Wang Wenjing sat outside his home on a battered old chair in the scorching sunshine and pondered his future. The opening of a McDonald's in the area a year ago was the first material sign that his beloved Beijing inner-ity neighbourhood was going to change for ever.
Wang, married with a teenage son, has lived since the day he was born in a two-room brick structure with a tiny courtyard tucked down this hutong, one of Beijing's famous narrow alleyways. His home is modest. There is no central heating or running water. The nearby public toilet is shared with about 20 other families. Still, he would prefer to stay here and continue operating his small bike repair business from his front door.
However, the bulldozers are coming. Like many of Beijing's traditional neighbourhoods, the cluster of homes where Wang's family live is to be torn down in the name of modernisation. Wang will be offered new accommodation in a spanking new high-rise building with all mod cons.
Beijing is in the midst of a massive transformation. Since the early 1990s it has undergone major development. Everywhere you go in the city there are building works. But the change is most apparent in the hutongs, the maze of narrow alleyways lined with single-story courtyard homes.
The rate of development is proceeding at such a fast pace that the hutongs, which have been part and parcel of city life since the Yuan Dynasty in the 1200s, are fast disappearing.
Fifty years ago, there were an estimated 3,200 hutongs here. Today there are only 990, with many hundreds more earmarked for demolition to make way for wider streets and high-rise apartment development. Only 19 hutongs have been listed as historical cultural protection zones.
Our biggest surprise when we first arrived in Beijing was at how modern and developed the city was. We couldn't get over the efficient, wide dual carriageway from the airport into the centre, and the modern high-rise buildings dotting the skyline. The China World complex, with hotel, shopping centre and 40storey office building just five minutes from our new home could be in any European capital.
Missing was the dusty, crumbling, communist city we, and many acquaintances who have visited, expected.
But a taste of the old Beijing can be found around the corner from any city centre traffic-choked road. In seconds you enter a bustling labyrinthine back street world where the city suddenly changes. It is here that you get a proper feel for Beijing, its people and its culture.
In the new high-rise apartment buildings where thousands have already been relocated, families take a lift to their floor, and lock their doors behind them. But in the hutongs, with their close-knit and intimate communities, no door is closed.
As I walked down Xiehe hutong near the Forbidden City on Friday, groups of old men played Chinese checkers and cards under a massive umbrella to shade them from the sweltering 35-degree heat. Elderly women gossiped on the doorsteps, and barefoot young children ran around.
Some women were scrubbing clothes in washtubs outside their front doors, others were cooking meals in great iron woks, and a young man was asleep on a bed set up on the pathway. One little boy, too lazy to use the shared toilets, urinated on the street. Nothing here is private.
The demolition of Old Beijing began in earnest after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ignoring the advice of his city planners, Chairman Mao began in the 1950s to dismantle the city walls to make way for the second ring road. He decided that the walls were a sign of feudalism, and that the bricks could be better used to build the New China.
While many residents are happy to make the move to new apartments with modern amenities, others fear that the destruction of hutongs will mean the loss of one of China's cultural treasures. There is a reluctance to leave long-time friends from the old neighbourhood. But the physical transformation of Beijing is only one symptom of the dramatic changes taking place across China.
If you visit, do not expect to find a communist state where expressionless people walk the streets wearing dark-coloured Mao suits and carrying little red books.
Ass in any modern city, you will find fashion-conscious young people competing to keep up with the latest trends. They also aspire to the most up-to-date mobiles and designer accessories. Instead of traditional Chinese teahouses, many are queuing up in American-style coffee shops. But adjusting to the opening up of China is difficult for people like Wang and his neighbours. Resigned to eventually leaving, they dread saying goodbye to long-time friends and childhood homes.
They know it is bye-bye to Old Beijing. And make way for the new.
miriamd@163bj.com