Western observers have been lamenting the demise of “Old Beijing” since at least the 1920s, when the Chinese capital started itself stumbling in the direction of modernization. Each time, the city’s ancient charms-it’s intimate lanes ( hutong) and enigmatic courtyard houses ( siheyuan)-are said to be not long for this world. Each time, they survive to seduce the next generation of would-be eulogizers. Now comes Michael Meyer’s “The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed,” due out from Walker and Company this month. How much is there to be gained in listening to yet another requiem for a place that never seems to die?

The answer, in Meyer’s case, is plenty.

An award-winning travel writer, Meyer has done what few other foreign residents in Beijing are willing to do: actually live in the hutong. It’s true, many Westerners rent courtyard houses, but theirs are the neo-imperial mini-palaces of New Beijing, cleared of riff-raff, retrofitted with radiators and equipped with sit-down toilets. Meyer’s perch in the neglected lanes south of Tian’anmen Square is not so luxurious. For heat in winter, he relies on cups of Nescafe and the bowls of dumplings foisted on him by the Widow, his busy-bodied old neighbor. The dumplings and instant coffee processed, he walks across the lane to the public latrine, where one of his students once bowed to him as he squatted, pants around ankles, over the open trough.

Read the full review here (proxy required for those in China).