志    号：2005，9-8

胡同名称：白塔寺东夹道

所在城区：北京市西城区

突出题材：白塔

表现元素：门钹

Series Number：2005，9-8

Name of the Hutong：Baitasidong Jiadao

District：Xicheng (the west city) District of Beijing

Subject to Highlight：The White Pagoda

Element to Portrait：Door knocker shaped as cymbal.

Chapter 8  People in Hutongs

In 1449 (the fourteenth year of the Zhengtong Reign in the Ming Dynasty), there was a cruel war between the Ming Dynasty and the Oyirad, an alliance of the western Mongols.  What started the war was an episode of the border trade.  At that time, Esen Tayisi, the de facto dictator of the Oyirad, wanted to follow the example set forth by Xiong-Nu in the Han Dynasty and marry a princess of the Middle Kingdom.  He bribed a translator whose name was Ma Yun.  Out of his vanity, Ma Yun accepted the bribe and promised the marriage on the Emperor’s behalf without reporting it to the Court.  Esen was thrilled and sent one thousand horses to the Ming Court as betrothal present.  Emperor Ying of the Ming was shocked and of course rejected the present, Esen felt humiliated and thought that it was the Ming Emperor who had duped him and therefore started a war against the Ming.  A powerful eunuch in the Ming Court, Wang Zhen, encouraged Emperor Ying to go on a military campaign himself.  Both Emperor Ying and Wang Zhen had very little experience on battlefield.  The Ming army was defeated as soon as they made contact with the enemy.  Emperor Ying was captured by the Oyirad.  Fan Zhong, an official of the Ming royal guards, who was both sad and mad by what Wang had done to the Ming, kill Wang Zhen with hammers.

When the news reached the capital, almost everyone in the Court were panicked.  Someone suggested moving the capital to the south. Yu Qian, who was the minister of the Ministry of Military Affairs, yelled loudly, “Whoever proposes to move the capital to another place must be executed!”  Emperor Jing, the younger brother of Emperor Ying, followed Yu’s advice and defended Beijing rigorously.  He eventually defeated the Qyirad.  After two years, the Qyirad and the Ming had reached a peace agreement.  The Qyirad released Emperor Ying.  After returning to Beijing, Emperor Ying was placed under house arrest in Xiao Nancheng (small south city) by Emperor Jing, Six years after, Emperor Ying restored his power, hung Emperor Jing with red silk belt, and executed Yu Qian who had defeated the Qyirad’s invasion and had been a national hero.  Emperor Ying also ordered to offer sacrifices to Wang Zhen in Zhihua Temple.  Zhihua Temple was built in 1444 (the ninth year of the Zhengtong Reign).  Originally, it was Wang Zhen’s family temple and Wang Zhen had planned to stay there when he retired from the Court.  Zhihua Temple still exists today.  It is located at the north side of east entrance of Lumicang hutong in Dongcheng District.  It is one of the historical sites protected by the State and is famous for its “Jing music,” which is one of the five oldest Chinese music genres we can find today.  People who come to visit this place cannot help but remember this historical figure, five hundred years ago, who was one of the most powerful persons. 

In the eighth year of the Tianshun Reign, Emperor Ying, who had been the emperor twice, died.  Having succeeded the throne, his son Emperor Xian, readdressed Yu Qian’s case and exonerated him.  He ordered to convert Yu’s old residence, which was in Dongbiaobei hutong, into a temple to commemorate Yu’s loyalty and moral integrity.  An official named Wang Yi’e once came to the temple and pay respect to Yu.  He had a dream in which Yu had come back to the old residence and recited a poem.  In the poem there were two lines:

In the empty mountain whom should I rely on to tell the sorrow and injustice?

Crossing unfathomable distance a loyal spirit comes back by himself alone.

