KennethT

Ha!!!! So, out of curiosity, how should that dish be properly translated?

After lunch, we were walking through some hutongs to get to the next destination when we stopped here: Fongyee said that this place was a staple in Beijing, as it had been around forever... we got Some kind of milk custard - it came in various flavors, but we got the plain one just to see what the base tasted like. This is a very refreshing drink on a hot day - a sweet and sour plum drink... it was so good, my wife and I would seek it out on the days following too. Our next stop was here: This is the Confucius Temple - not a religious temple, but a place where students go where students can "pray to Confucius" so they can do well on their exams! As both Fongyee and my wife have taken lots of exams recently, they can both relate to this place. This is a great temple - it's very serene inside, and not crowded, and there is plenty of shade... a good place to relax and organize one's thoughts. There is also a great old Cypress tree that's over 700 years old After our temple visit, we wandered through some more hutong looking for this tea house: This is a great little place amidst the maze of hutongs. It's very peaceful, and they have an amazing set of teas.... We got an aged white tea: And a pu'erh that had been in an orage (maybe tangerine) peel... The owner of the tea place also provided us with a bunch of snacks (after that lunch and the custard, there was no room! my wife and I felt bad that we barely touched the snacks) Thank you @Fengyi for your immense hospitality and generosity, and for taking so much time from your very busy schedule to hang out with us. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip!

Immediately after breakfast the next morning, we made the decision to head out to the Lama Temple (or YongHeGong) which is the largest Tibetan buddhist temple outside of Tibet. We decided to go there that morning because we didn't have that much time before we were meeting another of my wife's friends for lunch, who was meeting us at our hotel. Since YongHeGong wasn't that far from a subway station on the same line as our hotel (also not far from the station) and we didn't have to change lines, we knew we could get there and back and have enough time to see it without being rushed. I always like seeing Buddhist temples - they're very different from seeing western religious sites. In the west, you can see a church or cathedral, but the buddhist temples are a whole complex - courtyards, various buildings, etc. So we get to the exit of the YongHeGong station, and of course, don't know which way to walk - but this time, it was a bit easier... just a couple of sniffs and we knew... it was the scent of incense. Here's the gate at the entrance - very ornate as usual: Once inside the temple, we knew right away why we could smell it from several blocks away - this temple (unlike others we've seen in other countries) provides a free bundle of incense sticks with the admission price - and people had no problems seemingly lighting them all at once! Once we got inside, it looked like a scene from a forest fire! This photo doesn't really even do it justice.. the whole courtyard was smoky! There are several buildings with their own buddha statues, but by far the most impressive was the last one, with this HUGE statue 3 stories tall! So, here's a funny story regarding my wife's friend. A few months ago, I was doing my research for the trip, and of course, the first place I look are any Beijing specific threads on eGullet. Unforunately, there hadn't been any active posts in quite a few years (the Beijing Dining thread was started in 2003), but the last active poster was in 2009-2010... This post: and those around it were a great starting point to my research... one thing that stuck with me was the description of Quanjude peking duck, and how the only one worth going to now was in Science Park... Anyway, we meet my wife's friend, and pretty soon I start getting the feeling that there's something familiar... She has such a great enthusiasm, and just the speech pattern alone get me thinking, and then, she mentioned something about the duck place in Science Park! Immediately, I think "holy crap - what a coincidence!!!" What are the odds that my wife would become friends with a woman from Beijing while in Verona, Italy, and that was the same person whose posts I had been reading on eGullet a few months later! This was the start of a great day, and one of the highlights of the trip, for me. We wound up spending the majority of the afternoon with her - she was so incredibly generous with her time, energy and boundless enthusiasm! Here's the first place we went: They had a lot of Beijing specialties here... but this is my favorite - even though we didn't order it: Then again, maybe we did order the Fried Enema - as we got this plate of fried starch with dipping sauce: This was lovingly referred to as "Beijing spaghetti" - hand pulled noodles with I think a bean paste sauce... Mixed all together, it was awesome... This was my wife's favorite: This is pieces of pancake that have been sliced and stir fried. Absolutely delicious.. Stir fried dough nuggets Knife-peeled noodles in soup Cucumber salad

