南锣鼓巷夜景 (Nanluoguxiang)

I had no idea of where to find the Beijing hutongs, so was watching as we rode cabs through the city on the way to the hotel and to meetings. After returning early Sunday from Baotou, my work companion asked the hotel concierge about the best options for getting to the Great Wall and Tian'anmen Square (compare descriptions here and here). We had the rest of the day off so figured we would go to the Wall first, and the area around the Forbidden City after getting back.

As it turned out, the hutongs were in the downtown area near Beihai Park, so after getting back from the Great Wall we had the cab driver we hired for the day drop us off. After walking along the lake in the park for a while, we 
figured out that the stylized tourist map was not to scale, and the Forbidden City - still a long walk away - was closing soon, we exited the East Gate. We wound our way through a series of narrow streets and alleys, quickly viewing life there - grocery stores, carpenters working rough sawed lumber, a chicken coup on the roof of a home, people coming and going. We made our way forward, keeping 

our left side always towards what we thought was the wall around Beihai Park - a bearing point like the North Star. Our likely route was along Jingshan West Street, and then keeping to the left and north through Gongjian Hutong - passing Beijing Xicheng Shenchahai Elementary School. When we got back to De'anmen E Street near entrance to Beihai Park, we crossed the street and walked east by rows of shops and restaurants until we came to the sign for Nanluoguxiang - I remembered the entrance sign to this place from the year before. (1)

As we turned into South Luogu Alley (English for Nanluoguxiang), I tried to quickly re-oriented myself with familiar-remembered places. 

Walking to the right down a side street, we looked for the restaurant I ate at last year. After passing the brightly painted police station on the left, across the street on the right was the non-descriptive restaurant entrance. I asked the waitresses who were standing just inside whether we could look to see the central courtyard - and there it was. I asked how late they were opened, and one replied and asked if we wanted to make a reservation. The restaurant had just opened at 5:00 PM, but it was too early for dinner, so we walked back to the lane. Flying overhead were magpies - a few sparrows were perched on the edge of a roof, who then flew into a tree as we approached.

What was new this time, was that most of the people I noticed walking the street were young Chinese, not foreign tourists. This was even more apparent when we tried to hail a cab at the end of the lane - many young people coming and going - constantly being dropped off while others caught cab rides, off to other places on an early Sunday evening. When Google'ing Nanluoguxiang, it turned out that even the CRI (Chinese Radio International) reports that this street is a trendy area for young people. The shops are chic boutiques - no brand names, just cool. When I came out of one of the shops, a college-aged woman  

asked me to take a picture of her standing in front of one of the store signs with her cell phone - my companion mentioned the photo was probably now on a Facebook page somewhere. Before coming to China this time, the two things I wanted to buy were a framed print of a farm scene done in Chinese peasant art style, and a CD of traditional Chinese music (remember my odd music tastes). The peasant art store I remembered from last time was no longer there, but we did come across a small music shop called Source. (2) The proprietor was a youngish man with long hair who introduced himself as "Stephen." When I asked about "traditional or folk" music, he led me to a part of a shelf with Chinese labels and pulled out several albums. I picked one to listen to, and he offered us a cigarette while we listened. My camera was out of battery charge, so I regret that I don't have a picture of the shop and its proprietor.(3) Stephen called the disc I chose Chinese Indie - how about that? (4)  I took the business card he offered me, and when home looked up the Weblink for Source and found that it is an outlet for a modern arts association - Yan Club Arts Center.

It is an endeavor to try to find out more about a music artist from China when all of the information on the CD jacket is in Chinese. The ISBN and  ISRC numbers didn't help, but I was able to find out that the

record label - Modern Sky Entertainment - is the largest in China. Clicking on that site, and finding the Badhead label, I found the record cover with the artist I was looking for - but wouldn't you know it, all of the information for this album is in Chinese. However, by using the Google Translator Tool, it turns out that the artist is named He Ping 小河 (translated: Brook), and his album is described as: Highly experimental alternative folk singer color, "good pharmacy (5)," lead singer, the experimental concept of his music is: with one another, mutual liberation, and in his music contains a deep feeling of freedom and love. Translation: Chinese Indie, just as Stephen described it when listening to the disc in his shop.

Some thoughts of the artist follow:

—有的人做音乐是在做人，有的人做音乐是在做科学家，有的人做音乐是为了革命，有的人做音乐是在做诗人，有的人做音乐是在做暴徒，有的人做音乐是在做小偷，有的人做音乐是为了卖身……
—我相信音乐不是自私的，我做音乐是为了我们一起幸福……

That translate:

Some people make music in life 
Some scientists are doing is making music
Some people do music is to the revolution 
Some people do music is to be a poet
Some people do music is doing the mob
Some people do music is to the thief
Some people make music to sell their bodies
I believe that music is not selfish
I do music is happy for us   

Just like the young woman on Nanluoguxiang who asked me to take her picture with her cell phone, technology is prevalent throughout China - the My Space page for 小河 and his band can be accessed by clicking here.  
__________________________
(1) A map of the vicinity of Beihai Park and Nanluoguxiang can be accessed by clicking here.
(2) Source, No. 14, Banchang Houtong South. The Website for Yan Club Arts Center also mentions a restaurant called Source. I cannot tell by the map whether it is the same one I had eaten at last year, or not, but the description on the Website mentions a courtyard eating area as well.
(3) For more pictures of activity along Nanluoguxiang, go here and here.
(4) Indie refers to Independent music. A Website specializing in distributing independent music can be found clicking here.
(5) This is the name of the band Glorious Pharmacy.

