At the end of March, I made a last-minute decision to visit Haitang in Beijing. Instead of choosing a chain hotel in the second ring road that often costs thousands, I casually booked the Happy Dragon Alley Hotel, Beijing TianAn Men Forbidden City in Dongsi Jiutiao. The moment I pushed open the wooden door of the alley, I realized that I had accidentally picked up the most comfortable place to stay in Beijing during spring.
The hotel is only over 300 meters away from Zhangzizhong Road subway station. After taking two turns on Line 5, we entered the alley. The old locust tree on the roadside was just sprouting new leaves, and the old man walking the bird cage was leisurely swaying. I dragged my suitcase for five minutes, and even the noise of traffic was blocked by the alley wall. When checking in, the front desk girl heard that I was here to stroll around the alley and take pictures of flowers. She didn't hand over her room card directly, but instead handed me a hand drawn map, marked the nearby sugar burning old shops and the sparsely populated Haitanghua Lane. Even the small snack shops in Nanluogu Lane that don't deceive people were circled out. She specially reminded me, "Don't squeeze through the main street, take the small alley behind the hotel door, and you can reach Yonghe Temple in ten minutes.
I live in a twin room with a view of the hutong. Although the room is not very large, it is spotless and the bedding is soft. As soon as I open the window facing the hutong, I can see the branches of crabapple flowers sticking out of the neighboring quadrangle courtyard. The wind blows the petals and they fall onto the windowsill. The most considerate thing is that the room is equipped with blackout curtains and a zero pressure mattress. Walking around all day during the day makes my feet hurt, and I fell asleep after lying down for less than ten minutes at night without hearing any movement in the alley. The wet and dry separated bathroom is well-organized, with even a small basin of fresh February orchids placed next to the washbasin. It was just picked by the front desk girl from the alley this morning.
What surprised me most was the public area of the hotel. The coffee machine in the lobby was always running, and free freshly ground coffee could be picked up at any time. When I was hungry in the middle of the night, I went downstairs to look for water. The front desk directly gave me a dish of Lvdagur (Glutinous Rice Rolls with Sweet Bean Flour) and two bottles of mineral water, saying, "It's easy to be hungry when walking in the alley in spring. You can go back to sleep after padding your stomach". In the self-service laundry room, both the washing machine and dryer are free to use. I threw my coat, which had been soaked in willow catkins all day, into it and it baked warmly in half an hour. Even the laundry detergent had a faint chamomile fragrance. There are many foreign residents here, and the young man at the front desk speaks English very fluently. When encountering foreigners looking for directions with maps, he will personally take them to the entrance of the alley to guide them.
For the next three days, I didn't crowd the tourist attractions at all: in the morning, I went to the Hutong entrance along the map given by the front desk to buy a bowl of fermented sour milk made from ground mung bean wow gold with a coke ring; at noon, I rode a shared bike for ten minutes to the corner of the Forbidden City to shoot the willows in spring; in the evening, I walked back to the hotel, picked up a cup of hot coffee in the lobby, and sat on the small chair at the door to watch the cats in the Hutong chasing the petals. Before, when I came to Beijing, I always felt that the scenic spots were crowded. However, this time I stayed at Yingxiang and realized that the spring in old Beijing is not in the crowded scenic spots, but in the wind of the hutongs, the hot coffee handed to me at the front desk, and the crabapple branches that can be seen by opening the window.
On the day I left, I took a detour around the alley and put the petals of the crabapple that had fallen on my windowsill into my notebook. Next time I come to Beijing in spring, I will definitely return to this small nest hidden in the alley.Show more