We didn't get to do much sightseeing after lunch, as we had plans to meet my wife's friend and her husband for dinner in a residential area pretty far away from the center of the city in the early evening. We tried to see BeiHai Park quickly, but we underestimated how long it would take to get there, how big it was and how much there was to see once we got there! I think the Beijing subway system is great... and I love how they x-ray your bags at every entrance, but if I had one gripe, it would be the lack of signs in English... I take that back - not a lack of signs, but a discontinuity... The trains themselves have all the stations labeled in Chinese and English transliteration, and the computerized voice does Mandarin and English at each station... and just like in many countries we've seen (but not in NYC ) each exit is labeled A, B, C, etc. and there is a map showing the location of each exit.. There is also a sign with a list of streets or sights found at each exit.... but once you go through the gates and get to where the exit meets the street, all the signs in English disappear! Even the map is only in Chinese at that point... so when you get to the exit, you don't know whether to walk left or right - so it takes a bit of trial and error (and some extra time). I will also take this time to complain a bit about T-Mobile... ..... They're the cell phone carrier we use in NY, and they have it set up that you get free data in 120 countries around the world - so you don't need to get a local SIM card when traveling... very convenient.. but they don't tell you how fast that data is! In China, we were only getting 2G! This makes most internet access all but impossible when out and about. Like many people have said, you can't really access Google services with any reliability in China - but we got a VPN before we left, so it wasn't an issue - but the VPN slows you down a bit, so when on 2G, Google maps becomes basically useless... unlike the convenience we experienced in Saigon in December (even though I had to get a SIM card because Vietnam is not 1 out of 120). Anyway..... end of rant... My wife met a bunch of people relatively recently at a wine seminar, quite a few of whom were from China, and a few of them lived in Beijing... so it was really great to meet up with them while we were there - I had heard so much about each of them after the seminar, so I really enjoyed meeting them myself. Plus, it was really cool to be taken around to sample some traditional Beijing dishes with some locals! So this night, we had a food crawl of local places... baozi (steamed yeasted dumplings), chuan'r (grilled skewers), hand pulled noodles... awesome! Baozi on the left - a couple different kinds... on the right, sauteed pig's liver in some kind of thick sauce with tons of garlic. In the beginning, our friends were hesitant to tell us what was in the murky brown bowl of "stuff" - but after convincing them that we wouldn't run screaming, they finally told us. It was really tasty. Then we went across the street to this place: It's a Xinjiang place - so they are Muslim, which is why you see the noodle puller with the hat... They specialize in chuan'r (grilled skewers of various kinds) and hand pulled noodles. This place makes many different shapes of hand pulled noodles, from round (in different thicknesses) to flat (in various widths) and also a shape that was loosely translated as "rhombus".... For each separate order, the puller has to prep the dough into the base shape: And then pulls: Here are 3 finished noodle soups (with 3 different shapes of noodles): One thing I saw here that I hadn't noticed before (but was probably there) - they dispense the plastic chopsticks from a machine about the size of a toaster oven that automatically sterilizes them! Once I knew what to look for, I saw this machine all over the place... Various skewers... we got basically a few of everything... there was lamb, mutton, chicken, tripe, some kind of dough, kidney, and more I don't remember.. very tasty! Cucumber salad, pickled cabbage, wood ear fungus Xinjiang nan... And, just in case that wasn't enough food, our friend ran out to a different restaurant on the same block and brought in these: She said the name of these translated to "doorknob" - and they were basically a fried pork soup dumpling. Awesome - but they were incredibly hot when they arrived, and I was so excited, I nearly scalded my mouth as some of the soup squirted out when I bit into it! It was fantastic. Here's a shot of the grilling guy outside: All in all, a great night... the food and company!

Don't get me wrong - I'm not faulting the service at all... I thought it was sweet that she was fussing over us so much - and I know that the only reason for it was that she wanted us to have the best experience possible... she succeeded!

