Famous Chinese hutong alleyway bans group tours so future visitors are far from the madding crowd

One of Beijing’s most famous narrow alleyways, known as hutongs in Chinese. will stop accepting groups of tourists from Monday to reduce problems of huge crowd congestion, mainland media reports.

To emphasise the new policy, from now on the government would remove the name of Nanluoguxiang from the official list of tourist destinations, The Beijing News reported on Friday.

The 800-metre-long street, with traditional architecture dating back to the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), was established by Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan more than 600 years ago, and attracts many visitors from the mainland and abroad.

According to the the government’s safety regulations for public areas, Nanluoguxiang is permitted to accept no more than 17,000 tourists at any one time.

However during public holidays more than 100,000 people have been known to crowd in the area.