Fengyi

I buy my Pixian sauce straight from the Sichuan Governmental Restaurant Store here in Beijing - it's lovely! It's not in a bamboo box and all pretty and that, but it's very good. If any eGulleteers in the UK out there are interested, I can certainly bring some back for you on my next trip back to the UK- you may have to collect it (I can offer London or Cambridge!) if I run out of time to post (I'm coming back to write a couple of major wine exams then run up and down the country like a mad chicken for a couple of days). However, it's no problem at all to slip some packages into my bags - I took three back to the UK last time for various friends anyway! There is about 300g in each pack and they last a while. It is the style with the whole broad beans in it. Just pm me if you're interested (I'm going back to the UK in a month)!

Both my favourite spice and herb have nothing to do with my formative years -just my formative greed! Spice: Cumin. I really learned to love this here in China with many drunken student nights spent huddling around a charcoal grill asking for extra cumin on my lamb kebab. I've posted a cumin and lamb feast on my blog and it even makes *my* mouth water thinking about it. Herb: Dill. Which is funny because I hate fennel and aniseed.... But the heaven of being on a Finland-Sweden ferry during the summer and eating pounds of dill-flecked crawfish and slabs of gravadlax is the best thing ever!

Gack! That's quite a lot even considering the strength of the Euro. I think of the number of spring rolls I could make here with $65. Zillions!!! But if it makes you feel better, the tasting menu at the Whampoa is nearly 300RMB (about 45USD) which is outrageous for here. I do hope you enjoyed the dinner for all that! Mind you, you don't tip at all here! Nor is there a service charge for most non-hotel places. [bTW please remember that if you are visiting China - please don't tip!!!!It's one good legacy from the communist era!]

Don't worry, Pan - I'm still around and this isn't locked yet...! It's Marks and Spenser - the unofficial source of the British lunchtime sandwich. There's quite a few districts - they've slowed the hutong wrecking as of late. The main areas of Dianmen, Houhai, etc.. still survive. There's been a local movement to stop development within the 2nd ring road. The trouble is that there are no heritage laws (well, there are in theory, but not in practice) and also, renovating these traditional hutongs to make them habitable requires more money than the local residents have so their biggest chance of being saved is to be acquired by a rich person (be it foreign or Chinese). The condition of a lot of them is appalling and restoration will need money pouring in to make them properly habitable. I have, however, seen signs of that in certain areas! Ha! I just had a tomato salad for lunch (with some Beijing Mozzarella-style cheese). Most of Beijing's tomatoes are grown in hothouses (Chinese style ones - with straw rolled over the top at night) so I'm not that worried as I think the use of nightsoil as fertillizer is declining around here. Of course, I wash all veg in veg-washing soap too! As for parasites, there are always bad outbreaks - but I'm not that worried about them. Beijing people are REALLY looking forward to the Olympics. There is a tremendous sense of pride here for most people (remember that post-modern style irony is non existent for 99% of the population). When you hear people talking about the 'New Beijing, New Civilization, New Olympics, New Spirit', they really, really do believe it for the most part. Patriotism is shockingly manifest (at least from my point of view) here. It's inherent in the language and culture. Most people love China to a degree that I, of no fixed nationality or race, find absolutely incomprehensible. I mean, there are even pop songs about the glory of being Chinese for goodness sake! As for the cars - it'll be a fringe benefit of living under a totalitarian government, during the Olympics, most cars will simply be banned from the roads. Easy-peasy stuff when you don't have to placate any voting population As for vacations - most popular is still to go to China's favourite places, then I think that France is very popular. Very romantic, very old world. But Chinese are travelling more and more. Dubai for shopping is becoming chic. The biggest influence on Beijing dishes has definitely been the popularity of Sichuan food. Beijing food should not be spicy-hot! But it is increasingly so and many people put this down to the influence of Sichuan's popularity. The most popular foreign food is pizza, by far, if you exclude McDs and KFC. I hope I answered your questions - and I hope you can make it back to Beijing some time in the future!

