志    号：2005，9-9

胡同名称：钱市胡同

所在城区：北京市宣武区

突出题材：窄、长、高

表现元素：拴马石

Series Number：2005，9-9

Name of the Hutong：Qianshi Hutong

District：Xuanwu District of Beijing

Subject to Highlight：The width, the length and the height

Element to Portrait：Stone used for tethering horses

Chapter 9  The Hutong Culture

In the winter of 1591 (the nineteenth year of the Wanli Reign of the Ming Dynasty), One day, ministers were practicing rituals in Chaotian Palace (the palace to worship the Heaven). On that day, it was snowing heavily.  Many poems were written to memorialize the occasion.  Two of them, composed by Guo Zhengyu and Wang Jiaping respectively, were particularly praised by the participants.  Wang’s was even better.  Today, reading his poem, we can still picture the palace along with the scenery vividly.

The Palace shining with strings of sparkling ice pearls is covered by reddish clouds,

The Load of Heaven came to the Court escorted by flocks of white cranes.

The royal garden bathed in snowflakes is deeply in auspicious aura,

Fragrance emitted from silver branches gives out purifying air.

Swords worn by thousand soldiers should all be wet,

Rivers and Mountains on the far land are hardly distinctive in my eyes.

Please don’t send north wind to make the cold too cold,

The warm and peaceful air over the world is just enshrouding.

Chaotian Palace was located northwest of Baita Temple (Temple of White Pagoda).  It was built in 1432 (the seventh year of the Xuande Reign of the Ming Dynasty).  It was used to worship Taoist gods and practice rituals.  The palace was destroyed by fire in 1626 (the sixth year of the Tianqi Reign).  On its site, today we have Dayu (this word literarily means “large jade”) hutong, Gongmenkou (this word literarily means “at the palace door”) hutong, Donglangxia (this word literarily means “under the east portico”) hutong and Xilangxia (this word literarily means “under the west portico”) hutong.

In the book Hutongs and Arches over Gateways (《胡同与门楼》, authored by Wang Bin), there are many collected gatepost couplets.  The couplet on the doors of No. 35 of Donglangxia hutong was particularly outstanding:

Coming back to the famous city, the governor has restored his power,

Hidden in the Eastern Mountain, the poet cherished his aspiration.

This couplet is quite interesting.  Among many couplets we have seen in Beijing, the one on the doors of No. 35 of Donglangxia hutong has its unique lingering charm.  Using the allusions that Xie An who came back to the political power and that Tao Yuanming who sang loudly with pleasure on the Eastern Mountain, was it because that the owner of the residence was an official who had not been happy with his political career?  Composing poems while evading political affair, was it really an action to hide away from the world and struggle to be a poet?

There is no evidence pointing to any relationship between No. 35 and Wang Jiaping, the poet in the Ming Dynasty.  However, it should not be a surprise that if whoever read this couplet has his memory flash back to the poet who composed the poem in the Wanli Reign.  It is not only because of the geographical relationship of this hutong to Chaotian Palace, but also, more importantly, because that between these two, there is a cultural heritage, an attitude toward live that has been passed along through generations.  Wang was associated with the grandeurs of palace.  He conveyed the mentality of the people whose lives were connected to the royal court.  Nevertheless, he was trying to translate this mentality into a poetic appreciation.  On the other hand, the owner of No. 35 had failed in his pursuit for a successful political career, and therefore had to lie low in a place where no attention would be attracted.  However, even he was hiding, he still took Xie An of the East Jin Dynasty as his example, struggling to take the fall gracefully.  He was also trying to use some artistic form to express his life experience, even though it was not exciting at all. Wang Jiaping and the owner of No. 35, one was “exploring the world”, the other was “evading the world”.  Combining these two mentalities, we then have the general picture of how traditional Chinese literati philosophized their lives and how they appreciated their lives no matter whether the perspectives of their lives were bright of gloomy.

Of course, what the couplet on the doors of No. 35 of Donglangxia hutong has conveyed is not the mentalities of common people. What have conveyed common people’s mentalities are the following couplets:

Summon all good messages; the luck will come.

Country to bless and family to celebrate; people to live longer and flourish years to come.

To be content with what you had is to be pleased with life; to know how to tolerate is to have peace in your mind.

The happiest thing to do is to do good things; the best thing to do is to study.

Whoever has honesty and integrity would have his family line last longer; whoever successes academically would have his family name to be carried farther.

Cultivate your own mortality as carefully as you are holding a jade; accumulate virtues more diligently than accumulate gold.

If descendents are virtuous, the clan will grow; if brothers get along, the family will prosper.

To be honest and tolerant, you would have extra leeway when you need it; to keep peace with yourself, you would live as long as the nature allows.

To be tolerant, kindhearted, nice to others, to wish the country have peace, family members have good and tight relationships, to consider study as the best thing to do, to stress self moral cultivation, to use the purity of jade and preciousness of gold to emphasize the importance of virtues to human nature.

