The sound of street hawkers has been a unique part of hutong life in Beijing since the 1960s. Today, we can only find them in the audio archives at places like the Shijia Hutong Museum.
The first public museum dedicated to hutong life and siheyuan, or courtyard homes, Shijia Hutong Museum is located in the heart of Beijing -- only one kilometer away from the Forbidden City. It has eight exhibition rooms presenting the history, residents and life inside Shijia Hutong during the latter half of the 20th century.
In the number-one exhibition room, there's a miniature model of Beijing when the city's landscape was an interwoven network of hutongs and courtyard homes. A documentary with former residents recalling their experience growing up in Shijia Hutong takes you back to a time when life is much simpler.
According to a survey conducted by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, about 88 percent of Beijing's courtyard homes have been destroyed, only about 600,000 of Beijing's more than 20 million residents live in hutongs today. Soon, the sights and sounds of this traditional way of living will be easier to find in a museum than on the streets. This is also why Shijia Hutong Museum created a database for all kinds of sounds that are symbolic of that nostalgic age.
The museum also has a display of vintage household items such as oil lamps, lunch boxes, children's comic books and semiconductor radios. There are even replicas of a hutong home from the 1960s sparsely decorated with a large portrait of Chairman Mao hanging over the eating desk and a comparatively modernized household from the 1970s, with a small TV set as its centerpiece.
Almost all the exhibited articles are donated by families who once lived in Shijia Hutong; every one of them is attached to the museum in an emotional way.
Only 500 meters in length, Shijia Hutong is brimming with literary legends. The museum itself used to be the home of renowned Chinese writer Ling Shuhua, who is better known among western readers for her friendship with British novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. It was under her suggestion that Ling published the Ancient Melodies, a biography of her family in the beginning of the 20th century.
Shijia Hutong is also home to the Beijing People's Art Theater, founded in 1952 by China's literary giants such as playwright Cao Yu, writer Lao She and Guo Moruo. Their stage play, "The Songs of Old Beijing Peddlers," is an enduring classic.
Shijia Hutong Museum opens for free from Tuesday to Sunday. It's within walking distance from Dengshikou subway station on Line 5.