I'm not on the correct etiquette to sign off on the blogging, but I would just like to say a Big Thank You to anyone who managed to plough through this blog! I hope it gave a small taster of how exciting the food scene is here in Beijing and what a variety of both Asian and Western cuisines that there are. I love living here for that! I'm sorry that I didn't make it to the Sichuan government restaurant and also that I didn't post a wider range of Chinese cooking (so many regions, so little time). I wanted to fit in some Guizhou and Anhui and Hunan too, but just ran out of time to eat in so many restaurants! Thankfully, we just took delivery of an exercise bike, so I can burn off some of those calories (and then eat more)!!!! If anyone is heading this way, please feel free to PM. I hope I can offer some small help! [OMG, I completely forgot to show Peking Duck! Oh dear, I am HOPELESS, aren't I? sorry!]

Hey! We've got similar notices on the Beijing subway which also forbid the carrying of refrigerators, desktop computers and such like! I have visions of someone carrying a Maytag fridge onto the Beijing subway everytime I see that notice.... The candied fruit is 冰糖葫芦 bingtanghulu in Mandarin. It's really odd to see it in HK!!! It's the traditional sweet of northern china - sold by itinerant pedlars. The fruits on it are haws, but up here we also get pineapple and banana and strawberry ones. Also you get the haws stuffed with walnut in upmarket versions. Thanks for the pictures...the goose made me drool and drool and drooooool!!!!

Hi! Thanks for the kind words! The relatives want me to have a proper xianrbing making class so I am hoping to arrange that when I have a free moment. I promise to take lots of pictures and post them in the Chinese foods forum so that you too can make these stodgy delights! Actually, the dishes weren't all that great (my cousin/auntie has a heavy hand with the MSG and her cooking's very rustic counstryside...) - but we have got a really good cook in the family (by marriage). He's a proper chef for the People's Liberation Army and his stuff is really good. I shall have to beg some recipes from him!

On Tuesday, I was asked to give a wine talk to a whole group of people connected with the Olympex Expo (stamps and coins) that is happening the same time as the Olympics. I introduced five countries's wines and the relationship between them and the Olympics. Then I taught them how to taste, and we had a fun blind-tasting game. The high point was that I was invited to stay onto lunch. As this meeting was at the Whampoa Club, this was an invitation indeed!!! The Whampoa Club Beijing is an scion of Whampoa Shanghai but it specializes in modern takes on traditional Beijing (and Lu) cuisine dishes. I've had the good fortune to eat there twice before and was really impressed. I haven't been to the one in Shanghai - but hope to! They had ordered the lunch tasting menu: Here's the first part: and here's a picture of the overall dishes for the first course: Around you can see the pork knuckle in front, then salad and the chicken. Here's a close up of the doufu: This was very nice with the Chilean Tarapaca Reserve Chardonny that we were drinking - the oaky nose really complimented the smoky doufu. The Youmaicai salad was very pretty: but the sauce was a bit too refined for me - I prefer a thicker, woofier sesame Then came the mains: The frog was rather nice: and the sweetness of the Cab Sauv-Merlot blend we were drinking was good to off-set the spice. But the wine went even nicer with the lamb: They had cooked this so that it had no "shanwei" 膻味 which is the gamieness flavour of lamb. Instead it was sweet and crispy. The wine really worked well with the inherent sweetness and the crispy texture. The shangjianbaozi dumplings were VERY cute (and wonderfully cooked) but my favourite was the 'pasta' dish: which was not only tasty, but texturally very exciting with the crisp prawns against the soft "pasta" - which were like very soft nian-gao. I never got the pigeon soup because I kept bobbing up and down and meeting and greeting and trying to be terrible polite to the various officials! But I was there for the dessert which was a bit strange really: Very cute looking, but strange to eat. The hotness of the mustard was not too dominating, but overall, it didn't mesh well with my admittedly Western-influenced ideas of what dessert should be. It was decidedly unsweet - so for once, the dessert wine (a Chilean late harvest Gewurtz) wasn't overpowered by sugar and the sweetness of the wine off-set the hotness of the mustard. But it was still a bit odd to have something like that for dessert. And yes, those are wasabi peas! Well, the food there is never boring - and I find it very exciting. The main down point is that it's massively expensive but it's good to see Beijing food being served and cooked in such an exciting way!

