In July, 2010, preliminary surveys on #65 Baochao Hutong were completed and full construction began. Thousands of photos were taken during the 10 month construction period, and small set were uploaded to this website along with some commentary about the whole gradual process (ordeal). As you go through it, you might notice it abruptly ending, roughly around the time that interior decoration began taking place. That’s cause we were bored of documenting it, and simultaneously 100% overworked!

Still, it is fun for us to keep online and we hope our guests can use this to help build a better connection to the place they will be staying in, or stayed in previously.

Please keep in mind, newest posts are at the top!

Last moment with our tree

Tomorrow the government has promised to take down the tree, so here are a few last moment shots of what the place looks like with a giant 50 year old 25m high tree.

Lobby roof up

It’s time to get our most important central public space up. The walls have mostly been there for quite some time now, but now we get to put in the support beams for the roof and then pour in the concrete base for the floor.


Our main foreman Mr. Liu, with Mr. Guo looking on..


Concrete’s been poured in and smoothed out


Inside’s a bit dark now.


View towards the south east – the entrance.


Close up of the concrete base. This will be our kitchen!

In come the Heaters

The question of how we would heat The Orchid has always been a big one. Cooling is a bit more straightforward since there are only so many options that are in the slightly affordable range. But heating – so many possibilities. The Hutongs of Beijing have always been notorious for making it through the cold winters. In Beijing’s recent history even as close as those growing up here in the 80’s, the hutong winter life was painful. Getting out of bed was difficult enough, but simply thinking about managing the coal for the heating took up so much time, and in the event of a problem it wasn’t unheard of for many people to die of cold through the night. Modern Beijing’s hutong life has changed a lot —- since last year. The government has been briskly adding in power capacity throughout each neighbourhood, and then subsidizing electric heaters as well as the cost of the electricity from 10pm to 6am. It is still a more expensive proposition for many poor people living here, but the majority is quite happy about it. As far as efficiency is concerned, there are better ways to do things. And certainly the benefit of options comes more easily to those starting from scratch like us.

It was always in our mind to simultaneously increase comfort and raise electrical efficiency by using floor heating. We had hoped originally to somehow use a large array of solar water heaters to convert heat for both regular water consumption as well as floor heating, but this quickly started to look like we’d need an entire additional set of equipment to deal with all those days of inadequate sun. In the end we settled for air-source heat pumps. This is essentially what most people have sitting outside, attached to their indoor AC units, except the outside unit is far bigger. Due to 220V limitations we had to settle for a smaller size unit, and buy two of them to meet capacity. The benefit of these units are the fact that they handle normal AC in the summer and then do all water heating needs in the winter. Also they are the most efficient at providing hot water for floor heating in the winter than all other means available in the area. They also weigh 300kg each!


Receiving the units on the street, and marveling at their size


Our workers wondering if we’ve thought this through properly


Installation company attempting to use the wheelbarrow to move them in


No problem.


Roof raising fun

Here are some great shots of this evening’s roof raising ceremony. For the purposes of good luck upon finishing a roof, certain cuts of pork ribs were purchased along with some incense. Then, to keep spirits high we treated the workers to a great cut of meat, in this case pork face, for an added boost to the usual dinner and we held a mild celebration before continuing a bit of work and then sleeping.

Restaurant is raised

Now is when things begin getting extremely interesting. A major second floor being raised overnight adds a lot more dimension to the yard and makes it feel like everything is moving along towards our architectural renderings (stay tuned for those!).


Southern wall of the restaurant dining room is up!


View from the street. A few things missing —