WITH ONE’S eyes closed, Beijing’s main roads sound like any Chinese city. All around is the roar of traffic, punctuated by honks from delivery scooters, recorded safety warnings from buses and the occasional bell of a rental-bicycle. But in the capital’s last hutongs, as its ancient grey-walled alleys are known, fragments of an older soundscape can be heard.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.The chirping of caged crickets is one. Hung in the doorways of courtyard homes or small shops, the insects bring a rural note into the city. A quarter-century ago their song was common. Beijing was still home to cycle rickshaws and delivery tricycles. Some riders hung crickets from their handlebars, inside spherical cages woven from reeds. Today, cricket-sellers cling on, lurking near a motorway bridge in southern Beijing. A big specimen sells for 20 yuan ($3). They are heirs to a grand tradition. In imperial times, bored courtiers and Manchu army officers spent fortunes on caged crickets and songbirds.Another relic is the musical clanking of steel plates strung on a cord, announcing a knife sharpener’s arrival. Several such specialists still work Beijing’s streets. Their sounding-plates, sometimes supplemented with a distinctive cry, summon customers from hutong homes and high-rise flats. But numbers are falling. “What young man would study this?” asks Craftsman Liu, a sharpener for 40 years, as he hones a cleaver on a whetstone mounted on his bike.An almost-vanished Beijing sound is one of the strangest. An eerie thrumming, like the noise of flying saucers in an …
