Two hundred and thirty-two metres, running north-east to south-west off Di’anmen Outer Street, which is why it is called 斜 — slanting. It does not obey the imperial grid, and the name is a joke about its shape: the long street is the stem of a pipe, the east entrance the mouthpiece, and the west end, curving south towards Yinding Bridge, the bowl.
It is named for what it sold and for whom. The Manchu banner garrison was quartered in the north of the city, and banner households smoked — dry tobacco and water tobacco — so the shopkeepers here made and sold the pouches and long-stemmed pipes they needed. The Guangxu-era Shuntian Prefecture Gazetteer records the street under this name. Under the Qing it was a high-end strip for officials and nobility, with houses like Huixianlou and Qingyunlou on it, and ordinary Beijingers did not shop here.
Then the dynasty fell. After the 1912 abdication the aristocracy began selling its possessions, and the antique dealers moved in — Baowenzhai, Minwenzhai — turning a court street into a second-hand market where you could buy the empire by the piece. That is the second class regime on the same 232 metres.
The third arrived in November 2010, when Yandai Xiejie was named one of China’s Historical and Cultural Famous Streets and Shichahai was earmarked as a showcase for “Humanistic Beijing”. The shopfronts were restored to a Qing look and the trade became souvenirs, snacks and coffee for visitors. So you are walking a street built for a garrison caste, repurposed to liquidate that caste’s property, and finally restored as a picture of itself. Guangfu Temple, Ming, is still standing on it, protected, in among the fridge magnets.