@Fengyi This post is for you!!! The next day, we woke up, had a fast breakfast, packed and got ready to return to Beijing... We got back to the hotel and were treated to a room upgrade! After checking in and dropping off the bags, we went around the corner to, you guessed it, a different mall, for another hotpot, this time at this place: HaiDiLao is an incredibly popular chain of hotpot restaurants - they are open 24 hours!!! In fact, the staff at our hotel were very excited when we told them we were going there for lunch, as they like to go there late at night after their shift ends. One of the staff even had a friend who was a waitress there, he tried to call her to tell her we were coming, but she wasn't working that day.... In any event, this place is known for their long waits during popular hours, and for great service. The waits can be so long that they provide free snacks and drinks, shoulder massages, games and even free manicures! Here's the waiting area (now empty, since it was around 2:30 in the afternoon - not a very popular time, but they were still pretty full) I didn't get a shot of the manicure station... Where DongLaiShun is a very oldschool Mongolian hotpot restaurant, HaiDiLao is the Sichuan style, which means they have the spicy broth - but my wife is not such a fan of spicy food, so we got the half and half - half pork broth, half spicy pork broth: And look at this cutie... I mean the apron! haha... Yes, HaiDiLao provides aprons for you to wear so you don't slop up your clothes while gorging yourself on hotpot... Here's a shot of the sauce bar - sorry the doofus got in the way.... They have a large area where they have sesame sauce, as well as tons of mix-ins - from green onion, to thai chili, to various dried spices, garlic.... etc etc... it was as large as a western "all you could eat salad bar" in the US but just had sauces, mix-ins, and pieces of cut fruit. I think our waitress was a little nervous for us as she kept a very close eye on us and kept trying to cook our food for us. I don't know if that's standard practice or not, but by this time, we are old hands at hotpot - this being our third time... (for those keeping score, one of those times was years ago in Singapore - our first hotpot experience, and the waitress took a lot of time at that place to show us what to do). Thinly sliced lamb. Unlike the thinly sliced mutton at DongLaiShun, the lamb tended to fall apart a bit when being swished with chopsticks, so the better technique was to put a slice or 3 into the slotted spoon and then swish... still fun, but no losses to the bottom of the abyss. Thickly sliced mutton - very tender... Shrimp. I grabbed the first one before the waitress anticipated and started swishing, shell completely intact, and then proceeded to deshell while practically burning my fingers off. I also managed to suck the head, which was awesome.... but anyway, upon witnessing me singeing my fingers, the waitress rushed over, put on plastic gloves and proceeded to quickly shell the raw shrimp for us, leaving the head on... whoops - I didn't realize how much of a full service place this was! Sometime around this point, the waitress also realized that we only had one dish of sauce for each of us, and she proceeded to go to the sauce bar and make us a few of her favorite recipes... I'm not exactly sure what she put in one of them, but it was so much better than the one I made!!! Veggie selection... we also got some oyster mushrooms, but I can't find the photo of them... oh well... I also got some of this flower tea: Of course, no hot pot is complete without the noodles at the end. Here, HaiDiLao really struts their stuff as they have a dedicated "noodle dancer". This guy comes up to your table (looking all hip-hop!) with a tray of raw dough, and then proceeds to dance around pulling the dough into noodles for you... so freakin' cool.... Not only fun, but delicious... great texture.

@Anna NDid the instructions say how large each serving was!?! It would be quite a healthy serving for a mouse!

By the time we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted.... we had probably climbed hundreds of stairs and walked several miles, all in full sun and hot hot hot. We were in no mood to wander around the village to find that local restaurant that may or may not be open. So, back to the hotel restaurant it was... We got the jiaozi again, and my wife, when tired, is saved by fried food.... so: Fish and Chips. This was mine... braised pork belly with chestnuts. Very tasty - I don't think I've ever had anything exactly like it. Yu choi in the background (the same as the night before).

