QianMen 前门

Using MRT, I stopped at QianMen station. Coming out from the station, I first saw the JianLou 箭楼 and Railway Museum at not too far.



In front of QianMen, there is this Dang Dang tram 当当车. This tram is currently out of order.


I was impressed when I first step onto QianMen main street. The road is huge, can imagine this is a busy road in the past. But I was wondered the building are mostly grey color, looks a bit dull especially it was a hazy day. Probably in the old time, most bricks are grey in color? As you can see from picture below, the street is quite long and straight, with buildings on both sides.



There were a few nice and old building at this main street called QianMenDaJie 前门大街. For example, QuanJuDe roast duck, which is since 1864. I took the picture but do not intend to upload here, because I think building below is more unique in carving :p


Most of the famous building will have description and sculpture in front, thus it is easy to spot :)
After walking at main street for a while, I turned into DaZhaLan 大栅栏, which is another smaller street famous for buildings as well.



There are still few renovations going on at some HuTong (alley) and also DaZhaLan.



For some of the route, we had to use the narrow walkway at the side of construction work. After that, I turned into those HuTong, and it looks like below in general.




Beijinger still lives at those HuTong :D The clothes are real :p Here is the route I follow as recommended by a magazine (Highlighted in green). Some of the HuTong are closed, and I skip some of the HuTong as I guess they probably looks the same :p By the way, map below is a snapshot of ditu.google.com except the green line I added.



In fact, this is just another attraction similar to WangFuJing, shopping with traditional buildings. But I felt the items here is cheaper compared to WangFuJing, maybe due to the renovation has not done. After that when it get more and more popular, maybe the price will rise :p