In Beijing, a city of more than 21 million people, some affluent residents are finding their own patch of peace and quiet in traditional courtyard homes. When Nikolaj Petersen and his wife, Irene Sim, moved to Beijing for Ms. Sim’s job with the Singaporean government, they wanted a home that made them feel like they lived in China, not just a nondescript high-rise apartment. About a year ago, the couple and their two children, ages 6 and 9, moved into a three-building courtyard home near the Forbidden City. The home includes a sauna, a downstairs playroom, two kitchens and a master bathroom with built-in closets. The children have their own private building, with a bathroom that has a wooden tub built inside the shower. Mr. Petersen declined to disclose the monthly rent, but similar hutong homes go for between 50,000 and 60,000 yuan a month, or about $7,500 to $9,000. Mr. Petersen, a 41-year-old visual artist, says the family spends much of its time in the courtyard under pomegranate trees that are more than 150 years old, watching their cat wander on the roof. “It’s like living in a forest,” he says. “It’s full of trees and quiet and yet in the center of Beijing.”
In Beijing, traditional courtyard homes that line narrow alleyways, called hutongs, are increasingly popular among expat families and well-heeled locals. The homes, built by China’s elite ruling class and wealthy merchants, are typically more than 100 years old and often have multiple buildings. Updating the plumbing, heating systems and adding modern kitchens and bathrooms can be costly, starting at $20,000 and easily topping $500,000. As a result, many upscale hutong courtyard homes can rent from about $3,000 to $10,000 a month, depending on size and amenities. Courtyard homeowners who rent out their properties have little trouble finding eager tenants in the expat community: Foreigners, while allowed to buy a home in China, often eschew the tangle of bureaucracy to buy or renovate such a property. And for newcomers, a traditional Chinese home that’s part of a neighborhood of one-story homes can present a more authentic and inviting experience than a luxury high rise. After living in a modern Beijing high rise for two years, Quoc Tran, an investment banker from Ohio, decided he wanted “to have a different living experience.” He moved in 2013 into a two-bedroom, two-bath renovated courtyard home for about $3,100 a month in Beijing’s Dongsishitiao neighborhood, where famous generals lived during the Qing Dynasty. More:How to Define a Luxury Home in China In his courtyard, he set up a small garden and often invited friends over for barbecues. Mr. Tran, 35, says over time he became part of the community. “People knew who I was, they saw me going in and out and if I had trouble I asked neighbors for help,” says Mr. Tran, who recently relocated to Japan for work. “You don’t see that kind of community life very often anymore.” Mr. Tran encountered one downside to living in a traditional hutong home: Even in a courtyard home with modern upgrades, Mr. Tran felt the chill in the wintertime. “I knew the hutongs weren’t as insulated as a modern apartment, but I never thought I’d have multiple heaters going in my bedroom and still see my breath in the wintertime,” he says. One of the most challenging parts of a courtyard-home renovation is adding proper materials to deal with the city’s frigid winters and humid summers. In some cases, a builder opens up walls to add thick insulation, though that technique decreases the size of the room. Instead many architects and designers opt to add heaters, install double-pane windows or beef up insulation in the roof. Last year, Amy Mathieson, designer at AnyScale Architecture in Beijing, worked on a courtyard property on the outskirts of Beijing for a German consulting executive. The 7,100-square-foot home had once been two old farmhouses and needed significant renovations. The existing structure was gutted and redesigned with glass corridors to connect the rooms, and designers put in modern touches, such as a stone fireplace, stainless-steel appliances and floor-to-ceiling windows. “People will say you can’t retrofit a courtyard,” Ms. Mathieson says. “That’s not true, it just takes a lot of work.” Beijing laws restrict a hutong home from being larger than its original footprint, making renovations complicated, says Vector Architects founder Gong Dong. Mr. Dong, who grew up in Beijing and remembers visiting his grandmother’s home in a hutong more than 40 years ago, is renovating an old workers’ dormitory into a courtyard property that will include two separate, private homes, a cafe and meeting spaces. “We’re trying to revitalize an area and make sure it doesn’t get demolished,” Mr. Dong says. Two years ago, designer Caroline Odinet was tasked with turning a heavy, dark, nearly 7,000-square-foot courtyard home into a light and modern home for a corporate executive and her family. Ms. Odinet took down heavy curtains, opened up the house to the garden to create a sense of indoor and outdoor living, and added lots of color, such as some bright yellow walls and fire-engine-red dining chairs. “So many people are afraid to use color in Beijing,” Ms. Odinet says. “They say, ‘Oh that’s the yellow only used by the emperor and that’s the red used at the Forbidden City.’ That’s changing now.” It’s difficult to pin down the exact number of hutong alleyways left in the Chinese capital, says Michael Meyer, author of “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed.” They were first built during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1271-1911), the latter being the last dynasty before China became a republic. In 1949, when Mao Zedong came to power, there were about 7,000 hutongs, Mr. Meyer says. According to the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, there were 1,350 as of 2008. There are challenges to hutong living. Aside from cold winters, some hutong dwellers are told not to flush toilet paper down the commode; the city’s older, smaller pipes can get backed up. And recent smog emergencies have reduced courtyard activities. Residents say they also have to learn about cultural differences, which include knowing where to put trash on the main streets, how to recycle cardboard for cash, and where to park cars. Mr. Petersen says there are unspoken rules about parking spots along his hutong and that some people will slash the tires of a car that’s parked in the wrong place. For Ms. Odinet, the interior designer, the choice to live in a courtyard home in Beijing came down to wanting to be as close to nature as possible. “Living in a hutong is less comfortable at times,” says Ms. Odinet, 58, who rents a 4,800-square-foot home with a friend not far from the old city’s center. “While I’m here in China I should live in a place that’s unique and that’s not like anywhere else.” Write to Alyssa Abkowitz at alyssa.abkowitz@wsj.com This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.