Undergraduate / Looking through a window: Hutong neighborhoods in Beijing - Williams Supplement [5]

Prompt: Imagine looking through a window at any environment that is particularly significant to you. Reflect on the scene, paying close attention to the relation between what you are seeing and why it is meaningful to you. Please limit your statement to 300 words.

Standing in our apartment, I look down from the window and see the familiar view of the delicate rooftops of a hutong neighborhood, decorated with fresh white snow. This neighborhood has been here since we moved to Beijing in 2000, and I love catching a glimpse of it when I pass the balcony - it's such a breath of fresh air compared to the surrounding drab modern buildings. A group of old men are seated around a stone table playing mahjong, slapping their laps whenever they make a good move, yelling Hao!; several old women are dancing to folk songs with colorful fans; children are running between the interweaving alleyways, screaming with laughter.

There are many hutong neighborhoods scattered all over Beijing, each with its own anecdotes and traditions, all witnesses of Beijing's history. As I have been wandering around Beijing over the past few years, I noticed a haunting character repeatedly written over many hutongs in white paint - Chai, "to be torn down." No mahjong, dancing, fans, or laughing. That's when I realized the mind-boggling amount of change Beijing has undergone this decade. Every time I come back to Beijing from the USA, I always have trouble registering the new skyscrapers, street lights, and highways. I also gradually began to see the bulldozers and rubble of hutongs, and wondered where the people disappear to. In the midst of rapid economic development and globalization, there is a massive group of people left behind. Like these hutongs, they have become unwanted tradition and are seen as obstacles in the way of modern development.

As I continue to watch the old men crowd around a game of Mahjong, I wonder what I, as a young Chinese woman, can do to help preserve these hutongs and history.