The arrival of winter in Beijing often brings with it a certain kitchen ritual. Cabbages, plentiful from suburban stalls, dot corners and courtyards as families prepare for the season ahead. Tradition holds that a family should accumulate about 25 kilos by February, a practical pantry for cold months. Cabbage remains a reliable ally: inexpensive, sturdy, and endlessly adaptable. It stores well without refrigeration; simply peel away the frozen outer leaves and pair it with boiled or sautéed tofu or pork. Its presence signals a time-honored rhythm, even as broader tensions sometimes touch the city’s global narrative.
When summer heats up, the scene shifts to exposed midriffs that mark a different mood. The heat encourages open shirts tied at the midriff or under the arms, a pose that has long met with mixed reactions from officials who have tried, unsuccessfully, to curb this display. Critics have argued that such sartorial choices clash with the formal aesthetics some associate with the capital of China’s modern economy.
Cabbages and bare bellies—these are the hutong codes. They are not seen among the gleaming skyscrapers of the financial district Guomao or in the polished dining rooms of Sanlitun, Beijing’s nightlife hub. Hutongs are the narrow lanes and low houses where neighbors share space and stories. In summer they gather three chairs and a table for outdoor meals, in fall they seek sunlight to lay out a quick domino-like game. Hutongs represent a cheerful, chaotic charm and a spontaneous spirit that persists in the face of rapid globalization and the unease many feel about change.
The earliest hutongs radiate from the area around the Forbidden City, their gray walls a counterpoint to the imperial reds and yellows that still echo in the city today. The Beijing accent, imperfect and noisy, flares across these lanes as if to remind visitors of the delicate balance between tradition and modern life. Even now, hutongs offer small pockets of life: a tiny orchard here, a cricket breeder there, a knife sharpener on a tricycle—small economies and micro-cultures that keep the neighborhood vibrant.
The hutongs host a substantial concentration of older, less affluent housing in central Beijing and a social fabric that has become less active over time. Urban planners and developers have faced repeated pressure to modernize, driven by the Olympics era’s ambitions. In the lead-up to the 2008 Games, a mix of greed, corruption, and historical disdain reshaped many hutongs. The city prepared to welcome millions of visitors, and the old lanes creaked under the weight of new structures. Facades woke up with the word “chai” (destruction in Mandarin) painted in red circles, a stark symbol of bulldozer-driven change. The approach was broad and unfocused, with the bulldozers often indifferent to whether a hutong was ancient or merely shabby.
Only a small group of preservationists, often foreigners, spoke out against the loss. They shared a common concern that the bulldozer would erase lives and memories in equal measure. Most residents accepted the financial compensation that allowed them to move into newer housing farther from the old neighborhoods. Hutongs, while full of character, often lacked comfort features like central heating. A friend once joked during a long bike ride through these lanes that strangers should live together for weeks to gain real perspective, recalling the dawn trips to the public toilet and the fresh, stark reality of winter. The point, he said, is that perspective arrives only after enduring the quiet misery of an early morning in freezing air.
Gentrification remains a serious threat to hutongs. The number of protected lanes is small, and the forces of change push forward regardless. Some of the author’s earliest notes come from a tiny café in Nanluoguxiang, years ago, where life was simple and the world didn’t yet demand the kind of spectacle now seen in the area. Today that dusty lane hosts Western bars, Maoist gift shops, modern art spaces, and even a Starbucks, a symbol of the city’s ongoing collision between history and global commerce.
On the most famous hutongs, weekend visitors and online personalities converge in search of the most authentic experiences. Cabbage, a staple in Beijing’s winter diet, remains a practical ingredient but has also become part of the city’s selfie culture, a backdrop as reliable as the lanes themselves [Citation: Beijing cultural history, local observers].