Le Home.

I wrote the following entry while sitting in my room, chilling out to the grooving sounds of pre-molestation charges michael jackson. here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Well, whats been going on lately? A whole lot. Theres been a lot of travel, a lot of sickness, and a whole lot of positivity to round the whole lot out. Was in Shanghai for about a week, before that (if we recall) was Guangzhou. Now I’m back in lovely lovely Beijing until Sunday. I really wish I could stay longer. It's starting to warm up and the Hutong is turning absolutely lovely. Not that it wasn’t lovely to begin with, but now I can walk around without my face freezing, peeling off, and shattering on the floor within moments of stepping into the courtyard. it’s a rather pleasant change.

Whats it like around the hutong? Well…

In addition to the weather, my roommates are extremely lovely. I’m very blessed to live with extremely good friends who are sweet, considerate, intelligent, and challenging. Scottie, my Australian roomie, is a musician (saxophone, drums, kazoo, young lady’s heartstrings), and a fabulously intelligent motivated guy. He’s our resident tai qi master, having just started the intermediate courses from the world famous masters at Bei Hai Park. He’s been studying for just over a year now, and is getting the whole hutong on the bandwagon. And he’s on a wicked health binge with no drinking and no animal products- yay! It’s nice to have someone else around who is not into drinking, and even nicer to have another resident vegan. I love living with vegans. Ohad, my Israeli roomie, is as sweet as sweet can be, and is slowly being convinced to go vegan! Slowly but surely, he’s making the change, and turning his formidable culinary skills to the task. This man has given me some seriously amazing Israeli rock and folk music, not to mention pleased my belly with some insane veganized Israeli grub. I’m just waiting for the day that we turn into a crazy vegan cook-tastic tai qi household- it’s going to be beautiful.

In terms of the hutong itself, it’s set off from the incredibly major and busy DongZhiMen Street, tucked back in the winding myriad alleyways that Beijingers traditionally live in. It’s about a ten minute walk from the street through alleyways that house other similar courtyard homes and various assorted open air markets and small (think really small. now cut that in half, and stick in your pocket.) restaurants. The hustle and bustle of the Hutong has an extremely different feel from that of the rest of the city. It’s a neighborhood, it’s small, intimate and for the most part peaceful. The hutongs are one of the very few places in the city that you can’t hear the honk of car horns, where neon advertisement’s don’t dog your every step, and where you forget for a while that you’re in the capital of an extremely populous and consumer driven country. One of the nicest things about the hutong is that every building is one story- you can see the sky and the leaves in the trees and the sun and the moon every step home.

Have I sung the Hutong’s praises long enough? I could go on for a while, but I think you get the picture. The thing is, the city’s Hutong’s are disappearing fast. They are being torn down to build new developments, high rises and shops and streamlined apartments. A few, maybe 40 or 50 of the city’s thousands, are bound (in my opinion) to be saved, gutted and renovated, for rent to foreigners and rich beijingers in the future. Hutongs are traditionally passed down through the generations, so for a lot of Beijingers this means losing a large piece of their family culture, and it means the dissaperance of neighborhoods that are rife with life and lore.

It’s not cool, and I’m extremely thankful that I’m getting to experience the hutong lifestyle before it disappears. I wake up, look out my ground story room window at the leaves in the trees, walk out my door across the open courtyard, and make my way across a few alleys to the market. It’s just so lovely, and such a rare mode of life in modern day beijing. I'm extremely grateful to live on the ground and shop at a local un-plastic laden open air market. Sigh. So lucky.

Peace
Jessie