Houses

Pretty close to the teaching area, a Hutong block is allmost totally torn down. This is one of the few houses left standing, and people still live in it...
Same house from the other side.
A couple of hundred meter up the same road, some sort of shop is open. People probably live in there as well.
And the last couple of houses left in the block still in use.
Playing Xiang Qi on the sidewalk, unfortunately Go (Wei Qi) is not a game played in the streets. Would have been fun to play them, but I suck at Xiang Qi.
Across the street from what used to be a Hutong block, some work still remains. This probably was Hutongs too a year or so ago, or fields where the people who lived in the Hutongs grew vegetables.

I learned a funny thing today. An appartment that you buy in Beijing (I guess it goes for all of China) is yours for 70 years only, after that the ownership goes back to the state. Also, if you sell it after say 20 years, the new owner has it for only 50 years...
I doudt that I'll last for more than 30-40 years, so maybe I should buy an appartment there, ought to be relatively cheap considering those rules.

I also asked Su Yang if it is at all possible to buy for a foreigner.
He thought not, but his mother was sure it was not only possible, but that owning a home in Beijing would also make applying for visa considerably easier.