Housing near the Forbidden City
NY Times:
The area that is now Beijing was destroyed by Genghis Khan shortly after the Sung dynasty made the mistake of demanding that he become a vassal and pay them for the privilege. It was rebuilt by his grandson Kublai who had the Forbidden City built so that his family could still live like Mongols outside the prying eyes of the Chinese.
While he built fabulous palaces, he also wanted to have the Mongol Ger, a large felt tent. The women of the Mongol leaders would use the Ger when they were giving birth. The Mongols also like to have herds of animal nearby and there was room for them too in the Forbidden City.
The "checkerboard" layout was also a Mongol innovation. The streets were laid out on a north south basis with crisscrossing east west streets. They were much broader and spacious than the typical Chinese streets of the time. It made it easier for the Mongols to control. Nine horsemen could ride abreast down the street and guards could easily see what was going on in the streets.
...The story is mostly about the rapid turnover of neighborhoods with modern housing and some gentrification of the old neighborhoods.
The hutong neighborhoods date to the 13th century, when Beijing’s chessboard grid was created by the Mongol founders of the Yuan dynasty. The layout of the neighborhoods, with public life spilling into the hutong alleyways and private life hidden behind brick walls in the courtyard houses, remained largely unchanged in the first decade or so after the Communist takeover in 1949. The wealthy hutong neighborhoods were mostly to the north, and the denser, poorer neighborhoods were south of the Forbidden City.
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The area that is now Beijing was destroyed by Genghis Khan shortly after the Sung dynasty made the mistake of demanding that he become a vassal and pay them for the privilege. It was rebuilt by his grandson Kublai who had the Forbidden City built so that his family could still live like Mongols outside the prying eyes of the Chinese.
While he built fabulous palaces, he also wanted to have the Mongol Ger, a large felt tent. The women of the Mongol leaders would use the Ger when they were giving birth. The Mongols also like to have herds of animal nearby and there was room for them too in the Forbidden City.
The "checkerboard" layout was also a Mongol innovation. The streets were laid out on a north south basis with crisscrossing east west streets. They were much broader and spacious than the typical Chinese streets of the time. It made it easier for the Mongols to control. Nine horsemen could ride abreast down the street and guards could easily see what was going on in the streets.
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