by Philip D Wetjen
Since my retirement from what was, upon reflection, a too-long career in IT, I have become a historian of historians. Or, perhaps more properly, lacking a degree in history, a chronicler of chroniclers. However, I have come to realize one of the benefits of my long endeavor in Information Technology was that it did give me the opportunity to travel. A chance to visit far-flung countries in which the corporation I labored for had established facilities, either to manufacture products or promote their sale.
Among those countries was the People’s Republic of China. Due to the explosive growth of the Chinese economy in the early 2000s, I made several trips a year to the PRC. The early trips were all limited to the Shanghai area, but by 2019, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, I finally got the opportunity to visit a number of other cities. And in my last few trips before retirement, I even managed to combine a few stolen weeks of vacation with each business trip.
Throughout my career, I had become accustomed to doing research. Research on how best to approach the particular project that was to be initiated in the facility I was visiting. Research on how Chinese culture might affect the implementation of a new business system. I discovered that despite the impression I had of all power emanating from the capital, those local regulations often had a greater effect on my projects. Apparently, the ancient Chinese saying I had learned still applies today: “The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away…”
In any case, I naturally acquired the habit of diving into extensive research before every trip. And now that my visits are all for my own benefit, I maintain that practice. One aspect of this ritual is to look into historical precedents – reading the accounts of others who have trodden the same path. In 2026, I decided it was high time I visited the capital of China. I had considered myself somewhat well-traveled in China, having spent time in Shanghai, Xiamen, Nanjing, Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. However, my Chinese friends were unified in their chorus that if I hadn’t been to Beijing, then I hadn’t seen China. When it came time to finally plan my visit to Beijing, I conducted my usual inquiry into historical accounts of Americans who had visited the capital during the 20th century. I chose American accounts because they’re invariably written in English and don’t require translation. I chose the 20th century because I like to attempt a bit of time travel as I walk the modern streets – imagining the flow of life and commerce in years past.
In the weeks before my departure, I surveyed the writings of several adventurers who passed through Peking (as it was then called) in the years preceding the 1949 birth of the People’s Republic. One name that came up on multiple occasions in my explorations was that of Graham Peck. Graham Peck (1914-1968) was an American travel writer and illustrator. Also lacking a history degree, Peck traveled extensively through China in the 1930s and 1940s. He documented his travels in two books, the first of which, Through China’s Wall, offers lyrical descriptions of China in 1936-37. And whatever Peck might be missing in his writing is more than made up for in his skillfully rendered illustrations.
Peck graduated from the Andover Academy near Boston and went on to attend Yale University. He was subsequently expected to embark upon a career in business. It was the same wish my father had held for me. Throwing that aside, Peck embarked upon what he intended to be a tour of the world. With $2,000 in savings and ample art supplies, he left the US after his Yale graduation in 1935, with a scheduled first stop in China. His plan was to stretch the $2000 as far as he could and then sell his drawings and sketches to the local residents of the towns he visited. This ‘stretch and sketch’ methodology was to serve Peck well. In 1935, $2,000 had the same buying power as about $48,747.15 today.
In my research about Peck, I learned that Time Magazine had reviewed Through China’s Wall and summed it up as “part exquisite travel book, part exciting history, part exotic philosophy and, above all, a portrait of a race that explains why the Chinese people lose battles but somehow win wars.” I found that description intriguing and decided that I would purchase a copy of the book. The procurement was not a straightforward task, since Through China’s Wall has long been out of print. But I managed to identify a used copy, published in 1945 by Readers Union-William Collins of London: $8.62 plus $3.99 shipping and handling. Apparently, once you locate one, out-of-print books on the topic of China can be acquired at modest cost.
The travels outlined in Through China’s Wall start and end in Beijing. Peck paints a picture of a peaceful and idyllic city, of historic sites and parks and ponds, with unending labyrinthine back streets and alleys called hutong. When he arrived in Peking in January of 1936, Peck immediately fell under the spell of the city. Even though his original intentions for China were quite abbreviated:
“When I landed in January 1936, I was a tourist expecting to spend two or three weeks in China as a first step in a trip around the world. To make a long story short, it was six months before I left Peking… the real reason for my inactivity was the same one that caused me to stay on and on – that was the extraordinary pleasantness of life in Peking, which moved with so graceful a languor that doing nothing nicely as an occupation seemed not at all unreal.”
Peck had learned that the exact location for the capital city had been chosen, partly because Yung Lo, the fifteenth century founder of Beijing had wanted to place the city where it would enjoy the protection from the five dragons. The city of Beijing consisted of the subterranean dragon, found in the hills and mountains, the earthbound dragon, found in the winding rivers, the wind dragon, found in the restless weather, and the rain dragon, found in the clouds above.
And Peck was fascinated by the elegant design of the city and further reflected on how the original design had been improved upon:
“Perhaps there has never been another locality so perfectly constructed for man’s pleasure. Originally endowed with a balanced proportion of mountains and flatlands, it had, through the many centuries when it was the capital of the Eastern world, been continuously groomed and improved by the addition of whatever it naturally lacked. Artificial lakes and hills had been contrived in suitable places, and the whole scene had been architecturally upholstered with countless temples, pavilions, and ornamented archways; to an extraordinary extent this whole landscape gave the effect of a tastefully decorated room.”
If I hadn’t already decided to visit Beijing, reading the opening chapters of Through China’s Wall would have certainly convinced me to undertake the journey. However, the lyrical descriptions of Peck’s beloved Peking of 1936 made me wonder if any vestige of that old city remained today. Could a contemporary traveler, perhaps armed with a copy of Through China’s Wall, find traces of Graham Peck’s Peking? I was determined to find out.
