Skip to main content

Coming Back home at night in Dongzhimen 东直门!

Ni hao!







Coming home late at night from a long days sightseeing in Beijing, this is what we see walking home from the Dongzhimen Subway Station.There is always a very special feeling about coming home after a hard days work! And going sightseeing and shopping all day is the same kind of feeling. It means now you can relax! We come up on the long stairs from the Dongzhimen Subway Station, and are now on the Dongzhimen Wai Dajie side of the 2nd Ring Road. First we stop directly at the stairs ending part, because here they sell souvernirs and vegetables. We buy some vegetables for eating later at home. I wanted to find somewhere to buy some chinese CDs, so we entered the building you see at the left of the first picture. It is the Oriental Kenzo Building. It is a residential building with a shopping center at the lower floors. It is really super stores here. They have many different stores, but they are looking very expensive too! So we leave after a while, and walk into a side street looing for my CDs! We ask some girls if they know where we can find a CD shop. We find some in the area, but when entering I feel I do not know enough about he chinese artists to be able to buy the right CDs! The price is very low by a westerners eye though! We wait, we do not buy today. The search will go on later during our stay here, and I can tell you that the end of the story was that I bought 6 double CDs with the different top chinese artists. Both male and female ones! And by the way one of them is Wei Wei, who has sold over 200 million CDs in the world. Mostly though in China. She lives in Sweden since 9 years ago. Now she lives in Stockholm, my home town. After this we walk across the 2nd Ring Road to the Dongzhimen Nei Dajie, the restaurant street! Also the southern border of the Minan Residential Complex, Minan Xiao Qu, where we live. Here in the corner of this street and our home street, Dong Jang Wei Jie, we can buy some fruit to eat at home. More street salesmen! This area was earlier called Dong Yang Wei Hutong, but now it is named after it´s northern border Minan Jie! The western border is Dongzhimen Beizhong Jie with my local favourite restaurant next to the Nan Guan Park. I will tell you about this street now. It begins from Zhenxian Hutong in the west and ends at Dongzhimen Nei Dajie in the south. It´s about 520 meters long and 22 meters wide. It was called Yangweiba Hutong in the early Republic of China and Dongyangwei Hutong in 1947, and remained so after 1949. The west part of the alley was named Dongyangwei Hutong in 1956, and renamed Dongzhimen Beizhong Jie in 1979. In the northern tip of the street, there was the mansions of the Prince Lu and the Prince Yunqi, which became the Russian Orthodox Eastern Church and the General Church of the Orthodox Eastern. It became the former Soviet Embassy after 1949. Today north of the northern border, Minan Jie, is the largest embassy area of one country in Beijing. The Russian Embassy is our neighbour here! Back to the eastern border. It is the Dong Yang Wei Jie, where our home and apartment is situated at number 1! The last picture shows you ou home street seen from the south. You can not see our house from here, but you can see directly on the left in the middle of that house is the place where we cut our hairs. And right to the left after this house is the local street where we go and buy our food and Tsingtao beers! Outside this to the east are some tall buildings and the 2nd Ring Road.

Zai jian!

Peter

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The China Millenium Monument in Beijing 北京!

Ni hao! The China Millenium Monument in Beijing 北京. All over the world, celebrations and festivities to usher in Year 2000 make up one of the grandest spectacles at the end of the century, as mankind strides towards the new century and millennium. New opportunities, challenges, and hopes are emerging over the horizon of China of the 21st century. The Chinese nation, with its splendid civilization of 5000 years, is on the threshold of an epoch of great renewal, as a future of yet greater splendour is arising in the East of the world. At the turn of the century and millennium, the China Millennium Monument. with its oriental cultural overtones and contemporary architectural art, will promote the national spirit by embodying an original style, displaying a modern aestheticism, and expressing hopes of the future. The China Millennium Monument, as China' s symbolic and commemorative building to welcome the Year 2000, is a gift for the world of the 21st century from the Chines

Dongzhimen 东直门

Ni hao! This day I will tell you about Dongzhimen 东直门 in the Dongcheng District, Beijing. Dongzhimen is the name of one of the gates in the old city walls of Beijing, it´s now a transportation node in Beijing. The 2nd Ring Road links with Airport Expressway. The Beijing Subway has a station at Dongzhimen, where Lines 2 and 13 connect. Line 13 has its eastern terminus at Dongzhimen. The Dongzhimen bus station is also situated here. For me it feels and seems like the central station in Stockholm! It really is near and we can walk there from home! Talking about minutes! We reach all corners of Beijing very easily from here during our 30 days visit. The subway station is only 8 minutes walk from our own apartment. West of Dongzhimen is Guijie, or "Food vessel street" (Dongzhimen Inner Street), extremely well-known to locals in Beijing as a food street. We go often to the restaurants on this street. There are so many different restaurants there. I think they must be 100 ones!

Beijing Hutongs 北京胡同 and Siheyuans 四合院!

Ni hao! Todays blog will tell you a little bit more about the Hutongs in Beijing. We all call it hutong. But when we talk abut them we really mean siheyuan. Siheyuan are the courtyard houses, and hutong are the streets or alleys inbetween them. So we should really talk about the Siheyuans inBeijing! Hutongs 胡同 are narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing, China. The word hutong comes from the Mongolian hottog meaning "water well." During the growth of towns and cities, wells dug by villagers formed the centres of new communities. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of Siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods. In old China, streets and lanes were defined by width. Hutongs were lanes no wider than 9 metres. Many are smaller; Beijing hutongs range in widt