The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
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The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
The most strident hutong defenders I had met were historians and tourists.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
I started to think about moving into a hutong that spring of 2003, when I met Mr. Yang.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
A Beijing courtyard home, in contrast, turns its face inward, hiding its most attractive features behind gates and walls.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
The former campus—where I had spent two of the happiest years of my life—had been erased.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
Together, they are the backdrop to a vanishing way of life.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
The job was a voyeur’s dream, but a bad one.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
British attaché recorded that in 1865 Lord Stanley sneered, “Peking’s a giant failure, isn’t it? Not a two-storied house in the whole place, eh?”
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
It is Beijing’s—if not the world’s—densest urban environment.