Beijing Nightlife

What is comfortable space is a relative term. My wife often reminds me to not stand so close to those I am taking with. The second day into my business trip to China, I found out that I don't really know what it is like to live in a city. Moving from Corvallis with a population of 50,000 to the seven-million resident D.C.-Baltimore-Northern Virginia metro area is a study of contrasts (see the blog: Far From Home), but throw Beijing into the mix, a megalopolis with its 15 million people - you just know that you must be half way around the world.

A group of us led by Bill set out for dinner in one of the hutong (衚衕) districts Beijing is know for. The Hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan - traditional courtyard residences. They make for interesting walking, looking, eating, and smelling. Hutongs are definitely hubs of activity where tourists want to go, but they are also the compounds where real people live, work, and play. Bill, has lived in Beijing for years, so knows his way around - though if you ask him, he will say that the longer you are in China, the less you realize you actually know. Regardless, Bill knew of a traditional restaurant - just two alleys down and right until we get there - so along we walked, all the way me feeling like a voyeur as my 6'4" cruising height could easily look into the small rooms that must be home. On the wall inside one easily viewed room from the alley was a National Basketball Association poster with towering stars posing, who if we were walking together, would have had the same perspective looking down on me as I did when passing by the locals. Even though these narrow streets and passages are for public access, I couldn't get over an uncomfortableness that I am sure I would have if some former neighbor brought his grand child and used the side gate to pass through my yard for a look at Georgetown East Elementary School just across my back fence - "Look Susy, that is where my polling place was when I voted for President Obama." Where private and public spaces end and begin in the hutong is probably a home's door. Perhaps the brightly painted designs along the eaves are a sign of the pride of ownership - differentiating a private space from the drab alley passage we just walked through to view this inner courtyard. Are there trespass laws in hutongs?

Thinking back, the layout of the restaurant we eventually arrived at probably took advantage of a cluster of what were at some earlier time a cluster of homes. Regardless, adding to the unfamiliar was the food, Chinese of course, but different than my favorite dishes at King Tin on Ninth Street in Corvallis. All the other patrons we saw there were internationals, but none Chinese. Adding to the mystery, was this another sign of Chinese economic development, an emergence on the world stage, with former dwellers now relocated to the many high-rise apartment buildings that lined the rings of beltways - real inner and outer loops, and more loops - and crisscrossing boulevards throughout this city that is the size of Rhode Island. After eating, we stepped back out into the night, where the alleys that were earlier illuminated by dusk, now were covered by a dark sky, and the street was only lit by the lamps inside shops, and tea houses, and bars that often blared the well-known songs of eras-past rock bands. It is funny, how sounds of something relatively new seem to blend in with places that are so exotic and old.

Another in our group wanted to find the restaurant district he remembered on an earlier trip, so off we walked off in another direction, into the night, me in tow, trusting my ten-year younger friend's sense of direction. After what have must have been a mile or so, the real nightlife of local Beijing - the real Chinatown - appeared: a plaza filled with couples dancing to music - recognizable melodies, but arranged in such as way that you were left wondering whether the recording artists had paid copyright royalties; men playing a board game that looked similar to checkers that was a kind of chess, but a scene I couldn't bring myself to photograph because the flash would, to me, seem intrusive - this was their living room; or the street corner where a man painted Chinese characters on the pavement with a water brush while other locals walked in circles around his canvas and commented. Lucky for me and my companion's reputation, we finally came on the brightly lit streets he remembered, lined by restaurant after restaurant with bins of crayfish and turtles and other specials-of-the-day by the front door; streets with young and old men and women talking; couples holding hands; shop hustlers inviting you in; parents with children, even an occasional small dog on leash - hardly a Western or African or Arab face to be seen - streets with traffic lights that had to be obeyed, because streams of cars and buses and bicycles passed through the intersections; strings of colored lanterns and lights that hung across the sidewalk and across the street; restaurants with tables inside, and restaurant tables on the sidewalks - all lit by the neon signs above that all seemed colored red or orange; bike vendors with fresh fruit in bins; and bike racks full of bicycles - all the same, but different because each had a different seat cover....and the smell of sewage....not sewage in the street gutters I was glad to discover, but the smell of public restrooms on every block... where else would so many people go while living on and above and along these streets?

It all goes to show what is comfortable for relatively all, may not be for those who normally stand close to you. Many people living closely together, with a few strange voyeurs passing through - hardly noticed under the night sky above, on the dusty streets below. And the next morning these same streets are swept by an armada of broom pushers, and the next night.... the cycle repeats itself - but not including this voyeur.... my legs are tired and my back is sore.'.. I am not as young as my companion and guide who pressed on from his memory of a scene past, to make these streets and lives at night my memories as well.