An outside view of Tian'anmen Square. We will be touring that tomorrow.

Today, we start at the entrance of Drum tower. We will take a bike tour of the area.

City workers fixing the trees. Notice, no machinery when uprooting this tree.

Entrance to a prayer Hutong.

Hutong means small lanes. They usually run north-south so they get lots of sunlight.

Here is the prayer altar for incense and offerings.

In many of the Hutongs are Shiheyuans which means dwelling compounds or quadrangles.

Here is a bridge in the Bar Hutong District.

This old building has been spruced up even with the outside balcony.

A great name for a bar...

And if you thought the name of the bar was cool, check out the rules posted on the door.

The Youhao Guest house, is a famous hotel where Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek once stayed.

Turning the lucky gold cylinders.

This is a horse mounting step.

Here lived a high ranking official. The rank is shown by the number of stars above their door of their siheyuan.

On our tour, we stopped by someone's siheyuan.

A siheyuan, is kinda like a townhouse complex where 4 houses will share a common courtyard and a common entrance.

In this house, this old woman served us a kinda green Chrysanthemum tea. We talked and shared some pictures.

Here is us in the bike buggy.

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