Hutong Terrace

De-facelift

It seems to be the one Chinese character that everyone sees posted on crinkled signs pasted on concrete walls and windows and has had to look it up on their Pleco digital dictionary…拆 (chāi).

You can hear its effects as you are tapping away at the keyboard of your laptop at work and you can see its wake passing by your local neighborhood baozi shop whose front door is now a window, and its 入口 is now akin to the entrance of Narnia.  It feels like it’s come like a thief in the night, except it’s happening before our very eyes.

Sadly, the facelift for the city that has accompanied the new building and code regulations looks more like a defacing.  Some of our treasured craggily inner city alleyways have received the stiffness reminiscent of too much botox treatment at the plastic surgeon (known as the Chengguan).

However, does this mean that everything fun about our beloved northern capital is dissipating and disappearing forever?  By no means!  There are varying definitions of the word 拆 especially when it comes to the minute details.  Does it mean no doors, replacing windows, lowering ceilings, getting rid of rooftops?  The answer is:  it depends.  Each neighborhood is different and each area is subject to different codes.

Unfortunately, our own courtyard here at The Hutong hasn’t escaped the clutches of the almighty jackhammer.  While not as grim as we anticipated when we first saw the black-cladded officers with the red armbands pointing to our walls, our beloved rooftop terrace has been restored to its original bare-boned skeletal glory as of last Friday.

While we are sad to see our hipster driftwooded and generously planted aesthetic go out to pasture—fear not!—for the terrace shall reemerge once again like the 凤凰 (fenghuang) from the dusty ashes of construction.  Soon we’ll have a new and fresh look to our rooftop, and the christening party will be at our annual Winter Fayre.

We will proudly display our new trendy holiday coif on Sunday, December 10th.  As always, we will bring the fun, the fanfare, and food and local goods perfect for the holiday season! Like a butterfly emerging from it’s dusty cocoon, we too are celebrating our opportunity for new growth and development and we can’t wait to host you and your friends!