Backstreet Beijing

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The room smelled like charcoal, and the familiar soundtrack of Beijing life floated in from outside: the throaty call of a wandering knife-sharpener, the laughter of running children, the honks of an impatient motorist trying to park a car. Our hostess was telling us about living in a hutong — one of the traditional residential alleys latticing China's capital in a dense network. As she finished, the room of visiting Westerners chorused approval, and our guide asked if there were any questions. Naturally, there was only one. Where, our group wondered, did the typical hutong resident go to the bathroom? "In the latrine," said the lady of the house. "Outside." As we contemplated what this must mean in the depths of a northern Chinese winter, life in the hutongs suddenly seemed far less folksy and cute.

We'd been delivered to this typical hutong home by Beijing Hutong Tour, tel: (86-10) 6615 9097, a company founded in 1994 to make the city's hidden byways accessible to tourists. And it's worth seeing them while you can, given that the hutongs are being razed at a rapid clip as Beijing modernizes in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Beijing Hutong Tour gives a good, concise introduction to how the old Shichahai Lake neighborhood, for one, looked before the neon advertising signs began to mushroom. Though Shichahai's lanes have been marked "preserved" by city planners, the area's traditional fabric is under increasing threat from the rising number of bars, shops and restaurants crowding the lakeshore.

See for yourself on the three-hour "Follow the Footsteps of Old Beijingers" tour. An English-speaking guide walks the group up the 700-year-old Bell Tower and around the Drum Tower before heading to Guanghua Temple and over the Silver Ingot Bridge, spanning two of the area's lakes. Afterward, as well as visiting a local house, you'll be taken to a tea ceremony at Prince Gong's mansion.

As for creature comforts en route, you just have to hope for the best. Our hostess's poker face relaxed when, on departure, I confessed that I had to answer an urgent call of nature. She'd actually installed plumbing in the house, she admitted, discreetly directing me to an indoor bathroom that had been there all along. I was astonished. What was all that about the rough and ready existence of the hutongs, where daily life had barely changed in centuries? She shrugged and replied, quite unapologetically, "Would you want tour groups using your toilet every day?"