Avoiding the crowds to explore the He Ping Guo Ju

🏢📸 Located in the basement second floor of the Beijing Department Store, the He Ping Guo Ju has been open for quite some time. I've seen various posts about it and was very interested, but I just never went. 😌😔 🔥👥 The main reason is that it's too popular; every scenic spot is surrounded by crowds waiting to take photos. When there are too many people, the effect of the scene restoration is diminished, and the experience inevitably suffers. 😵‍💫📉 🎫🌆 Plus, during the previous garden fair, they even charged a 30 yuan admission fee, but even so, the place was still overflowing with people, and I really didn't have the courage to come over. 😰💸 🆓🌞 Now that the popularity has decreased and free admission has been restored, I finally took the opportunity during a weekday lunch break to come to the department store and specifically check out the He Ping Guo Ju. 😄🚶‍♂ 👥📷 As expected, there are now far fewer tourists. Although each street is still lively and all the main photo spots have people taking pictures, you only need to wait a bit to get a satisfying photo. 😎👍 🌆💭 Being here really gives you an immersive sense of participation; it's just like the old Beijing hutong street scenes, with a very high degree of restoration. 👀💯 🏛🌈 And each street has its own unique characteristics, with commercial street scenes from the Republic of China period, scenes from the fifties and sixties, and even classic memories of hutong life from the seventies and eighties. 🎭🕰 👴👦 No wonder people of all ages can find resonance here, after all, the span of eras displayed here is quite large. 🤝🎉 👦🏠 For someone like me, who lived in a hutong in the eighties, the arrangement of the hutongs here is really full of details, almost no different from the ordinary hutongs in Beijing thirty or forty years ago. 🏡💖 💭🌆 Especially the narrow alleys on the edges, the honeycomb coal baskets on the ground, the cardboard on the coal factory gates warning 'stealing coal kills the whole family', and the chimneys protruding from the windows of the bungalows, are all unstoppable memories. 😌💭 📺📰 There are also video halls, post offices, barber shops, evening newspaper stands, street-side popcorn, and old posters on the walls, all of which can remind you of the bits and pieces of childhood life. 🎈🎊 🚶‍♂🌃 Walking on the streets and alleys here, one can't help but feel as if they have returned to their childhood, when the dim lights at night made everything seem eerie, and you couldn't help but quicken your pace towards home. 🏡🏃‍♂ 🗿🚂 The huge Buddha head and hand in the temple, and the locomotive at the train station that you can climb on, I think are the most impressive sights in the He Ping Guo Ju. 😲👏 🎨💎 There are also displays of intangible cultural heritage skills worth seeing. As for the goods actually sold in the various shops and stalls, I think there's still room to dig deeper into the characteristics of the era and the region, and there's still room for improvement. 🤔💡 🌍💖 For tourists from other places, it's a scenic spot; for local residents, it's about nostalgia. Older people look at old objects, younger people look for something new. 👫👪 👏🎉 The fact that it appeals to all kinds of people proves that the He Ping Guo Ju is very successful. 🥳🎊