Anyway, I should bring this to a close and stop hogging the bandwidth, so I will post the last two meals!!! Firstly, off to Yilao's (Great Auntie's) we went, armed with various gifts. She lives in a 60m2 apartment with five other people - it's a two bedroom affair..and I'm not sure where they all fit! It's her and her sort-of cousin and husband (both Shenyang countryside), their daughter and son in law and grandchild. .. When we're invited over, I know that there will be enough food to feed the 5000, so... this was the first set of food put on the table: From the top boxes of MeltyKiss chocolate and wine (our presents), we have a cold tossed salad, huanghefish braised in dark sauce, pork with garlic sprouts, gongbao chicken, shrimps with green onion and ginger, braised spareribs and in the centre, eggplant/aubergine 'hezi' (lit. boxes) - which were stuffed with pork and deep fried. All this for essentially 6 to start (to put it into perspective, Great-Aunite let slip that they only have 3/4 dishes in total when it's them eating). To my horror, the granddaughter was allowed to eat instant noodles instead as she refused point blank to eat this food. Apparently, she demands only instant noodles, McDonalds or KFC. It's so depressing that they indulge her (she's a real Little Empress) and allow her to behave like that All this food was being produced in a tiny kitchen: This is one side: This is the other, with cousin/auntie cooking: And here are some close-ups of dishes I thought you may find interesting... This is a cold dish made of duck meat in the middle and a gelantinous dish made from boiling pig skin around it. After my great-auntie complained that it was flavourless, so chile oil and soya sauce were added. The shrimp were a real delicacy: and were there for our benefit. The cold tossed salad was lovely, with egg, doufu, cucumber, carrot radish all in a piquant dressing: and then more dishes kept coming out of that tiny kitchen, and finally the end dish: about 3 platters of xianrbing (sutffed flatbread) were produced! These are dough-covered pork and celery disks which are delicious but not very light! Of course, we got forcefed with them until we couldn't move... This is a picture of the table once we'd been steadily eating for about 1 hour. In the background is the TV programme we were also supposed to watch and comment on at the same time.... it was the CCTV (central China TV) 13th Annual Song and Quiz Festival. My poor husband had to sit there and endure 2 hours of Chinese traditional singing and all our comments in Chinese!! Poor guy!

Hi Abra! I don't really stress over the fake food thing - after all, there's a lot more things that can kill you quicker in Beijing... like the taxi driving! Honestly, life is complicated enough so I try and just avoid situations where I might come across fake food. SOme ex-pats here are JUST ridiculously paranoid and I think that's a very horrible way to live. Mind you, I wasn't posted here, no one forced me - I came here because I like it here (I sort of speak the language, I am familiar with the culture) so maybe I'm more laid back to begin with Also, the trouble with talking about Chinese food matching with most people not from China is that most of them very do know very little about 'Chinese food' full stop. They can't name the four great cuisines, let alone the 8 schools, and the minority cooking. I always hold that saying "Chinese food" is hard to pair with wine is like saying "European food" is easy to pair with wine. Just as it would be hard to pair lutefisch (sp!?!?), pickled herring and steamed artichokes/asparagus with wine, and easy to do boeuf bourguignonne (sp?), roasted chicken and braised lamb shank, there are easier and harder dishes from various areas of China. For instance, Hunan is easier to pair than Sichuan and Dongbei is very wine-friendly! The food-serving fashion here also makes it harder to pair wines well, but honestly, I think that most people come out with that maxim (chinese food is hard to pair) simply through lack of knowledge! But that's just my two cents worth! I do plan to write a book about food matching with the various schools of Chinese food. Mr Lau in HK has already done one, but since it was sponsored by LVMH I don't really approve of the limited wine range cited, despite the excellent fundamentals!

