If all you know about a city is what you glean from the back seat of a taxi headed for the airport, shame on you. You’ve wasted an opportunity to let your feet tell the tale of the town.
The folks who run Context Travel can show you the path – beaten or well trod. In this case those paths criss-cross one of the most dynamic, and yet essentially enigmatic, cities on earth: Beijing.
Context’s ‘Hip Hutongs’ tour is a three-hour exploration of Beijing’s alleyways, or hutongs. Why alleyways? Because they’re where the cultural action’s taking place.
“China is desperately trying to avoid what economists are calling the ‘middle income trap’ and move away from the Made in China, Designed Elsewhere paradigm of the iPhone and so much else,” says Context co-founder and National Geographic writer Paul Bennett. “This walk looks at how the creative industries like media, architecture and fashion are being enlisted in this program, and how they’re taking Beijing’s historic – and often threatened by development – hutongs and reinventing them.”
Take the trek and see the inner courtyards of homes that have been transformed into boutique hotels. Ferret out the city’s hidden inner spaces, such as the garden of an emperor’s consort that’s now home to a famous concept store.
The Forbidden City is fine, so too the city’s legion of soaring new structures and the big-name restaurants. All of this is what’s on public display for visitors to Beijing, and a lot of it is worth seeing. But if you’re in search of the city’s soul, Hip Hutongs is where you might begin. Leading this tour is one of the city’s savviest residents, the editor of a local fashion magazine.
(Image: rakastajatar)
