The End of the Peking Badlands? Chuanban Hutong for the Chop is Seems

Reports reach me from Peking that a number of buildings dating back to the 1920s and 1930s have been razed on Chuanban Hutong to make way for a new high rise concrete block of some sort. As readers of Midnight in Peking, or my subsequent e-book The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking, will know Chuanban Hutong, formerly Chuanpan Hutong, was, along with Hougou Hutong, the epi-centre of the old Peking Badlands on the edge of the Legation Quarter and nestling into the eastern Tartar City.

One of the buildings to come down is the former No.28 (renumbering occurred later after the road was truncated with the construction of Beijing Railway Station, associated access roads and the destruction of the ancient wall in the 1950s. Readers of Midnight in Peking will of course be familiar with that location (below) and its rather horrendous history. Also now lost to us are buildings that once housed White Russian run bars and lodging houses. However, what will remain of Chuanban Hutong remains to to be seen – perhaps of most immediate architectural concern would be the former Asbury Methodist Church (established by American missionaries) on Hougou Hutong and once known as “The Island of Hope” – it is now the Chongwenmen Protestant Church (though appears on Google Maps, rather wonderfully, as The Asbury).

So, if you don’t know the old Badlands, sandwiched between Chongwenmen Outer Street to the west, Beijing Station Street to the south and east and Suzhou Hutong to the north (a good food street), get down there as soon as…there’s a map here or you can use the Midnight in Peking Audio Walk, downloadable from here.

I’ll post some pictures of Chuanban Hutong in happier times tomorrow…

The former No.28 – now sadly gone

The entrance to the old Asbury Church and missionary compound – now a bit uncertain (should be OK – but this is Beijing!) and definitely about to be surrounded by high rises in what has been a rather low rise area for all of recorded history until now