Hutongs are narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing, China. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word "hutong" is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.

Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. More recently, some hutongs have been designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history. However, many of these locations and their inhabitants faced the threat of demolition and forced removal in the eve of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

On June 19th, 2007 nurses and physicians went on strike across Poland. The protest, which lasted seven weeks and included hunger strikes, began when the nurses' delegation requested a formal meeting with then Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski to discuss their low salaries, inadequate administration and failed reforms.

When Jaroslaw denied the delegation a meeting, four nurses from the delegation refused to leave and decided to occupy his office until he would be ready to meet them and talk. Other nurses who waited outside spent their first night sleeping on the road and blocking the traffic. The situation aggravated the next day in the morning when police used force to move them from the road. A few of the nurses collapsed during that exchange and had to be hospitalized. That incident not only caused an outburst of social outrage towards the government but was also one of the major reasons of a seven-week long protests. Living in a tent camp called the "White Camp", protesting nurses and physicians fought for their better tomorrow.