Street Special: streets around the Forbidden City

The Hutong, the narrow alleyways surrounding the royal palace, all served the first family. Today the only sign of that function are the names that indicate that places in the Hutong provided goods "By Appointment" to the Monarchy – look, supplying ice, making the royal pants.

Remember what I said, only the royal family and the temples could use color red for their wall. And this perfect temple is now a primary school.

It's a very old primary school. The Ningyun temple was turned into a school at the beginning of the twentieth century.

There were four temples surrounding the Forbidden City. Each was set up for the worship of natural elements: the wind, the clouds, thunder, and lightening. This one, Ninghe Temple, was used to worship clouds. Now it's called Beichizi Primary School.

We wonder how it feels to go to school in an old temple. It's quite an interesting contrast, those young, fresh faces and the old majestic buildings. It's the kind of scene only to be found in this corner of Beijing.

A few steps south of the primary school sits a quiet corner. Few people know the significance of this place. It's Huang Shi Cheng, or the Royal Archive, three grand structures made of stone and bricks. And even back then they knew the importance of taking special precautions to preserve their documents. Special measures were taken to make sure the indoor temperature remained stable and the buildings are both fire and moisture proof.

See those boxes, that's where the old royal archives were kept, a total of 151 of them. Wrapped with gold, real gold. But they are all empty, the real archives are in the museum.