Finding out would certainly require additional research. And an early conclusion in that research was the inescapable language barrier. Not just for me wandering about the city – but also involving the transliteration of names from Peck’s nomenclature in 1936 to the modern standards applying today. First and foremost, the overwhelming fact that the name of the city has changed. Or, at least, how that name is stated in English.
In Graham Peck’s time, the city was known as Peking. That is, it was known as Peking outside China. It was the standard transcription of the Mandarin pronunciation of the city name, which is composed of two characters, one for ‘northern’ and the other for ‘capital’. That transcription method, known as the Wade-Giles system, had been developed in the late 1800s. Then, in the 1950s, a new system, deemed truer to the actual Chinese sound system, was developed. This system was known as Pinyin, and it yielded the name ‘Beijing’ for the northern capital.
Then, to further complicate matters, the city name itself did actually change during periods in the country’s history when the city was not the capital. Thus, the city was called Beiping during the years of the Republic of China, the characters then meaning ‘northern’ and ‘peace’. Talk about a moving target! To paraphrase Hemingway, Beijing is indeed a moveable feast.
I began digging into the details of Through China’s Wall to see if I could determine exactly where Peck had resided in the city. Peck stayed in Peking for six months in 1936 when he first entered China, and then for an additional four months in 1937. Although his first residence was beautifully described in the book (including one detailed drawing of its courtyard), the location of the home was never described. However, among the equally detailed descriptions of his second residence, the name of the hutong that he lived in was specified.
Hutong can be very roughly described as the equivalent of ‘neighborhood’ in old Peking. The hutong is a unique architectural style, with the residences consisting of walled-in, enclosed courtyards containing several buildings, with access to the neighborhood via a single entranceway that invariably had dual red doors, painted red. The building material was grey brick made from local clay, with structural pieces made from timber, along with the window and door frames. Peck describes the effect of this architectural style in detail:
“I came to realize that nothing could really disturb the tranquility, the divine monotony, of Peking’s courtyards and the life they contained. Each one was a unit of complete privacy, a law unto itself, and nothing that happened beyond its limits could really affect it. Such a court was a home which fitted man as comfortably as the cocoon fits the caterpillar or the shell of the snail. After a while it seemed to me that the Peking courtyard was not only an architectural contrivance; it was also a state of mind, a private world to be shaped as the owner inclined.”
Although Peck’s narrative regarding his second residence did not include an exact building number, I felt the description of the neighborhood he offered might provide sufficient clues for me to identify the general location:
“The house was on a by-street, Ta Shih Tso Hutung, in the northern part of the old Imperial city, nearly two miles from the Legation Quarter and the section where most foreigners lived, but in the handsomest part of Peking. It was one of a narrow neck of houses stretching down between the Lake Palaces and the Forbidden City; at one end of its twisting alley rose the scarlet pavilions of Coal Hill, at the other lay the lotus-filled moat of the Purple City, and over it to the west towered the giant white dagoba of the Winter Palace.”
Using a combination of contemporary maps with texts that referred to the old names for some of the geographical features, I could determine the general area of Peck’s residence, with ‘Coal Hill’ now being the area comprising Jingshan Park, and the ‘Purple City’ corresponding to the Imperial City. But I soon realized that the transition from the Wade-Giles system to the Pinyin system did not merely involve the city name. It was only through a combination of hacking and luck that I wandered from Peck’s ‘Ta Shih Tso Hutung’ to the contemporary parlance: Dashizuo Hutong.
Via online maps (An at times contradictory combination of Google and Baidu), I found the neighborhood on my second day in Beijing. I had been fearful that the ever-expanding commercial development occurring in the city might have obliterated this hutong, but I was able to locate it, clearly signed as Dashizuo Hutong. And it was remarkably well preserved. I strolled its full length several times, hoping to catch a glimpse of the scene as Peck had described it:
“In its outer courtyard was a tiny pavilion shading a well with a marble lip carved in a pattern of twining vine leaves, and in the hall of the main house was a panel painted with a panorama of a garden through which ladies in faded white garments wandered, over bric-a-brac bridges and among weeping willows…”
Although I did not receive any serendipitous invitations to an early luncheon under a well-side pavilion, I regarded the numerous curious smiles that greeted me on my tour a sufficient reward for all my research.
So, I had located and traversed multiple times through Graham Peck’s old neighborhood. And I like to believe that I had caught a glimpse of the ambiance Peck had felt. The smooth grey brick walls, topped with equally grey ceramic tiles, conducted me through the occasional corners of the hutong. Residents clustered here and there, a few at a time – working on a scooter, watering the plants in the flower boxes, walking a bicycle with a child in the carrier, toting packages… or just standing around talking and smoking. Emerging from their courtyards to partake of life in the hutong.
Yes, the crowds of tourists still stream up and down Dongonmen Avenue, the main street leading from the hotels in Wangfujing to the Imperial Palace, and the many historic sites of Beijing. All of this is perhaps less than half a mile away. But here in the hutong, the sound of traffic is muted, and there are no crowds. Just one time-traveler, not at all lonely, strolling through Ta Shih Tso Hutong on a spring day. Soaking up the lingering atmosphere from nearly a century in the past.
Phil Wetjen’s fiction has appeared in the Clackamas Literary Review. His non-fiction essays have been published in the North Meridian Review, Critical Asian Studies and Cleaver. He studied Economics at Binghamton University.
