Up, Breakfast, and into the bus for a short ride to the "Hutong" district. This is the way most of Beijing *used* to be: one-story housing all run together to look like a maze of streets completely lined by grey walls. The doors in the walls lead to courtyards which accommodate small single-family residences, but they are constructed "wall to wall" so there is no space between what would otherwise be "outside walls" of the residences. In *present* day Beijing, the population can no longer afford the luxury of using land that inefficiently, so most of the Hutongs have been demolished and high-rise apartments have sprung up. The remaining Hutong areas are now preserved as historical landmarks - so their value is immense - perhaps a million dollars for one 700-square-foot home with it's small courtyard. Most owners couldn't afford to own them if their families hadn't owned them for hundreds of years.
A long line of bicycle-rickshaws are waiting for us and we all pile in - couple by couple.
Our driver looks much older than *me* - and much more frail - but he manages to pedal us down the maze of streets. 
The walls are all the same color and look much the same - because it was controlled *by law* what your home was allowed to look like: everything was decreed - depending on your profession and rank in the society. Your door must be a particular color. The posts over your door must be a particular shape. 
Everything scripted to be sure that everyone knew where everyone else stood in society. Though I do suspect that the air-conditioner unit was added *after* the Emperor's rules were no longer in force.Which opens my thoughts about Great Societies. Civilizations build and eventually do astonishing things - and create rules and rule books. Some rules are necessary for civilization to exist: "Thou shalt not kill".... but eventually if a society exists long enough, it codifies things which are just silly and which ultimately drag that society down - preventing any further progress. 13 is unlucky for Westerners. 4 is unlucky for Chinese - because it happens that the word for "4" is pronounced to sound like the word for "die", but 8 is "lucky". Red is good. White is not. In European "court" societies, huge amounts of time were spent developing and enforcing rules about "court behavior": TINY little rules about specific etiquettes and such. And on and on. The more successful a given society becomes, the more that they eventually develop a "leisure class" which has nothing real to concern themselves with - so silly, stupid rules are codified just to keep the current class in power - and to give them *something* to concern themselves with. Clearly, I think that China got to that level. And I salute the leaders who realized that it was time to "break some eggs to make some new omelets". As I understand it, Deng Xiaoping was one of the people who went a long way toward cleaning up the totally-broken eggs of Chairman Mao. It's a tough balance - deciding which very-very old and respected things should be preserved - as museum pieces - while deciding which things to discard so that the society can move forward and reward *innovation* again.
We see lots of solar water heaters on roofs - actually all over China.
I don't know how long these have been in place, but they do seem to be ahead of America in utilizing solar power that way.We pull up at a lake in a park, then disembark our rickshaws to walk through the narrow streets.
Space is at a premium, so we find a tiny "motorcycle car" which I think is cute.
and we arrive at our "home visit".
One of the long-time Hutong residents has opened his home to B&B guests - and to us. We shuffle through his courtyard 
and into his living room. All 26 of us. 
And we're seated while Jimmy Johnson tells us about his life and home - through our local interpreter, Vivian. 
He is very warm and open. I notice that, as with the rest of China, the old and the new are comfortably shuffled together: an XBox is next to the flat-screen HDTV - here in the ancient Hutong. 
We mill around and talk one-on-one with Jimmy as his wife prepares a meal in the kitchen.
then it is back out 
into the streets and back to the rickshaws.
You can see why I felt a bit bad about having this gentleman pedal *me* - but note the big smile on his face: he works hard and doesn't complain.We ride back through the Hutong - asking why some parked cars have pieces of tile leaned up against their wheels. We're told that there are lots of dog owners there and the tiles are to prevent the dogs from leaving cautic liquids on the tires (cough cough). Interesting solution to the problem.
Anyway. Back to our starting point, thanks all around, then back walking to our bus. As we're waiting to cross a street, a Chinese family seems to be leaning toward us to get a picture with the "weird Westerners" in the photo. I notice and smile and motion - and their smile breaks out wide as the wife - with her baby in a stroller - leans right up against me - smiling hugely - as her husband takes a photo. Really cool: they are as interested in us weird-looking Americans - as we are in them! I suspect that I'm even-more-weird looking than most since I'm one of the few in our group with a beard. At least I'll keep telling myself that that's why I was weird-looking enough to garner interest.
Next stop: A silk carpet factory and China's equivalent of "Best Buy".
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