xiaofangjia hutong

Xu Yong
xiaofangjia hutong

Photographs: Xu Yong

Text: Xu Yong

Publisher: China Photography Publishing House

86 pages

Pictures: 68

Year: 2003

ISBN: 7-80007-611-3

Price: 70 €

Comments: Softcover, 21 x 26 cm, color photographs. First edition. Included in Parr & Badger vol. 2 page 125. In very good condition !

An expanse of hutongs is again going to disappear in Beijing. One of them is called Xiaofangjia Hutong.

Located in the east of an old urban district some 100 meters away from the Second Ring Road or the old city wall of former Beijing running from east to west, the Hutong stretched from Xiaopaifang Hutong in the east and zigzagged to Dafangjia Hutong in the west. 291 meters long and 5 meters wide, it met Xishuijing Hutong in the north. The door plates flanking the courtyards on both sides were numbered 1 to 39, and 2 to 22, skipping 29 in between. In the Hutong there were 312 households with a population of over 1000.

In the carving up of Ming Dynasty Beijing lane zones, the Hutong belonged to Huanghua Lane to the east of the imperial city. On the northwest section there was a horticulture garden owned by a big family surnamed Fang. By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the garden had fallen into disuse. But the name of Fangjia Garden has been handed down to this day. Both the Xiaofangjia and the adjacent Dafangjia (small and big Fang families) hutongs got their names on this account, though the former is only half the length of the latter.

Like all other hutongs in Beijing, the rise and decline of the Xiaofangjia Hutong are closely connected with the vicissitudes of the city of Beijing. By the time I shot this album of portraits, it had become one of the extant hundreds of hutongs in the city. Although there still remained the original arch gates, all the compounds without exception were inhabited by several or scores of families. The elegant and magnificent siheyuan (courtyards surrounded by houses) that once enjoyed repute in northern China for centuries with characteristic trellises, fish ponds and pomegranate trees had long disappeared.

The decline of Beijing's hutongs can be traced back to the end of the Qing Dynasty.

[...]

The Cultural Revolution also caused great destruction of cultural relics in Beijing's hutongs.

There were 14 Qing Dynasty gateway arches in Xiaofangjia Hutong before the Cultural Revolution. Though in disrepair for years, the arch skeletons, sculptured brick-gatepost carvings and stone blocks in front of the entrance remained. But the carvings on the gateposts were altered from "Safety and Good Luck" into "Revolution to the End". The name of the Hutong was originally named "Fengfa ("Vigorous Mood") Hutong."

The reform and opening up quickened the modernization of Beijing City. Large numbers of hutongs were bulldozed. Statistics show that over 1500 hutongs in Beijing disappeared between 1980 and 2000. The number of hutongs in the real sense of the term dwindled from over 3000 to merely several hundred. Hundreds of thousands of Beijingers bade farewell to their Hutong dwellings. New buildings sprang up everywhere on big avenues and new Beijing districts aspired to those in Tokyo, New York and La Défense in Paris.

In this process, hutongs were made to seem awkward and Hutong dwellers rendered powerless.

On August 18, 2002, I photographed over one hundred residents of Xiaofangjia Hutong as they freely formed different groups in a random manner. Each resident held a card with his/ her name, date of birth and identification written on it. Two and half months later, the Xiaofangjia Hutong and scores of hutongs in the vicinity disappeared from the map of Beijing.

Hopefully this album may serve as a commemoration of the Xiaofangjia Hutong.

- Extract from Xu Yong's foreword