West Sea 西海

In my wandering about in the Deshengmen area, I was trying to find the Jishuitan 积水潭 subway station on Line 2. However, I haven’t started asking around yet. I guess I was just hoping I would just stumble into the subway station by chance. I was walking inside one of the small lanes called hutong 胡同. Hutong are remnants of old Beijing where people used to live. There are still patches of hutongs here and there but they are getting harder and hard to find.

This hutong in particular is the Shuitan Hutong 水潭胡同. It features the large lake called the West Sea which is a popular place for fishing and just relaxing. The Shuitan Hutong was a little disappointing though since there were large parts of the hutong which have been renovated and sanitized for tourists. In fact, it doesn’t feel like a hutong anymore. Such is the state of these hutongs. There are some which have become tourist attractions and this probably help keep them the way they are. As for the others, modernization beckons.

I walk along the shores of the West Sea until I finally asked someone where the subway station was. I was surprisingly close as I only need to get out of the village. Still, this random wandering brought me some interesting places which was not in my radar at all. Just goes to show how much Beijing has to offer visitors.

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