Although the village where I was born is only 36 kilometers from the city center and can be said to be very close to it, but in the old days it was as far from the city as the sky was from the earth. I did not enter the town until I tested into a middle school inside the city at the age of 12.
When still a child, I heard the villagers who had been to the city talking about the streets and alleys of Beijing this way: “there are 3600 big Hutong alleys and countless small ones.” I was really scared, my eyes popping out open and my draw dropping. There was only one main street and a few side streets in my village, of course I could not imagine how big Beijing was.
So when I went to the city to attend school, for one or two months I dared not venture far from the school gate, fearing getting lost in the 3600 big hutongs and the countless small ones. Only after awhile did I find a way to deal with the city, for I learned that the inner city of Beijing was square-shaped and the streets and alleys connect with one another and as long as one remembers his direction he would never get lost. That winter, out of the need for making money for food and clothes, I sold newspapers while going to school. Every morning I went to get the papers at 3 o’clock and sold them by 6 o’clock. In the bitter coldness of the deep winter, I walked the streets and alleys of the four districts against wind and snow, trying every hutong and every road, never running into a dead end. Yet because I was hurry selling papers, despite the many hutongs I had been through, they appeared to me like vague shadows that came and went fast, leaving no memories of their names in my mind.
Forty years have passed since then and now I call myself a genuine and authentic Beijinger. Yet Beijing’s streets also have undergone great changes. Often I go somewhere doggedly in the remembered direction only to find myself in a place of nowhere or forced to return the way I had come because of an unpenetratable wall. Nowadays, me a veteran Beijinger hesitate a lot in going tou, just like when I first came to this city.
Beijing, an ancient city, is a great treasure house of culture and a museum of history. The streets and alleys of Beijing, in addition to being the arteries and veins of the city and the channels of transportation, are also the exhibition halls of history, culture and folkways in this great museum. Every street, every alley has its history and story and each is unique in providing a profound pool of knowledge.
The legends and anecdotes of Beijing streets can be found in folk histories, informal essays and local ethnological recordings, either elaborate or brief but nevertheless all rich and colorful. These recordings, however, are scattered in antiquarian books and are known to but a few veteran Beijingers of advanced age and much less to contemporary Beijing residents. Beijing is undergoing colossal transformations. How to build a modern city while preserving the style and appearance of the ancient capital remains an unsolved question. Can the current construction be considered modernization? What is genuine preservation of the characteristics of the ancient capital? For these questions, there are various answers and all are partially justifiable. Moreover, large scale reconstruction is out of the necessity to meet the needs of current living and it is beyond anyone’s imagination whether the ethnic, local, historical and folkloric characteristics of ancient Beijing are still to be preserved.
I do not buy the idea that there is no construction without destruction, that destruction must precede construction, and that we cannot build a new Beijing without destroying the old one. However I agree that what should be demolished must be demolished. We mustn’t hold on tightly to the decadence and imperfection and regard that as conservation. Nevertheless, in building up a new Beijing we should not eye what is beneath our nose only and disregard what lies beyond. We should not sacrifice aesthetics for practicality. We should not believe that what is new must be good. Innovation does not necessarily mean the creation of excellence. The reason why people are nostalgic about the past is mainly because of the shallowness and shabbiness of things new. It is alright for daily-use commodities to have new varieties day by day, but it is not alright for our great capital to be played like a toy, torn apart today and sewn up tomorrow.
The replacement of the old by the new is the principle of the work of nature and it is inevitable that Beijing will have less and less of its old streets and alleys. But just like a man’s name remains after his death, the changes of cities should also have some record left behind. When old streets are demolished, their photos and stories should be preserved. It is bad not to keep a record of the streets that will be rendered to dust. We need family genealogy, alley genealogy, street genealogy, city genealogy and country genealogy. The genealogy of the city is its local history and that of the country is the history of China.
Tens of young amateur researchers studying the ethnology of Beijing are writing a book of a million characters, A History of Beijing’s Hutongs. On basis of their fieldwork, they also produced this Practical Guide to Beijing’s Streets and Alleys with an eye to providing some convenience to domestic and foreign tourists and some knowledge to Beijingers of their own place. The publishing house of the book will surely benefit the society.
他们要我为这本书写序，我不堪重任，写不出来。草成这篇小文，只算是一个老北京人献给他们的衷心感谢。
They wanted me to write a preface for the book. This is indeed beyond my ability. This humble composition of mine I take as the sincere gratitude for their work from a veteran Beijinger.
刘绍棠