Laksa - sorry about the lack of Hooter's food pictures - I've never eaten there, but people say it's pretty much standard Hooter's fare (whatever that means!) Pan - "snap" to a Malaysian childhood! My malay birth certificate causes no end of trouble but it's pretty cool to try and read it! I haven't seen many of the yellow haw about - they *are* difficult to get, aren't they? Well, I'm supposed to wrap this up but I've have two more meals that I think may be of interest. They're a contrast of extremes: the first is the dinner from last night with my Yilao (my maternal grandmother's cousin) in a fairly typical Beijing apartment and the 2nd is lunch today at the glamorous Whampoa Club with a bunch of high officials. Both truly beijing food - but at pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm afraid I won't be able to post the photos today (a combination of time-crunch and a very bad-tempered internet) but will post first thing tomorrow. I hope that's OK!

duplicated below!!! (sorry my internet is REALLY playing up!)

Don't worry about the discussing of prices - it's perfectly acceptable in China to ask someone how much they earn, how much their rent is, how much their car, and many people will volunteer the information. Price and wages are perfectly suitable conversations (as are personal appearance - I just *love* hearing 'oh my goodness, you're so fat/tired looking/spotty' ) Take Western taboo about price and personal appearance and just apply it to politics here - I've just come back from being stuffed more full of food than I can cope with - I went to my Great Auntie's house and have rolled back here....with plastic bags full of leftovers. I will post the pictures as a fitting end to the blog just to prove how OTT guest-host relationships can be here!!! (if you're interested!).

If you would like to see more contemporary postings of jiaozi photos - I took some in January which you can see on This thread Was even Frank's Place going when you were there? Frank is still here and still runs two cafes! The Friendship Store is very run-down and overpriced and rather a hold over from that time. I have heard that it is being renovated, but it's almost impossible for it to compete with the likes of Parkson, Sogo, etc... BTW, I still got the 'meiyou' response from waiters and waitresses in the 1990s but it has been disappearing slowly. Wow! they could bring surliness to a whole new level, couldn't they?!?!?!

What they call xiaolongtangbao are miniature xiaolongbao. Less than half the size of a regular xlb. Next time, a ruler is needed in the photo to show the scale of the things! Shanghai-style Xiaolongbao are very exotic here. Something that has to be actively sought out for its rarity. There are northern-style xlb, but they are totally different beasts to Shanghai xlb, being more akid to baozi. Rarity has its price! But then again, try getting decent xianr bing in Shanghai - totally different to BJ style! [a small aside of reflection] Thinking about how different things are between regions in China: it's strange for me to hear friends saying 'Oh China - it's all one country and ergo one culture, one food, one attitude'. Whereas, it's much more like a mass of countries like Europe: a common underlying cultural background with big differences between north and south, east and west. or I guess how the West coast vs East coast is for NAs. For instance, I would never choose to live in Shanghai... I have been there a lot, but I just don't feel comfortable there. I don't like the food, for one thing! And the people are far, far too sophisticated and business orientated for me! And the politeness of the service staff unnerves me.... Whereas, the minute I landed first in BJ, I felt at home here. The people can be terrifyingly rude, crude and direct; the food is stodgey, *full* of garlic, and relatively unsophisticated and the climate sucks, etc.... but I really like the BJ culture and mindset, for all its downpoints. Just compare taxi drivers in Shanghai and Beijing- it doesn't get more obvious than that!!!