This memorial temple still exists.  It is one of the historical sites protected by the Beijing government.  However, it has become a zayuan (a courtyard with houses for miscellaneous uses) and is torn and tattered.  People living there surely know about Yu Zhen and may be proud of him.  Dongbiaobei hutong is not far away from Lumicang hutong.  Two different persons in the same historical period, one was a hero, the other was a villain.  Both of them left their imprints on old Beijing.  One makes people hate and detest him; while the other makes people sympathize with and revere him. 

On the west side of Jiugulou street in Xicheng District of Beijing, there are two small alleys of the east-west direction.  On the south side is Houmachang hutong; on the north side is Xiaoshiqiao hutong.  Between these two hutongs is the Bamboo Garden Hotel.  This hotel used to be Sheng Xuanhuai’s residence.  It used to be called Sheng’s Garden.  Sheng Xuanhuai, whose style name was Xingsun, was born in Wujin, Jiangsu Province.  He once was Li Hongzhang’s advisor and an important figure in the Westernization Movement.  He participated in the launch of the China Telegraph Bureau in 1880, started the Grand Beiyang School in 1896.  Later, he took over Hanyang Steel Plant and Daye Iron Mine, managed Luhan Railway, proposed the creation of the China Commercial Bank, and took responsibility in managing Pingxiang Coal Mine.  After the Box Uprising in 1900, Sheng participated in the Mutual Protection of Southeast China engineered by the British and the United States.  Right before the Qing Dynasty collapsed, Sheng had been the minister of the Ministry of Post.  He borrowed heavily from foreign countries and used rights to Sichuan-Hankou and Guangdong-Hankou railroads as collaterals in the name of the government, disregarding the fact that the rights to build and manage those railroads had already belonged to private merchants.  His action actually triggered the Railway Unrest.  After the Xinhai Revolution, Sheng escaped to Japan.  He died in Shanghai in 1916.

After 1949, the Sheng’s Garden was confiscated by the government.  First it was Dong Biwu who lived there.  Later, after Dong had moved out, Kang Sheng moved in.  Both Dong and Kang were important figures in the Chinese modern history.  Besides these people, there were two other persons had lived in this place.  One was An Dehai who had lived in the garden even before Sheng Xuanhuai did; the other is Wang Yintai who was after Sheng.  An was a general eunuch.  In 1869 (the eighth year of the Tongzhi Reign in the Qing Dynasty), by the order of Empress Dowager Cixi, he went to the south to arrange and purchase stuffs needed in the palace.  On his way, he abused his power, domineered over local officials, took bribes and recruited followers.  Eventually, he was executed by Ding Baozhen, the governor of Shandong Province, for the reason that according to the rules set forth by the ancestors, a eunuch should have not be allowed to step into anywhere outside of the capital.  Wang Yintai was a traitor serving in the Japanese puppet government.  He was born in Fenyang, Shanxi Province, and was a deputy minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Beiyang Government.  During the time of the Japanese occupation, he was the Chairman of the North China Political Affair Committee and the Minister of Industry and Commerce in the puppet government.

These people, An Dehai, Sheng Xuanhuai, Wang Yintai, Dong Biwu, Kang Sheng, ranging from a general eunuch in the feudal society to the Acting Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, were all either famous or notorious in their own times.  However, they have lived in the same hutong and in the same residence.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that hutong is indeed a vehicle that carries the sediments of history as well as the weight of influential figures.

It goes without saying that not everyone living in hutongs is as influential as those mentioned above.  Most people in hutongs are common people who have to take care of basic needs for everyday lives.  On the west side of Jishuitan Lake, there is a small hutong named Banchang Ertiao.  In the hutong there is an old man whose name is Xu Lincun.  He was born in Linbao, Henan Province in 1913 and his style name is Zhihai.  During the Cultural Revolution, in 1966, Lao She, one of the most important writers in the Chinese modern literature, under the tremendous political pressure and public humiliation, threw himself into Taiping Lake and died.  Next year, in a night, Xu Lincun buried a stone tablet on the bank of Taiping Lake.  On the tablet, it was inscribed that “This is the place where Mr. Lao She said goodbye to the world.”  Xu also invited several good friends to come to the spot, performed the ritual to pay respect to Lao She.  1967 was the year when the Cultural Revolution was at its peak.  To accomplish what Xu have done required extraordinary courage.  After the Cultural Revolution, Xu has been widely praised for his wisdom and bravery.  He was cited as an example that a common person living in an ordinary hutong could accomplish something that required unwavering willpower and persistent effort.

