The capital's forgotten neighborhoods have been brought back to life in Wang Yaomin's new book The Most Famous Sights of Old Beijing.
The book features black-and-white sketches of hutong, traditional courtyard houses, meeting halls, mansions and relic sites.
The sketches appeared with captions regularly in Beijing Evening News for eight years from August 2, 1994.
A total of 108 sketches were selected from the original series. They were chosen for their artistic merit and historical value as a record of old Beijing.
Wang was born and grew up in a hutong in Beijing -- one of those narrow neighborhood lanes in the city, situated where the southwest corner of Tian'anmen Square is.
His family moved to Dongzhimenwai when the lane was demolished with the expansion of the square.
He said in his preface: "As we lived not far from Qianmen, when I was small I would frequent the area of the old railway station at Zhengyangmen, the City Moat and Dashilar.
"Images of the ancient gate towers, stone bridges, ceremonial arches erected in the streets, tea houses and the old emporia etched themselves on my brain..."
"I have never stopped recording the old capital in my sketches."
In his book, Wang has, through both pictures and words, expressed his understanding, knowledge and love of Beijing's traditional culture.
"Wang has employed a sturdy realism and precise modeling to produce a harmonious beauty, with his use of dots and lines, black, white and gray," said Fu Jiabao, secretary-general of the Beijing Artists Association.
Fu said that Wang's pictures also highlight the charm of black-and-white sketches. "Using the simplest of colors, Wang makes a boundless universe of colors come alive," he said.
The Most Famous Sights of Old Beijing is published by New World Press in Beijing.
(China Daily April 21, 2003)