ON Saturday, we were busy with a wine tasting during the day. It was about Blind Wine Tasting techniques, and you can see that we aim for a pretty serious-type of set-up: But because of this, we were famished by dinner time, and so we went for what I call 'comfort food' which is HK dinner-style food. This type of food is VERY hard to find in Beijing. Most Cantonese restaurants here are firmly in the seafood/abalone/sharkfin luxury dining mode. But in our mall, we're lucky to have a 'Station K' - which although not 100% authentic, it's close enough! We got some chaoniuhe (炒牛河) fried beef flat noodles which had a special touch this week of fried crab bits on top: And we got some more youmaicai (which looks just like the other picture I've posted of youmaicai) - there seems to be a run on this vegetable recently! Then we saw on the special menu a very NON-HK dish, but it appealed to us. It was pickled peppers stir-fried with bullfrog (泡椒牛蛙) and it was very nice (albeit so totally not Cantonese) But we returned to the Cantonese theme with chasiu and roast goose plate: and some jiaoyan (salt and pepper) pork ribs It's very hard to get Cantonese BBQ here - in fact, Station K is the only place I know that does it! It's easier to get a pizza Generally speaking, the most popular Chinese food schools here (outside of Beijing style food) are Cantonese (up-scale) and Sichuan. The latter has really taken off in Beijing. If I'm allowed to continue...I would love to post some pictures of food at the Sichuan Governmental Canteen Restaurant. Hands down the best place in town for amazing Sichuan food....

As it's a lazy Sunday for me, I decided to add some pictures of around Beijing as some people expressed an interest. Of course, there's the modern buildings that are going up for the Olympics, like the water cube: That is a very cool building! It looks completely unreal! I just heard that in a few weeks, the Canadian syncro swim team is coming and they want Beijing-based Canadians to cheer them on. I am tempted just to go to see the inside of the thing!!! and there's the CTV Tower: Which looks very scary. Lots of people are saying they don't dare to go in it. It does look very precarious - especially when they hadn't yet connected the towers! We live in a modern building too - and to our eternal shame, we live right next to a 24 hour McDonalds!!! Here's a view along the street we live. As you can see, construction sites are everywhere. I cannot wait until this city has finished building itself!!! But there are also more peaceful places! Here's winter picture of people on the lake at the summer place: and the mountains that the Great Wall is built over: in contrast, here's a picture of the valleys of Shanxi province (where the vineyard picture came from). We're standing with our backs to the vineyards looking over the gorge: I think Shanxi food is just wonderful! It's based on noodles and vinegar. They have more types of noodles than I ever thought possible! Some of them don't even look like noodles: These are sort of tubules made from buckwheat and placed in a steamer. To eat them, you pull them out and dip them in a sauce of your choosing. They've got a really cute name - kao-lao-lao! We even went to a "showcase of noodles" (which was in a fancy restaurant in Taiyuan) to see a whole noodle display including such things as these cute things Anyway, I seem to have gotten diverted here - but I hope you liked the pictures anyway!

On Friday, we decided to go to Dai Tai Feng because we had a coupon for it... also, it's the best xiaolongbao in town, and it's just across the street from where I work. It was a surprise to me when I saw pictures of the original Dai Tai Feng in Taipei (in the Chinese food forum on eGullet). The ones in Beijing offer quite up-scale dining as you can see: and it's not a particularly cheap place to eat (but it is GOOD). We got some appetizer dishes to start: From top left going clockwise, we have shredded mixed doufu shreds, cold spicy beef-tendon (my favourite!), "sugar-vinegar" pork riblets (sweet and sour taste - but not the SS pork that is common around the world), and stir fried Youmaicai. Then the first basket of xiaolongbao came: These are just heavenly! Wonderful taste and texture. Seriously good! But, even further up on my scale of delight is the so-called xiaolongtangbao (xiaolong soup dumplings) and what I called the mini xiaolongbao: I hope that the chopsticks can show the scale. They are the cutest little xiaolongbao I have ever seen! They are delicious - we ordered two baskets in the end!!! And we also had some lovely shrimp wonton: In case you are interested, dinner for 3 came to about 360RMB (with free coupon of xiaolongbao worth about 45RMB). It's a relatively expensive meal for here (I reckon under 100RMB for two as cheap, 100-200RMB as reasonable and 200RMB+ for two as quite a lot!).

