Hipsters flock to Beijing’s alleys
Wang Xiuren’s traditional courtyard house in central Beijing, a short walk from Tiananmen Square, has witnessed the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese occupation, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the market reforms of the 1980s and ’90s. Then the hipsters came. On a bright, sunny Sunday in late September, Wang, 62, stood in front of the house, watching a parade of young, affluent writers, artists, designers, architects and foreign tourists amble by, snapping photos of Yangmeizhu Hutong’s high grey walls, vermilion doors and sloping tile roofs. In recent years, Beijing’s creative class has transformed the hutong — or traditional Beijing alleyway — into a warren of cafés, bars and pop-up shops. “They’re really good at design,” Wang said of her new neighbours. Wang’s neighbourhood, Dashilar — which translates literally to “big stone fence” — is home to some of Beijing’s most vibrant remaining hutongs, with names that hark back to an earlier time: Money Market Alley, Door Frame Alley, Coal Lane. In the 1990s, as the city rushed to modernize, developers destroyed about 600 hutongs a year, displacing an estimated 500,000 residents.
Yet in recent years, government protection programs and rising real estate prices have put the brakes on wholesale demolition, and the earthy, organic feel of hutong courtyard homes — some lacking heat and indoor plumbing — have turned many remaining areas into magnets for the young and hip.
Wang has decided to cash in on the creative boom. Her grown daughter, who lives in Los Angeles, has helped her transform part of the courtyard into a coffee shop, which she hopes to eventually supplement with a museum showcasing her family history.
“I’ve been to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami,” Wang said. “I could live in the U.S., and it would be very nice. But I’d rather stay here and work for something — if I don’t, nobody will know our story.”
If Dashilar seemed even trendier than usual, that’s because Beijing’s fifth annual Design Week was going on. The event, which is sponsored by the Beijing city government, has Dashilar as its de facto command centre and spiritual core.
Dashilar is perhaps a microcosm of Beijing’s own transformation into a hipster mecca. The city now boasts at least half a dozen craft breweries, up from zero only a few years ago. “I’d like to live in the hutongs, but I can’t find a good one,” said Zhang Mingming, a 28-year-old architect, as he ambled around a courtyard home. “There are a lot of problems here, like the lack of showers and toilets.”
Zhang said his firm, Standard-architecture, plans to turn the courtyard into an art school. “We’ll open at the end of this year or the beginning of next,” he said. “We’ll have artists, dancers and designers come here and teach kids.”