Welcome to Wu Ying Hutong, Beijing.

This used to be a home.

Recently they knocked it down and gutted the memories form the traditional Beijing home. While this is happening all the time throughout Beijing, I’ve noticed something different on Wu Ying Hutong this week. The commute of the migrant workers who are knocking down and buildings within the hutongs has become very small.

… and by commute, I mean, get out of bed and begin working. This is on my daily commute to work. I pass it twice a day. In the day, no one seems to notice the tents and beds appearing in construction sites. The above photo shows both sides of the hutong, around 180 degrees — its a stitch of 3 photos taken with the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM that rendered much like a fish-eye. Oddly enough it did stitch pretty well considering what the 14mm does to the edge of a photo (you can see one place on the worker’s left hip which didn’t stitch correctly).

Residents and vendors of the hutong pass by daily without noticing that construction sites double as homes for the workers. Or perhaps they do — but its normal, not of note to them. This difference in perception is interesting. What is normal to my neighbors, is obviously not normal to me. Down the alley from this tent, another new business is replacing a home. The walls fell down and were cleaned out in one day. The next day, bricks and bars were up. The builders here have created beds from the infrastructure of the soon-to-be business.

There’s no front wall built on this place yet. This guy has been sleeping out here for about a week. The notion of privacy in a country of 1.4 billion people almost takes an attitude of: “If I ignore you, than you can’t see me.” The public bathrooms and public showers in the hutongs are another symbol of this.

After a couple nights of passing this guy on my way home after work, I stopped to take his photo. The next morning, I woke up and walked back to the site and the same guy is out building away.

This certainly raises some questions about how long a migrant worker in Beijing could go homeless, if they can keep sleeping in their construction sites.

More to come on this …