China Beijing Hutong Travel

What is real Hutong? Is the hutong what we called lanes? Hutong is Beijing unique old city lane. Hutong originally was named Mongolian, namely street alley. Because Beijing had layout in ancient times, the hutong is relatively straight and dotted. There are 7000 hutongs and their names are very different.
In the prime of these dynasties the emperors, in order to establish supreme power for themselves, planned the city and arranged the residential areas according to the etiquette systems of the Zhou Dynasty. Some are with person names, such as Prime Minister Wen Hutong; some are with market and commodities, such as Golden Fish Hutong. Some is with Beijing largest hutong is East & West Jiao Min Xiang, and the whole length is 16.5 km. The shortest is one-foot street, and the length is less than 10 meters. The narrowest hutong is Qian Shi Hutong in Da Shi Lan district of Qian Men. It is only 0.7 meters wide and a little fatter people can not pass unless he hold his breath. In order to collect more natural daylight, courtyard with buildings on the four sides sit on the north towards south, its arrangement result is that hutong most become from east to west,