hutong

plural hutongs · alternative hutung

1. A narrow alley or street in a traditional residential district of a city in China, especially Beijing.First known use 19th c.

   'I spent my childhood in those old hutong courtyards. Relationships were warmer then.' His mouth puckered, as if hunting a lost taste.

   2006, Colin Thubron, “The Capital”, in Shadow of the Silk Road, London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 11

   4 more examples

   The fish-bone-like transportation network is also present, especially in large neighbourhoods, where a series of major hutong (usually running east-west) are either joined by smaller transverse hutong or lead to even smaller dead-end hutong that occasionally run between housing plots.

   1999, Wu Liangyong, “Traditional Courtyard Houses and a New Prototype”, in Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing: A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighbourhood (Urbanization in Asia; 3), Vancouver, B.C.: UBC Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 74

   In Beijing, near the Forbidden City, a winding maze of hutongs, or narrow alleyways, is home to one of the world’s most exotic markets.

   2007 October 16, Brice J. Bay, “Thanks, but I’ll have the bat on a stick instead”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2015

   Today, just 1,300 hutong remain, and many more neighborhoods, like the colorful Qianmen district just south of Tiananmen Square, are scheduled for renewal.

   2009 January 19, Andrew Jacobs, “Finding treasures in a city’s disappearing past”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2021

   He led me along a dog-legging route through the fifteenth-century alleyways that were the lacework holding old Beijing together. Hutongs, as they were called, defined China's old capital, their grey stone walls pierced at intervals by weathered wooden doors that opened onto four-sided courtyard houses.

   2016, Madeleine O’Dea, “Beijing 1986”, in The Phoenix Years: Art, Resistance and the Making of Modern China, Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, →ISBN