The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed

I moved to Red Bayberry and Bamboo Slanted Street on August 8, 2005.

Sichuan province. I was posted to a city named Neijiang (Inner River), located on a bend of the Tuo River.

He crouches, looks up, rises, makes a small bow, and yells, “Good morning, Teacher Plumblossom!”

mynah bird

healthier than living in a high-rise apartment. The concept is called jie diqi in Chinese, “to be connected to the earth’s energy.”

Originally Red Bayberry and Bamboo was named after a matchmaker who arranged marriages on the lane. After the custom was deemed a relic of feudalism, municipal authorities swapped her name (yang) and profession (mei) for homophones that mean Red Bayberry (yangmei), then added bamboo (zhu). The name reflects the apothecaries who worked here, and the

Minnesota home. Here, I also met my future wife. For me, Beijing was simply love at first sight.

I wanted to live in the hutong as I had in the countryside a decade before, with unhurried days in a community where I played a role.

It is Beijing’s—if not the world’s—densest urban environment.

In 2005, the state-run media reported that only thirteen hundred hutong remained.