Day Three- Part One- Hutong Tour

We woke up EARLY again despite being so tired the night before and taking sleeping pills… thank you jet lag… :)

We didn’t have to meet our guide quite as early, so we hung out around our room for a bit, skyped with the kids (where we found out Braden had been sick and running a fever since the day before :(  and made arrangements for Me Me to pick him up so she could take care of him. He ended up running a fever and being sick for several days and missed 4 days of school, poor guy!!)

When it was late enough, we got dressed and went down to the restaurant to have some yummy breakfast. The breakfast buffets were really the food highlight of our whole trip, for sure! It was included in the price of the room and there was so much yummy food everywhere to be eaten!

We headed back up to our room to finish packing up because we were leaving the hotel for good today to head to our girls’ provinces! What an exciting day! I woke up with MAJOR butterflies in my tummy. The very short “vacation” part of this trip was nearing its end and the REAL reason for our trip was beginning.

After checking out of our hotel and loading up in the van, our first stop was the Hutong Tour. This tour took us through what  you might call the historic area of Beijing. This area is protected by the government and is being preserved. So much of Beijing has become high rises to be able to accommodate more people in less space, but this area is especially neat because it’s the same as it has been for hundreds of years!

Here we are on the rickshaw with our driver looking on.

We took lots of pictures as we rode along. Here you can see all the rickshaws lined up waiting for customers. This was only 1 street lined with them. There were at least 6 more long streets lined with them! There were so many rickshaws and drivers in this area!

One of the many hundreds of alley ways in the Hutong district.

As we rode along there was a beautiful lake with shopping and restaurants all alongside.

Here’s a row of restaurants and bars along one side. We were told by our guide that this is a trendy spot at night and on the weekends.

Here is our guide, Victor, telling us about the Hutong District. One cool fact about this lake is that it connects to the lake at the Summer Palace!

Looking across the lake towards the city high rises.

Construction was going on here. It had been completely gutted.

Walking along through some of the alleyways.

This Hutong had been renovated in recent years.

The highlight of our Hutong tour and perhaps of Beijing (for me) was getting to go inside a family’s home. This was just as we walked inside the front door and turned to our right. You can see the front door with windows on the left of the photo.

We even got to sit on the couches and visit with the sweet homeowner! This house has been in her husband’s family for 300 years!

On the other side of the living room area, was their back porch area.

Also across the living room, and to the left of the back porch, was another little room which was the kitchen. This is it! The lady in the red shirt is the homeowner’s sister who was there for their traditional Sunday dinner. They spend all day preparing the meal to enjoy in the evening.

Right across from the kitchen was the one and only bedroom.

The other room in the home was the homeowner’s studio. We found out that he was a national award winning artist! Wow! His original work was amazingly beautiful. One of the main items on our must buy list was original artwork. As I looked at his work in his studio I was SO wishing we could buy some of his paintings!

As we were looking around and taking pictures, the homeowner (artist) came in for a brief minute to say hi. He had been hanging out at the neighbor’s house. I got the feeling that he didn’t love the attention and showing people his home because after saying Hi briefly, he went back to the neighbor’s house :)

Here is his medal he won for being the National Artist of the Year. It was in a glass front bookcase in his studio.

As we finished looking around, the homeowner pulled out a box full of artwork for us to look at. And they let us buy some!! We were so excited! We knew we wanted to buy artwork, but to get to buy the artwork from an artist that we got to meet and see his home… it was just incredible! It took us a little while to look through all of them, decide how many we would buy and then pick out the ones we wanted. They were all so very beautiful!

Here we are with the homeowner. She was a very kind lady who warmly welcomed us into her home that she was obviously very proud of. Her husband had lived his whole life in  this exact home and she moved here with him when they were married. They have one daughter whom they raised in this home. She is now married and living in a high rise in the city, but she does come back to visit often.

After we left the family’s Hutong, we walked back to where our rickshaws were parked to ride back to where we started. We saw lots of neat sights along the way back.

Here we are posing with our guide at the end of our tour. He did a great job and we all enjoyed this tour very much!