Video information
Are hutongs good or not? If they are good, what are their strengths? If they are not, what makes them undesirable? We repeatedly asked the same questions to our interviewees. When it comes to the same matter, people always give completely opposite answers. Some people can't stand the dampness and earthiness of hutongs, while others love their down-to-earth nature. Some people's greatest wish is to leave the courtyard houses and have their own toilets and kitchens, while others consider the courtyard houses to be the most advanced and fashionable residential buildings—everything is shared. Why is there such a huge contrast? To understand this, *Hutongs* does not just present standard data and historical materials about hutongs, nor does it only focus on their objective beauty and tranquility. Instead, it seeks to find, capture, and recreate those very subjective "sensations." *Hutongs* collected the different "sensations" of 100 people regarding hutongs and presented 20 representative ones. Ultimately, it was discovered that although people's subjective "sensations" vary, they can always find connections and evidence in the objective structure, environment, and history of the hutongs. For example, the strong sense of direction among hutong residents is related to the planning of Yuan Dadu; their conversational style and humor are connected to the opera deeply rooted in the hutongs; and their passionate hobbies are linked to the plants, soil, and phenology in the hutongs. Following these subtle connections, individual close-up fragments are pieced together, forming a broader, distant view of the past and present changes in hutongs beyond the stories.