Beijing, China: Rickshaw Tour

We were able to take a Rickshaw tour of Beijing Old Hutong.  The Old Hutong are the narrow streets of old historical Beijing.  We  found all our rickshaws lined up in a row, and we all got in them two by two.  A Rickshaw is a type of tricycle bike designed to pull passengers.  The bikes were not speed bikes with different gears, it was all one chain and one gear.  Up and down while pulling passengers, I was feeling bad for our drivers.

We all really enjoyed the ride.  The kids were having fun, but there was a chilly breeze going through the alleys, so Big Sis especially was cold.  She was using her backpack as a blanket.

The streets were seriously narrow, I felt that we were going to scrape the walls while we road by, but the drivers were great.  At first I thought the town was just a prop and a tourist attraction, but the deeper we got in the Hutong, the more I realized there were real people that lived here and it was a for real residential area.

The rickshaws stopped and we were able to walk the streets for a while.  The streets were so cute and the houses were pretty amazing.  The entire thing looked like an outdoor museum.  Everything was so clean and pristine.

1

We walked to one of the residents of the Old Hutong village.  The purpose was to see how a normal family lives in the area.  We were able to go in the house and walk around and see inside their house.  The house was a cute modest home with a huge courtyard.  The kids loved the courtyard, the plants and the fish.

We were then taken to a little room on the side of the house that was filled with beautiful paintings.  Now we understood why they let tourists into their homes, the residents used it to sell their artwork.  There were some amazing artwork, so we did end up buying a painting.  The artist then signed the painting for us.  There was a beautiful set of calligraphy paint brushes that he used to sign the painting.

After we left the family's house, we got back on the Rickshaw to finish the ride around Old Hutong.  It took about three hours to ride around the small alleys and visit the family.  We all really enjoyed the ride.

We ended the tour at the beautiful Houhai Lake.  We didn't have time to take a boat ride, but the kids all enjoyed looking at the lake.  Here is our amazing tour guide, Brian with all the kids.

After the Rickshaw Tour, we had to walk through a market street to get to our next destination.  There were cute little shops on both sides of the streets.  The shops had paintings, woodwork, silk cloth, and other Chinese souvenirs. The paintings especially were amazing and we got drawn into many stores with beautiful paintings.

We ended the day at the Beijing Bell and Drum Tower.  Brian kept hurrying us along while we were shopping and didn't tell us why.  We found out it was because he was trying to get us to the towers before they closed.  He never told us that this was on the schedule, so we weren't going very fast and we kept stopping at the shops.  We got there about a minute after they closed, but it was OK.  By this point, the kids were ready to be done for that day, as it had been a long day. We were perfectly fine just seeing the towers from the outside.