What's a hutong?
Well, today we hopped on a rickshaw and rode through the narrow streets and alleys that form a hutong neighborhood. These older neighborhoods have been protected from being demolished for larger roads in an attempt to preserve Chinese cultural history.
Our tour group "enjoyed" lunch at one of the local family residences. It was quite an interesting experience! We've been so hungry...that it's nearly impossible to turn away the crazy food they put in front of us. The fun part has been trying to eat everything with chopsticks!
Before leaving the hutong, we visited the drum tower. This building was originally built for musical reasons - later used to announce the time - and is now a tourist attraction. We had the opportunity to witness a drum ceremony on the top floor of the tower. One-by-one the drummers entered the room and stood in front of huge drum barrels. For the next five minutes (and half the afternoon) my ears were ringing to the beat of these drums!
On the way back to the bus...I couldn't resist jumping in with the local kids and playing hacky sack. A little different than the hacky sacks back home...these are made with feathers attached to coin-like weights at the bottom. Needless to say...I better stick to baseball!!!!