So, the next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel as it was included in our rate. Again, mostly western options, but I was happy to see that some of those options were made in-house... also, this hotel prides itself on using locally grown produce, and grow some herbs and veggies onsite. The tomatoes in the above post were bursting with flavor - I haven't had a tomato that flavorful since I grew them myself in my apartment a few years ago. House smoked sausage and bacon... the bacon was very lean, and super smoky. Roasted potatoes. Bread and pastry basket with butter, house made apricot puree (not sweet enough to be a jam - plus it was refrigerated), and I believe some kind of chestnut spread... Smoked trout (served cold). Very smoky, but the trout was very dry. But who cares about breakfast when we're about to go here!!! There are a couple ways you can get up there from the parking lot... they have a cable car that goes up and down, a ski lift that goes up and then you take a toboggan down, and there is also a few hiking paths that you can take, which actually get you past the area where you have to buy an entrance ticket. By my math though, I'd much rather pay 45 Yuan (about 7 dollars) per person for a ticket (plus about 80 Yuan for the cable car), than hike 2 hours up steep and rugged terrain, only to have to climb over the wall to get onto it!!! We later realized this was a much better decision than we had even originally thought, seeing how hot, sweaty, dehydrated and exhausted we were by the end. You have to purchase the entrance tickets at the visitor's center about a mile away from the parking area. Our hotel provided a free shuttle to take us from the hotel to the center, and then up to the parking area. Then, when we were finished, we could call them and they would send it back to pick us up. Our driver gave some good advice - pick up some water at the visitor's center before going up to the wall... What is 10 Yuan for 2 bottles of water at the center becomes a lot more up top!!! So without further ado, I give you: Who's that hot and sweaty person gripping the wall on the incredibly steep stairs for dear life? Does he realize that he is mildly afraid of heights? Yes... yes he does. This is why it is not that practical to bring TONS of water with you - all it does is weigh you down and make you off balance, which can be tough when some of the areas are hard enough with just a small bag and camera! It was also about 100degF that day with not a cloud in the sky (but it was slightly hazy). So in areas when we didn't have to hold on to something for balance, we used our sun umbrellas which were lifesavers.

@DerynI completely understand, and am the same way... if by myself, I tend to eat much too quickly, rush through things and not enjoy them properly. The nice thing about street food in Asia is that it is really cheap, so it's no big deal to order something and only eat a small bit of it, and move on to try the next thing - you still get to try everything, but don't have to gorge yourself to do it... and it's cheap enough so that even though you're wasting a lot of food, your pocketbook won't really notice. Also, in the duck restaurants, you could order a half duck too, so it's always an option.

So, we finally made it up to Bei Gou village, near Mutianyu, and checked into our hotel around 3PM. We walked around the village, and took a short hike up to a small pagoda on the top of a hill. There are very few dining options in the village - the hotel told us of a small restaurant, but they close somewhere around 5-6PM, so we missed going there the first night as we got back from our hike a little too late... So we had dinner in the hotel that night. During the week, the hotel is not very busy, but I hear that it is very busy on the weekends, when many people who live in Beijing come to relax there. The restaurant's menu was a strange mix of things - from western dishes, to some Indian dishes (some of the employees are from India), and some regional ones. The area around Mutianyu is known for a few things - they have orchards for chestnut, walnut and apricots - and there are some distilleries for the chestnut liquor. We couldn't visit the distilleries, but I was able to get some shots of the orchards... Chestnut Walnut Apricot Also growing in small plots all over the place were corn: I gather Bei Gou village is also a trout fishing village; I wasn't able to get any shots of it, but I did see an area that was penned off in a river. Dinner that night was composed of: Jiaozi, served with soy sauce and chili oil Spiced chicken thigh Grilled trout Sauteed yu choi - this was very similar (if not exactly the same) as what I've been growing in my apartment!

@huirayYou are completely right... although many of the restaurants in NYC's chinatown call the dish "Peking Duck", they are really Cantonese roast ducks (similar to what I had in Hong Kong), served with pancakes. I don't know if any true Beijing style Peking Duck is served in NY at all... although I just read that a branch of Da Dong will be opening soon! Interestingly, a friend of ours who lives in Beijing (actually eGullet member Fengyi - but that's a story for a little later) said that the hoisin served at 1949 is not the true Beijing hoisin, as it is sweet, like a Cantonese hoisin... Beijing hoisin should not be sweet at all - we had a peking duck at another place on our last night which used the traditional hoisin and I was surprised by how different it was... it was herbal to the point it made me think of Chinese medicine herbs! Very interesting indeed.... @DerynI know how you feel - and I'm happy to help your urge to travel to Asia/SE Asia... I know a lot of people who are active on the Asia Fodors message boards who travel there alone all the time - it's a great place to do that since it is very safe, and there are so many food options where it is not awkward to eat alone (as in a nice restaurant, which could be awkward for some).

