Do you hutong? Yes, I do

When my friends arrive from the United States for a visit to Beijing this summer, I will not take them to Qianmen - a sun-baked patch of concrete and modern storefronts. I will take them to Guloudajie before it becomes the next ancient hutong dismantled to line the pockets of developers.

Already, heaps of broken bricks line some of the Gulou area's narrow streets hidden behind oversize billboards advertising what the Gulou neighborhood might look like as a future attraction called Beijing Time Cultural City.

Built in the time of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, the hutong of 13th century Beijing were depicted in our favorite history books, along with the famous temples and palaces of China.