First-time visitors to Beijing may worry that they’ve taken a wrong turn when they alight on trafficked streets dominated by modern skyscrapers. But by exploring the narrow streets and twisted alleys ...

Gu Chen has slept and worked in the same one-room apartment in Beijing's ancient "hutong" neighbourhood of Beixinqiao all his life. Most mornings, he rises from a twin bed that he shares with his wife ...

Fifty years ago, Beijing had 3,000 hutongs — narrow alleys flanked by old, one-story houses and crowded with people. Some of the alley communities have existed for 800 years. But as Beijing modernizes ...

Reporting from Beijing — Almost every morning, Liu Yunjiang prepares a show for strangers at his house in one of Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods. He starts by tending to his birds — cockatiels, pigeons ...

In northern China, hutongs are thin, narrow alleyways lined with cramped single-story houses in which families live communally, sometimes for generations. Depending on your point of view, to enter ...

BEIJING — While the posh and extravagant Pangu Plaza, housing a “seven-star hotel” and stretching immensely over five square blocks in the shape of a dragon, is the ultra-modern face that China has ...

People at a hutong in Beijing. Although Beijing is making incredibly fast forays into modernization, the true heartbeat of this ancient city still resides in its hutongs, which are today hidden behind ...

BEIJING — Beijing’s latest urban preservation campaign swung like a wrecking ball this summer through the colorful shops along Yonghegong Street, a tree-lined road between two of the city’s landmarks: ...

A woman passes through a neighborhood being demolished to make way for new developments in Beijing. Once common, hutongs are becoming a rare sight in the capital. PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images Though ...