Houhai Hutong Class Trip

Last Friday my Chinese language classmates and I went on a walking trip to visit some Hutong (胡同). We set out from campus at about 1pm and got to the Hutong by about 3pm or so. We walked there and were in no real hurray. It was a very nice day, not too cold, but definitely not too hot either. We stop for fruit and meat-ka-bobs at some street vendors. Mostly it was a bonding experience between classmates and the teachers that went. The Hutong are a great place to visit because they are very narrow streets that are very friendly to through traffic. So it's very nice, peaceful, and most importantly devoid of cars. Another thing I liked about the Hutong, and most side streets in China I've seen so far, is that they are so well swept. You almost never see trash on the ground, or dead leaves, or plastic wrappers. It's almost surreal at times. It's also worth noting that many areas are swept by hand, no big street sweepers. Just a guy with a cart and a large bamboo broom.

Occasionally you'll stumble upon a funny photo-op,



an eye catching scene,



or just a cool statue.



After wandering in the Hutong for some time we passed through the Lotus Market area of Houhai and ended up at a restaurant where we had a nice large meal partially paid for by the school. There were about 25-30 in our party so we basically took over the restaurant's upstairs. So many dishes were ordered. Everything was good. The dessert was a candied sweet potato. Imagine a diced and cooked sweet potato dipped in melted sugar. Crunchy outside, soft yummy inside. It was great weekend overall!