuan Shichang, Beijing’s most well-known bird market. Local residents congregate here with their own birds, carried proudly from their houses in ornate cages, to gossip and show off their pets. They buy grasshoppers and feed them to the birds using chopsticks. I’m tempted to invest in a pet myself – the birds have names that are just as melodious in Chinese as they are in English: babbling thrushes (huamei) and singing larks (bailing).

In the evening, Shichahai beckons once again. I amble along badly paved streets, which are surprisingly quiet for this early in the night: only the click click of mahjong tiles breaks the silence. Washing hangs from balconies overhead; on doorsteps, schoolchildren agonise over their homework. In a courtyard, elderly ladies waltz to the music of Strauss that wafts from a tinny radio.

Yet change is always in the air in Beijing. Nanluoguxiang, the city’s most well known alleyway, given a multi-million-dollar makeover in the lead-up to the Games, has been paved and painted and is bursting with snappy cafés that offer wi-fi and café lattes. Nearby, another alley, Yandai Xiejie, is known for its dive bars and hip boutiques; it was once the place in Beijing to buy opium pipes. And Lotus Lane, wrapping one of the central lakes, boasts loud bars with karaoke screens and blinking coloured lights. I duck into one, order a cold beer and sit back to watch the scene unfold before me. This is Beijing: brash, bemusing and utterly brilliant.

And, thank goodness, there’s not a scorpion in sight.

Photography by Brian Johnston.

Article courtesy of Vacations and Travel Magazine.