Afternoon tea is taken at a cafe in a hutong beside Miaoying Temple, Beijing. (Photo/China Daily) Chinese sites' inclusion on UNESCO list adds new luster to human civilizations Tom Wolters, a Dutch landscape architect who has been living in Beijing for over 20 years in a traditional courtyard house, or siheyuan, near the former imperial city, said the inscription of the Beijing Central Axis on the World Heritage List did not come as a surprise to him. Wolters and his family fell in love with Beijing when he got the chance to work as a co-director of a China-European Union cooperation project in 2001.
Three years after they arrived, they decided to settle down in the city with a history of over 3,000 years. He said when they moved to the courtyard house, their Chinese friends asked why they choose to live there instead of buying a nice villa in the suburbs, which was the trend at the time. "We were so lucky to find a traditional courtyard house (siheyuan).
We liked it so much," Wolters said. He also witnessed the impressive upgrading of the old Beijing city over the years. "Many courtyard houses are saved, protected and preserved, and the historic streetscape of hutong (alleyway) has been restored by demolishing illegal structures, such as added floors and rooms, and there is strict control of building regulations," he said.
Running north to south through the heart of historical Beijing, the Central Axis consists of former imperial palaces and gardens, ancient sacrificial stru.