Thousands of traditional houses in central Beijing are under renovation and initial progress has been made recently. This is the first time that the administration of Cultural Heritage is joining the whole process of renovation.

Our reporter Liu Min has the details.

Reporter: Conservation experts are working in Siheyuan together with workers to make sure renovation does not damage the looks of the hutongs.

In the past, old houses in some hutong areas were destroyed under the Old City Reconstruction project and new houses were built by property developers. This time, preservation of the historical scenes of the districts has been put in the first place instead. The municipal authorities have allocated 1 billion Yuan in total to renovate four downtown districts - Dongcheng, Xicheng, Xuanwu and Chongwen.

Director with Beijing municipal administration of cultural heritage, Wang Yuwei says that in the new project, his administration is involved in many aspects of the work.

The main job for us this time is to launch a profound investigation on all Hutong houses in these four districts. After the investigation, we can provide a complete plan for the project team to carry out the renovation with protection of the whole area. The purpose for doing so is to preserve the original historical style.

One third of the investigation has been finished and some of the residential areas have already finished the renovation. The experts' team consists of conservation experts, technical consultant and also directors from the administrations. They work together to come up with the best solution for each household. During the whole renovation process, the team has met numerous challenges, Wang Yuwei further introduces:

Hutong is not very wide, and many households live in one courtyard. We've encountered many problems. For example, how to install water pipes, heating channels and electrical wires into the yard. The challenge is that we need to do all these based on scientific principles and at the same time not to take up too much space, so the team introduced a public channel to contain all the wires and pipes. This is a kind of innovation.

In Dongsi Shi Tiao, the messy, crowded old courtyards have become clean, new, and spacious. From outside, the windows look exactly like the traditional wooden ones with decorated frames, but inside the sliding windows made of alnico looks as modern as those in new buildings. In a courtyard, a resident is moving into her newly renovated home.

The old and shabby things have been removed out of the courtyard. Now the yard is very smooth and flat, and after the renovation of the house, we also did the interior decoration to have a brand new home.

For China Drive, I'm Liu Min