Xu Yong’s Hutong
“Hutong” is a kind of ancient city alley or lane typical in Beijing, where hutongs may number several thousands. Many of them were built during the three dynasties of Yuan, Ming and Qing. Now they are mainly found around the Forbidden City. In the prime of these dynasties, the enperors, in order to establish supreme power for themselves, planned the city and arranged residential areas according the etiquette systems of the Zhou Dynasty. The center of Beijing was the imperial palace – the Forbidden City – with the main streets laid out longitudinally and latitudinally. There are two kinds of hutongs, one kind is usually referred to as the regular hutongs, which are situated close to the east and west of the palace and orderly arranged alongside the streets. Most of residents who used to live in these hutongs are imperial kinsmen and aristocrats.
By Xu Yong
Beijing Hutong 101 Photos has come out in two editions by now. This new edition involves a change in cover design and of the 83th photo as well as a further revision and partial re-translation of the English text. It has been almost 10 years since the publication of the first edition of this photo album. In this very period, the face of Beijing has changed a lot, from a traditional one to a modern one with up-to-date and probably distinguished features.To the accompaniment of mechanical noises of bulldozers, siheyuan (quadrangle) in hutongs (lanes) were reduced to rubble, which was carried by truck over to the suburbs for filling pits. According to statistcs, more than 1000 hutongs in Beijing have disappeared from 1989 to 1999. The number of hutongs in the real sense has been reduced from over 3000 before to some hundreds at present, and it has still been on the decrease. The album reflects what hutongs looked like 10 years ago and shows how I felt about the special culture and atmosphere of Beijing. And that feeling of mine still seems unchanged.I should be grateful to the readers for their attention and kindness to the album as well as to Zhejiang Photographic Press and Ms. Ge Weiwei, the editor.
Xu Yong, April 12, 1989
HutongAn expanse of Hutongs is again going to disappear in Beijing. One of them is called Xiaofangjia Hutong. Located in the east of the old urban district, some hundreds meters away from the Second Ring Road or the old city wall of the Old Beijing, it run from east to west, that is, it strectched from Xiaopaifang Hutong in the east zigzagging to Dafangjia Hutong in the west. It was 291 meters long and 5 meters wide, it met Xishuijing Hutong in the north. The door plates flanking the courtyards on both sides were numbered 1 to 39, and 2 to 22, skipping the 29 in between.In the Hutong, there were 312 households with a?? population of over 1000.In the carving up of Ming Dynasty, these Hutongs belonged to Huanghua Lane to the east of the Imperial City. On the northwest sectiong, there was a?? horticulture garden owned by a big family surnamed Fang. By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the garden had fallen into disuse. But the name of Fangjia Garden has been kept to nowdays. Both the Xiaofangjia and the adjacent Dafangjia (small and big Fangs) Hutongs got their names on this account, though the former is only half the length of the later.
Like all other Hutongs in Beijing, the rise and decline of the Xiaofangjia Hutong are closely connected with the vicissitudes of Beijing. By the time i shot these pictures, it had become one of the extant hundreds of Hutongs in the city. Although there still remained the original gates, all the courtyards without exception were inhabited by several of scores of families. The elegant and magnificent courtyards that once enjoyed repute in northern China for centuries with its trellises, fish ponds and pomegranate trees had long disappeared.
On August 18, 2002, I photographed over one hundred residents of Xiaofangjia Hutongs as they freely formed different groups in a random manner. Each resident held a card with his/her name, date of birth and identification written on it. Two and half months later, the Xiaofangjia Hutong and scores of Hutongs in the vicinity disappeared from the map of Beijing.Hopefully this album may serve as a commemoration of the Xiaofangjia Hutong.
By Xu Yong. December 25, 2002
The new century will be here very soon. A few pictures in this photo album were taken only a couple of weeks ago. In recent years, for business reasons, I hardly had any time to concentrate myself on taking pictures. Therefore, I had to keep with me a ???foolproof??? camera in my handbag or car so
that I could occasionally take pictures of some daily things that attracted my attention and aroused my interest. All of the pictures included in this album are selected from what I took on my way to from work or during vacation from early 1995 until recently – scenes of urban life in Beijing.To those people who have lived in Beijing for a long time, these common scenes may have nothing special. Thanks to nearly two decades reform and opening-up, great changes have taken place to the city of Beijing and its people, and people???s?? horizon has been greatly broadened. People have been accustomed to those things that they might find strange a decade or two ago, and even face the strange without feeling strange, for they have grown more self-aware, tolerant and considerate. True it is ! At the turn of the new millennium, everyone, whether the Beijingers themselves or the outsiders who have observed Beijing for a long time, would have the unfeigned feeling that Beijing is becoming more and more colorful, and more and more attractive.What I did in this album was to present some fragmentary records of Beijing scenes at the end of the century from the perspective of an ordinary person in a calm mood.
Xu Yong, December 23, 2000
1954, Born in Shanghai
1978, Graduated from Luoyang Industrial College
1986, Graduated from Beijng Normal University, majoring in Chinese Literature
1990, his photo album – “Beijing Hutong 101 Photos” – was published
1992, his subsequent Native China series photo albums including “Lanes Collection”, “collection of Regions of Rivers and Lakes”, “Hutong Collection” and “Cave Collectiong” etc. were published
1996, he cooperated with 99 well-known contemporary writers and published “Hutong 99″ – a photo/essay album.
2001, he published “Beijing Unveiling” – a photo albumHe has held several exhibitions of his own works both at home and abroad. Many of his works have been collected by domestic and overseas organizations and individuals.
1990, his “Beijing Hutong 101 Photos” – a well-known work of contemporary photography, which has exerted extensive impact both at home and abroad.
1994, he initiated in Beijing the activity “To The Hutong”, which soon developed into a “Hutong Tour” sightseeing activity. Such effort drastically changed the idea that Hutong have become “useless junk” in the process of urban modernization and effectively promoted the publicity and protection of Hutongs in Beijing.
2002, as one of the pioneers of the Dashanzi Art District, he established 789 Space, the biggest art space in the area.
