Paoju Hutong escapes its prison past

It's a summer's day round the Lama Temple, and people are busy going about their day at Paoju Hutong, content in the knowledge they're perfectly safe. Just round the corner is one of the city's biggest police stations, and the boys in blue are a regular sight around these parts. Whether citizens would have felt as safe a couple of years ago is another matter, however: They would have been living in the shadow of a high-security prison.

Its name, "cannon factory," comes from its previous function as a munitions factory that produced, among other things, artillery in the late Qing Dynasty. Later, imported technology supplanted domestic arms production and the factory was closed. Out of the original building, a prison was constructed in its stead, and was occupied with high-profile prisoners of the Chinese government until 2008.

The prison for all

Even before the Xi'an Incident in 1936 forced Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government to begin their defensive war against Japan, various patriotic figures had already been preparing for war. General Ji Hongchang gathered General Feng Yux-iang and other army leaders in North China, but these pre-emptive actions angered Chiang, then still insisting on a non-resistance strategy. Ji was thrown into Paoju prison along with 3,000 other prisoners for insubordination and in 1934 was executed for beliefs that later proved to be sadly correct.

Somewhat ironically, after the war the jail was used to house Japanese war criminals, including the infamous traitor Kawashima Yoshiko. She had been the sister-in-law of the emperor, Pu Yi, but was later adopted by a Japanese named Kawashima Naniwa. Yoshiko became a spy for the enemy during the war and was arrested for her duplicitous activity in 1945. She stayed a prisoner for three years, before joining General Ji in his fate.

Over half a century later, some parts still remain but under different ownership. Seventy-year-old local resident Li told us, "After 1949, it was replaced by the prison of the police bureau of Dongcheng district for jailing political prisoners. Then it was owned by the Beijing Security Department of the Bureau of Public Transportation until its penal section was moved to Daxing district in 2008."

As a relative of a former prison worker, Li used to be resident inside the courtyard of the prison in the late 1960s. Back then, it was mostly filled with old-style, one-story houses with tiled roofs, unlike today. There wasn't much room to walk around freely inside, Li recalled his prison life. He vividly remembered an escaped convict jumping on his roof one night and being soundly beaten by his police pursuers for his troubles.

Fifty-year-old Zhao said the prison occupied half the hutong. The high, castle-like walls are still equipped with electrified security wires that he believes were already there from the Second World War. "The windows and roofs were also part of the castle," said Zhao. "But they are demol-ished now."

The lane is now crowded with civilians and, while squad cars are a constant reminder of the nearby police station. The dark and forbidden atmosphere of captivity have long gone with the prison.