2009 Chinese New Year in Beijing - Trishaw Ride Touring The Hutongs & Local Siheyuan Houses, Deshengmen Tower and National Theatre (Shuidan)

I have been delaying uploading some more pictures of our Beijing trip as it sometimes takes a long time for the pictures to load. Would continue today and hopefully i can finish uploading all the pictures :> This post contains pictures hubby and i took when we went for our interesting and fun trishaw ride touring the Hutongs and local Siheyuan Houses. I have never gone on a trishaw ride before and it was quite fun and the friendly uncle even shares interesting stuff about the Siheyuan and Hutongs to us while cycling. It is so interesting how you can tell who lives there eg the ranking of the officials in the olden days by the front design of their houses. What are most fascinating about the modernized Beijing are not the skyscrapers or broad streets, but the winding, secluded hutong, where there are the beautiful Siheyuan. Beijing used to comprise tens of thousands of Siheyuan of different sizes orderly arranged in rows. The passages between the rows were hutong.


Siheyuan is the traditional residential compound of Beijing. Taking shape in the Liao Dynasty, it matured through the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties to become the most characteristic residence of Beijing. The name Siheyuan means a courtyard surrounded by houses on all the four sides. Over hundreds of years, the Beijing Siheyuan formed a style unique to the capital city in layout, inner structure, furnishing and decoration.

Deshengmen Tower:

National Theatre (Shuidan):

We only stop at the newly-built National Theatre to take pictures and what a pity we did not have a chance to go inside to take a look. National Grand Theater of China which is sometimes referred to as Beijing Opera House, but is nicknamed “The Egg” is actually officially called - National Centre for Performing Arts (国家大剧院). It is one of the new landmarks of the city and what makes it apart is the unusual architecture that looks like an egg. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size. Construction started in December 2001 and the inaugural concert was held in December 2007.

(Source: http://english.visitbeijing.com.cn/impression/Culture/100813.htm)
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Centre_for_the_Performing_Arts_(China)