The next day, we were headed up to a small village near the Mutianyu location of the Great Wall for a couple of days. Our car was picking us up at 1:00, so we had to pack up and check out, and have lunch before since the ride is about 1.5 hours. Since we were short on time, and didn't want to go to far to risk getting really sweaty before our journey, we went, wait for it.... back to the mall! And to our old favorite since a trip to Hong Kong, Din Tai Fung. DTF is a large Taiwanese chain of dim sum restaurants. The only issue is that while the quality is good overall, some locations are much better than others. We went to 2 different ones in Hong Kong, and the Causeway Bay location was much better than the other location, and the menu was a little bit longer as well. One thing they are known for are the xielongbao - soup dumplings: These were very good, but the wrapper wasn't as thin and tender as the best ones we had from them in Hong Kong Shrimp and pork wontons in chili oil Shrimp and pork soup dumplings Water spinach, aka morning glory, sauteed with garlic Bao filled with black sesame paste... this is like a dessert item - it's my wife's favorite dessert.

Dinner that night was our first foray into Peking Duck... we were actually supposed to go to a very famous duck place the night before, Da Dong, but, we got confused about the location as (as you may have guessed by now) it's a chain, and there are 2 locations within walking distance from our hotel - our concierge made the reservation but we got confused as to which location it was for... So, that's when we went to the hotpot place instead, which was also close by. The next morning (before we went to the summer palace) we talked to the concierge who said that while Da Dong is very famous, in his estimation, nowadays is famous for being famous but isn't that great anymore.... so he recommended we go to a different place... A restaurant called 1949, Duck de Chine. This is a pretty fancy (and relatively expensive!) place - our dinner which was a whole duck, some greens (cooked in duck stock), a bottle of sparkling water and tea cost about $100 - definitely our most expensive meal in Beijing. But, the duck was amazing - and different from the Peking Duck you get in Chinatown here in NYC. First, the duck was very lean - there was no fat on it whatsoever, and the skin was perfect - I mean really perfect - tender, fatless, crisp... they give you a little dish of sugar - if you dip the corner of a piece of skin into it, arrgghhh... heaven. The guys standing around in white shirts (and a tie) are security guards. Accoutrements.... one of the things they are known for is their hoisin sauce. They present the dish of hoisin, then add a stripe of sesame sauce, and another stripe of another sauce (garlic? I'm not sure). The waiter then shakes it around to make the pretty swirl, and then adds some crushed dried garlic on top. There is also a dish of cucumber, scallion, and watermelon radish. In addition to the standard paper thin pancakes, they also put some duck in a couple of sesame buns, which was very interesting. The waiter made one pancake for each of us, and also the sesame buns, and then left the rest for us. Gailan poached in duck stock, with dried tangerine peel The carcass for nibbling... The carnage.

Breakfast the next morning, I decided to mix it up a bit: Wonton soup. This was a little different from what we get in the US - first they asked if I wanted chicken or beef broth, and the wrappers for the wontons are super thin and very delicate - much like many of the wontons I had in Hong Kong, but the filling was pork with some kind of green. I added some roasted chili and fermented black bean in chili oil. Various dim sum... the tube around 5:00 is a bamboo tube filled with glutinous rice and mushroom (and pork, of course). Closeup... After breakfast, we decided to go to the Summer Palace. As you walk around the touristy area of the center of the city, there are lots of 'travel agencies' selling private car or bus trips to the great wall, or the summer palace, forbidden city, etc.... Interestingly, the way they make their pitch (we actually saw this all over the city selling lots of different things) is that they have a speaker (or megaphone) with a usb drive plugged in and it just repeatedly gives the pitch in Mandarin and then English. But, one great thing about Beijing is their subway system, which is clean, safe, efficient and goes basically everywhere. We decided to take the subway to the Summer Palace - cost: 5 Yuan each way (that's less than a dollar!) and it took about 45 minutes to an hour to get there as it's pretty far away from the center of the city. It, like so many things in Beijing, is huge, and has tons of stairs... great when the heat index is over 100degF! There is also a lake, where you can rent a boat (either peddle or with electric motor) and cruise around for a relaxing afternoon. If you read some blogs or guidebooks, you might be tempted to believe that there is no bad Chinese food to be had in Beijing... you would be mistaken. We decided to go for lunch to a very cute and picturesque tea house in the Summer Palace compound - we had a very nice oolong tea, and the worst food possibly imaginable... except the rice it was served with, which was decent... for plain white rice. One of the dishes looked like it was supposed to be a kung pao chicken, but looked like small chunks of chicken in a gloppy sauce that looked like it came straight from a can. We also got a beef dish that came with a similarly gloppy (but different) sauce - and the beef was tough, stringy and leathery. Both dishes came with some sort of bright pink hot dog like substance... Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) neither my wife nor I took any pictures of this atrocity...