Just for Peter and Laksa, here is the photographic evidence for Hooters - taken from inside a cab last night on my way home. (The taxi driver thought I was demented...) Sorry for the quality - it was taken at the traffic lights on the junction of Gongtibeilu and Gongtidonglu (where Hooters is located...) I have actually seen Miss Hooters China in person - she works at the Shanghai branch near Hongqiao. It's absolutely mortifyingly embarrassing to say that.....!

Egg Burritos I love that! They really are a good way to start the day. Did you also eat 'Beancurd brains' (doufunao)? we really like those but they're harder to find around here whereas we have at least three stands for jianbing sellers.

Hi! There haven't been any real scares about jiaozi here in Beijing - but I suspect that one wouldn't hear about them anyway! They're pretty much a staple here - as many people don't have the time to make jiaozi from scratch and most of them are pretty tasty!

I forgot to answer this most pressing demand..... HOOTERS - yes, the first in Beijing just opened last year. I haven't any pictures (not really the sort of place I would go -though I've been dragged to the one in Shanghai....) but Google will prove its existence

This morning I planned to go to the local market with a friend. This market (Sanyuanli) is the most upmarket one in the city and mainly caters to the wholesale trade here. So they have very interesting things for sale. But first, we enjoyed the pineapple my ayi brought in yesterday: which are nearly always sold prepared like this. It's pineapple season here and in the suburbs there are carts and carts selling pineapples!! But to market! Here is the first picture (sorry for the blurriness!) it's the bread stall: - the large white things are Mantou 馒头, the staple bread of this area which is steamed and slightly sweet. The brown round things are 'bing' (bing is a generic term for any flat bread) stuffed with meat or red bean paste. Here you can see the bing and the noodles more clearly. The white and brown buns by the side are Shengjianbao -which are baozi which are steamed and fried (very tasty!). Their heat is making the window steam up! We passed by the fish stalls on our way down: As you can see, there are fish from everywhere in the world here! and I'm not sure what 90% are called - I hope there's an expert out there who can help me!! Next to the fish were a bunch of crabs and salmon carcasses - I can just imagine a thrifty housewife falling on the latter! We passed the mushroom guy - the range of mushrooms in China is enormous! I really enjoying trying them out. and the tomato specialist: The tomatoes are all grown around Beijing in the network of hothouses they have here. They have a lovely taste - even if they're a funny colour. The thing here is to eat them as a fruit with a side of sugar to dip them in. Tasting some of the cherry tomatoes, they do seem as sweet as fruit! We then hit the pickle man, where I bought some radish pickle for my husband: I was very impressed by his zhacai (mustard tuber pickle) - they looked very nice! Next to the pickles were the dried stuffs and the seaweed seller: and then we stopped for vegetables: The prices here aren't too bad. The avocados are 9RMB each - and about 15RMB if you buy them at a supermarket. The less exotic things like carrots are literally pennies! We passed by the seafood again.... where I stopped to admire both the squid and the stall-holder's efforts to get her girl to smile for me! My eye was caught by some clams - apparently fresh in from Dalian that day: The whiter ones were cheaper (5RMB for 500g) but the darker ones were smaller and more suitable for stir-frying the lady said (and they were 6RMB for 500g). I decided to make vongole pasta for lunch and so went for the stir frying ones... All things piggy were next: The pork products are always carefully separated from the other meats in northern chinese markets to avoid contamination with the halal section. Muslims are the largest religion in China and most of them live in the North of China. So we wandered along and came to the beefy-bits section: The size of the ox heart is astounding - and those feet were pretty big. While we were there, an African guy arrived ready to buy cow feet in large quantities! This is the halal lamb stall: Everyone working there was Muslim - from the Hui minority (who are not as turkic-looking generally as the Uyghurs are...but they still don't look Han Chinese!). Finally we stopped by the snack stall with the ubiquitous tea eggs and stopped to order a jianbing. This is a true beijing breakfast (which supposed originated in Shandong!) of a crepe with an egg broken on it with corriander/cilantro and green onion sprinkled on. It is then flipped over and hot sauce and Tianmianjiang (sweet sauce) spread on it. A piece of thin fried dough is placed in the middle and the whole thing is folded up and ready to munch. Breakfast of Champions! Cost: 3RMB, Stomach-filling properties: Priceless. Here it is being eaten on the way home in the taxi: After a morning's shopping followed by Chinese tutoring, I made some pasta vongole for all of us and our Chinese teacher: Forgive the fusilli - I just discovered that I hadn't got any spaghetti in the cupboard!! I think our Chinese teacher enjoyed the dish quite a bit. We discussed the similarities between the Chinese and Italian way of life...there were almost too many to mention!!! Also at the market, we had bought basil - all the amount below for only 12RMB - which I think is amazing for something so rare here in Beijing (it's hard to find, although it is grown locally for the restaurant trade!) after lunch we made pesto with it and the Parmagiano and pine nuts that we also picked up at the market. For dinner, we went to the famous Ding Tai Feng - which is very down-home in Taipei apparently and very up-scale in Beijing.....