These are the ideals and ethics we may perceive from these couplets.  What are behind these ideals and ethics is what the hutong culture portraits to us.

What is the hutong culture?  Different people may have different definitions.  Actually, the simplest way to get the essence of the hutong culture is the method used above. For gatepost couplets speak the hearts of the owners of the residences. If we are able to put their heartfelt voices together, we would be able to answer the question of what is the hutong Culture.

Because of the special position Beijing has in the national political life, sometimes we also see such couplets as that “When the Heaven approaches the top of canopy, stars are also closer; when the Earth reaches the fabled immortal island, dews and rains are abundant”, that reflect the mentality of those people who thought they were privileged for the reason that they were living closer to the Son of Heaven.  Authors of these couplets took proud in the fact of being a citizen of Beijing.  Similarly, we have such couplet as that “Abundant rains and dews we have because of the Sage who is leading us, how we should repay for the peace and prosperity.”  It contains not only pride but also the faith in and loyalty to the country.

Doubtlessly, the wording and contents of couplets kept changing as time passed. In Xishui hutong in Xicheng District, there was one couplet, “Reform world; Old families”.  It was related to the Reform Movement let by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao at the end of the Qing Dynasty.  Such words had, to say the least, the ideological connection to these reformers.  Similarly, in Dacheng xiang, we have “Twentieth century Minguo (the Republic of China), Four scholartrees family.”  It was closer to us since it referred to the government that existed between 1911 and 1948.  There is another one, “Goods are abundant and Heaven blesses us because of democracy; people are talented and the world is responding because of the republic.”  There is a more interesting one at No. 11 of Doujiao hutong in Dongcheng District.  It says, “Learn to read and write diligently; strive for honor at any moment.”  It is quite unbelievable!  Could one write gatepost couplet just like that?  It certainly can be done.  Time is changing and feelings of the residents in hutong are also changing.  There is nothing strange about it.

However, time has been changing too fast, and hutong can hardly keep up with it.  Right after 1949, there were about two million people in Beijing.  What about now?  There are at least fourteen million people in the same city.  The population has increased dramatically, while the number of siheyuans has kept almost the same.  So, siheyuans have been turned into various zayuans (a courtyard with houses for miscellaneous uses) of different sizes.  Since siheyuans are declining, hutongs are declining too.  As cars have gradually entered residential houses, hutongs can no longer meet the need of people in Beijing to move around.  It seems that hutongs have become an obstacle to modernization.  Since 1990s, the pace of reforming the city and removing unsafe houses has been accelerated.  Many siheyuans have been torn down.  Many hutongs have also disappeared.  Many mini districts have been built on the sites of previous hutongs.  If hutong per se disappeared, the hutong culture would certainly disappear too.  It is just like the relationship between skin and hairs. If skin is gone, there wouldn’t be any place for hairs to stick.  No question about it.  It seems that hutong has come to its end.  Is it really possible that hutong would have the same fate as that of the Toad Tomb in Xi’an or the Wuyi xiang in Nanjing, and become just historic relics?  Is it possible that hutong would be only a few samples preserved just for exhibition? This is saddening perspective, a depressing thought.  Would it turn out to be true?

Just as in any form of an architectural construction, the structure of hutong also faces the issue of defining the ratio between the space and the population who are using the space.  The expansion of population has destroyed the proper proportion between the space and population.  The fault is not at hutong itself.  If we take a simplistic viewpoint to think about this issue, then, we would face the dilemma that we have to preserve hutongs on the one hand and improve people’s living conditions on the other hand.  However, if we change the way of thinking, stop thinking as a realty developer who takes bulldozers as the only solution to the problem, it is indeed plausible to preserve hutongs while improving people’s living conditions.  The relationship between these two tasks is not like that between black and white that are opposite to each other.  After many years of research, the Beijing municipal government has set up a plan to establish forty historical-cultural reservation areas.  75% of them are in old city areas.  This plan has laid foundations for the preservation of hutongs.  In particular, they are the area from Xisibei Toutiao (the first Xisibei hutong) to Xisibei Batiao (the eighth Xisibei hutong) within Huang Cheng (the imperial city), Shichahai area, Dongsi area, Nanluoguxiang area, Beiluoguxiang area, the area north of Dongsi Shitiao, Guozijian area and Nanhenxi street, Xianyukou, and Dazhalan area.  In short, they include the areas where best of hutongs in Beijing exist.  Of course, comparing to old Beijing, hutongs has diminished significantly.  Correspondingly, the hutong culture now exists only in a much smaller scale.  However, because culture is relatively independent, the hutong culture may still assert itself through people’s behaviors even though these people are no longer living in hutongs.  The culture may last for a much longer time.  The French philosopher Descartes once said, “Je pense donc je suis” –I think therefore I exist.  Since hutong will still be with us, is there any reason that the hutong culture won’t be doing so?