Rickshaw tales of Shichahai

Beijing

Sometimes the best stories are those passed down through word of mouth. Wu Wencong takes a ride and listens to some legendary hutong tales.

This lakeside stretch is among the most often touted by the tourist guides, along with the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Shichahai is famous for its bar streets by the lakeside, but local Beijingers say there is much more under the surface ?a quieter, more retrospective side.

The best way to discover that is to hop on a rickshaw with a paper cup of hot coffee and allow the rickshaw rider to tuck a thick cotton quilt over your lap before he rides off with you on a hutong tour.

Some visitors may prefer to measure the length and width of the hutong with their own legs, but they would be missing the best part - the fascinating stories told by the rickshaw riders.

Forty-year-old Li Gang is a native Beijinger and his family has been living in the hutong of Shichahai for generations. For the last decade, he has shuttled visitors back and forth along the lanes, telling stories passed down from his grandfather.

The tour starts off from the memorial arch at the Lotus Market, passing over the 700-year-old Wanning Bridge and cruising by the 1,000-year-old Temple of Fire. The rickshaw stops in front of a restaurant named Kao Rou Ji, which mainly serves broiled beef and mutton and Islamic stir-fried dishes.

Li says not many people know that the restaurant shares an illustrious history about as long as that of Quanjude, the iconic Peking duck restaurant. There is only this one store, and there are no others in the country.

Past the 500-year-old Yinding Bridge, which was recently rebuilt, the roads become narrower, sometimes just wide enough for the rickshaw to pass.

Li says this stretch used to house the weaving and dyeing workshops of the Ming Dynasty, producing the fancy clothes the nobility demanded.

His next stop is at the entrance of a quadrangle dwelling, the classic Beijing courtyard house. These have a history of more than 2,000 years and although there are many similar styles throughout China, these in Beijing are special as there are rooms on every side.

The northern rooms, the tallest buildings, are reserved for the senior members of the family, while sons lived in the rooms on the right and daughters on the left.

Rooms in the south wing are the lowest and reserved for servants. Before the Qing Dynasty ended, only Manchurian nobility were allowed to live in Shichahai.

The owner of the courtyard house we were looking at said his grandfather bought it in 1948 for 2,000 silver dollars.

The original north wing is 380 years old, and guest rooms built in the other wings are open to tourists who want to experience the typical day of a Qing noble, who probably did little except coax songs from a bird kept in an ornate bamboo cage, indulge in cricket-fighting or perhaps play a game of chess.

If the culture experience gets too heavy, take to the frozen lake on skates. Or, as the afternoon sun slants across the sparkling ice, pedal an ice-bike with your sweetheart.

After so much history, pure childish pleasures may be just the thing to relax you.

(China Daily 01/23/2011 page15)