By dinner-time, I was knackered so I couldn't face either cooking or going out. Fortunately, on my way home there is a supermarket (upmarket and expensive but convenient). So I hit the jiaozi (dumpling) freezer: There are SO many fillings to chose from! It was quite tiring just to consider them. But in the end, we managed to agree on two: a corn, vegetable and pork filling made by one of the two 'Jiaozi multimillionaires' and a youmaicai 油麦菜and pork one. Youmaicai is a type of green veg which looks like a Romaine but without the white parts. It's very good raw with sesame sauce! We also found my favourite pidan (preserved eggs) which are made from Quail's eggs. Much more delicate and tasty! At home, we had some pidan and pickles with the jiaozi: The reddish ones are first type, the second are greener. Again, these are very typical of what Beijinger eat. It's like the "meat and two veg" of the region. Also, on the way home, in our mall I came across the newly opened Bread Papa Cream Puffs store. There was an excited lineup for it! So, of course, I had to join in the line (my Chinese side comes through at times!) and get some for dessert! and I got one normal and one chocolate covered... They are really very good - and it's going to be REALLY tough living with that store just 10 floors below our apartment I better exercise more!!!!!

Thanks for all the words about the photos - it's a bit challenging to post them here - particularly as my internet service is a bit hit and miss (I've heard it's because lately they're running more checks on the internet servers within China because of T****t- please don't post the full word!) dockhl - I'm so sorry but I didn't buy them! My husband gets ratty at the amount of Pretz that I can capable of buying!!! Kent - the organic shop was not strictly organic - but did have some organically produced veg and things. The Chinese for organic is youji 有机 but there is another term 'lvse' 绿色 which means 'Green Foods' which indicates that the foodstuff has been produced under clean and environmentally friendly conditions. These labels are supposedly controlled by the government, but WHO knows?!?!?! Yesterday, I mainly ate Beijinger food.... I was lucky on my trip to the office, not only was it quite quiet, but I also managed to catch one of the new subway trains. They are very swish - with TVs on the side walls. Currently they are showing short clips explaining Olympic sports. I watched Horse Riding and Mountain biking! I was at the office for lunch and we had to buy some lightbulbs - so we went across to Walmart and got lunch in the form of baozi. Normally I avoid Walmart like the plague, but the baozi are really not bad: As you can see - for 3.60RMB (so fifty USD cents), I got three baozi with cabbage and pork filling: A very typical simple Beijing lunch. It's what millions across the city eat everyday. It's like the M&S sandwich in the UK