胡同

This guide to the hutongs near Mao'er Hutong in Beijing follows Wanrong, born here in 1906 to an unusually modern Manchu family who let her study English and piano. It traces her wedding procession at sixteen, carried through these lanes to marry Puyi, the last emperor of China, and the years that followed in the Forbidden City and later in Japanese-controlled Manchuria. Walk the same chessboard grid of lanes the Yuan dynasty laid out seven hundred fifty years ago.