A hostel in a hu tong

Well, it didn’t take us long. Our tradition of “getting our bearings” (read: lost in a strange city carrying 20 lb bags) lives on!

We did get a chance to wander through a quiet neighborhood, where old men were gambling and drinking tea without their shirts on, and old ladies were slowly line dancing in the park. (I have to find out were I can do this when I get home!)

As picturesque as that was, our bags were getting heavy – just as we stumbled onto Chairman Mao.

We finally just called the hostel but the receptionist wasn’t confident enough in her English to give me solid directions, so she told me to hand the phone to a Chinese person – I tried to give it to this matronly lady, but she had me give it to her small son. He spoke some English, but wasn’t familiar with giving directions but after much conferring, he, his mom and the receptionist got us on the right path.

We walked and walked. People we asked just said keep going! – so we did. We were getting a little weary when we popped in another hostel, where the reception was nice enough to give us directions (which were: turn down the next nameless narrow alley and follow that until you see the sign – lucky we stopped to ask her instead of waiting even one more block!).

Our hostel is in kind of the yuppy part of a hu tong, but there are more traditionally built homes around us.

A hu tong is a neighborhood where the houses are all connected and very close, the walkways are barely wide enough for one person to pass, and the neighbors share a community bathroom. Very, um, cozy?

Our beds are VERY hard, but my mom assures me that’s just how the Chinese roll. The wifi access is limited – I couldn’t get on wordpress or facebook the entire time we were in Beijing, and we had to enter our passport numbers to use the Internet.