March 22: Hutong Tour

This morning we went on a tour of a Hutong area. This is an area that has preserved what it was like in old Beijing. People still live there, however – it’s not just a tourist area. We traveled by rickshaw – one for every two people (plus a baby) because the alleys are really narrow. We had to cross regular streets a couple of times and this was pretty scary – we just went right through the traffic. Norah loved the rickshaw ride. She loves having the wind whipping through her hair. She really is at her happiest when she’s outside. We visited a kindergarten school and got to see the inside of a resident’s house. He served us tea, showed us pictures of his son, brought out his grasshopper and his cricket (how lucky were we to see them both!), and answered questions through our guide. Incidentally our guide’s name was Water and he told us his last name was Loo (not sure of spelling). Isn’t that weird that we’d have a guide named Water Loo when we live in Waterloo? Today was probably our favourite day in terms of touristy things that we’ve done.

In the afternoon we went to the Pearl Market. I actually bought a strand of pearls for myself (and for Norah, of course). I’ve always wanted pearls, so it was really nice to find them here at such a reasonable price. The Pearl Market is not nearly as bad as the Silk Market (i.e., in terms of salespeople being aggressive), but after the pearl extravaganza, we didn’t have time to do a lot of other shopping. We had to get back to pick up the babies’ passports and prepare for our farewell dinner of Peking Duck.