In a city that is almost unrecognisable from pictures taken only 50 years ago, a city of ugly shopping malls, grim traffic choked highways and scores of depressing, boxy, apartment blocks, Gulou is Beijing’s heart and soul.
The labyrinth of alleyways, or hutong, have wound their way around the old Drum and Bell towers, two majestic structures that once kept the time for the city’s residents, for centuries.
The square between the two towers was, until recently, the Saturday night hang out of groups of elderly Chinese women who would set up a blaring speakers for their group dancing. The local men, meanwhile, would gather in half-lit doorways surrounding the square, huddled over games of Mah Jong. Kids would run lose through the streets, stopping at houses to pick up their mates, more like siblings in this nation of only children.
These alleyways have housed Beijing families for hundreds of years. Families that have watched emperors come and go, dynasties rise and fall, war, revolution, famine. But now they are falling victim to something they can’t stop – gentrification.