In different districts, people in hutongs have different social statuses.  In Beijing, people used to say, “People on the east are rich people, people on the west are the nobles; people on the north are poor people, people on the north are the deprived.”  This generally reflects the classifications of the social statuses of people living in hutongs in Beijing.  The east referred to the east part of the downtown area; the west referred to the west part.  The line that divided them was today’s Di’anmenwai Street.  The north referred to the area on the north side of Dongzhimennei Street and Gulouxi Street.  The south mainly referred to the area on the south side of Guang’anmen Street and Zhushikou Street.  Due to historical reasons, people living these four areas have different social statuses.  The rich, the noble, the poor and the lowly, these traits roughly described the situations of people living in these districts.  In history, particularly at the end of the Qing Dynasty, along with the development of Wangfujing Street, the east part of the downtown area had been gradually turned into a commercial district, therefore more and more rich families had moved into that area.  In the Qing Dynasty, in the west part of the downtown area, there were many royal residences, so there were naturally more nobles. On the north side of Dongzhimennei Street and Gulouxi street, at the foot of the city wall, there were many urban poor.  On the west of this area, people used to say “the poor fruit market; the shabby ribbon lane.”  In the south part of the city there were many peddlers, craftsmen and poor artists living there.  After the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, an entertaining place, a place that was well known by the name of Tianqiao, emerged in that area.  Eventually, Tianqiao has become a synonym for Beijing popular culture.

However, even in the same south area, not everyone had the same social status in different sub-areas.  In the middle of the 17^th century, the Qing had set up its capital in Beijing.  In order to fortify the imperial city, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty ordered that the Manchu should have the inner city and the Han had to live in the outer city, and forced the Han who had lived in the inner city to move to the outer city.  Not until the Daoguang Reign that this regulation started to become lenient.  For this reason, hutongs in the area on the west side of Qianmen Street and south side of Xuanwu men were the home of officials of the Han ethnic group.  It was in this area that the Xuannan Culture had emerged.  This culture represented the making and mentality of Chinese traditional intelligentsia.  Some well-known figures in the history of China, such as Zhu Yizun, Kong Shangren, Wang Yuyang, Ji Xiaolan, Lin Zexu and Gong Zizhen, have left their footprints in this area.  Those footprints reflected their lives and the culture they had represented.  These figures have made up a special group of people in hutongs.

In the history of Beijing, there was another special group of people in hutongs.  This was a special group of persons living in the so-called Eight Major Hutongs.  The Eight Major Hutongs is a term generally applied to those hutongs outside of Qian men, such as Yanzhi hutong, Baishun hutong, Hanjia Hutong, Shitou Hutong, Zhujia Hutong, Xiaoli Hutong, Dawailangying Hutong, Xiaowailangying Hutong, Shanxi Xiang, Qingfeng Jiadao, Wangguangfu Xiejie, etc.  From the late Qing to 1949, there were many brothels and many girls working for the men’s pleasures in that area.  However, even among those women, whenever there was a national crisis, there were not short of heroines who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the course of righteousness.  Xian Fengxian was an outstanding example of them.  Facing immediate life-threatened risk imposed by Yuan Shikai, she helped General Cai E escape from Beijing and covered his tracks.  Her courageous action had eventually let the fall of Yuan Shikai.  These figures certainly demand our respect with their wisdom and courage. Hutongs in Beijing are indeed the place where you can find many extraordinary figures. People in hutongs understand what they should do for the benefit of the country, know where to draw a line between right and wrong, and are not afraid to take action or even sacrifice themselves to do the right thing.  We should never underestimate people in hutongs.