@huirayYes, I've seen it described as steamboat in Singapore - although, years ago, there was a Chinese place near our hotel that referred to it as hotpot - The Magic of Chongqing Hotpot or something like that - they said the 'magic' was in their special sauce, which tasted very similar to the ubiquitous sesame sauce at hotpot places in China.

@DerynInteresting... I've had fondue in Burgundy where it was meat (duck was popular, as well as pork and beef) and the cooking liquid was oil! Very tasty! ETA: yes, you either used your chopsticks to dip, or the slotted spoon. Sometimes, the thinly sliced meats would fall apart, so the server in one place showed us how to use the slotted spoon and chopstick in conjunction with each other a proper result.

That night we went for a very traditional Mongolian hotpot - the original hotpot in Beijing. We went to Donglaishun. This is a big chain, started in 1914. And, like so many others, it was in a mall. This hotpot, unlike the sichuan style hotpot, uses a mildly flavored broth for dipping. Charcoal powered! We ordered 2 dishes of sesame sauce (this place you have to purchase the sauce separately, which is different from another hotpot place we went to later), and they provided some chopped onion and cilantro to mix into the sauce. Thinly sliced mutton Lamb meatballs - these were the best things of the night! Mushrooms Greens Noodles (to be had at the end) If you've never done it before, hot pot meals are a lot of fun. You dip your stuff into the boiling broth, hold it as long as you like, then take it out and dunk in the thick sesame sauce. The flavors are addictive!!!! The only problem is when it is 85degF outside... even in the airconditioned mall, we were getting pretty sweaty by the end!

Sorry for the gap in posting... jet lag got the best of me last night and I couldn't really think straight, no less type! So, the next day, we visited Tien'anman Sq... It is mind boggling how big this public square is, and on a normal day, how relatively empty it feels! We also had the interesting experience of being a tourist attraction ourselves, as a couple different Chinese families (at different times) came up and wanted to get their pictures taken with us! After talking with others, we assumed that they were probably visiting from a small town somewhere and had probably never seen white people in person. One family's young daughter (maybe 8 years old?) was soooo excited to see us and have her picture taken with us, and then her parents seemed so happy when we were willing to take pictures with all of them.. I've never seen smiles so wide before! It's times like this that I wish I could have spoken with them a little bit to see what was going on in their mind... oh well... In retrospect, I also wish I could have taken a picture of them taking a picture with us! After that, we strolled around some of the hutong north of the FC.. The purpose of the stroll was to get to here: This restaurant serves food from the Xinjiang region in the North West, which is primarily Muslim, so as expected, the food uses a lot of cumin, lamb and mutton. This restaurant supposedly wins "best Xinjiang" every year or something like that - it is listed in every tourist guide book, but locals like to go there too... and we thought it was excellent. Salad, called liangcai... cucumber, onion, pepper and tomato with a refreshing dressing. Xinjiang nan.... flat bread that is pretty dense and spiced with the Xinjiang spices Rose tea Mutton skewers... tender and delicious! Mutton stew with potatoes, carrots and some sort of choi. The sauce was addictive, and great with the bread. The mutton was tender and flavorful - but not gamey.

@DerynI had read on a blog somewhere that there are 8-10 branches of the donkey restaurant in just Beijing. I didn't realize it was a national chain, but it wouldn't surprise me. I understand your feeling about the flights. Our first trip to Asia (about 10 years ago) was on Singapore Airlines on a direct flight from NY to Singapore. The flight and service were fantastic (although discontinued, but supposedly resuming in 2018), but I noticed on the seat back map that we were flying over some areas that I'd rather not fly over (although it was hard to tell exactly where we were on the map at that time). The return trip went the other way and flew over the great circle route over the Pacific. Since that flight, all the other flights from NY-Asia have been great circle flying over Canada, Alaska, Russia, etc. That being said, when SA resumes their NY-Sing. direct flights, I would certainly consider it if I were going anywhere in the area (Sing, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.).

@Thanks for the CrepesWe were surprised as well... we had heard that donkey meat was popular, so we wanted to try it, but weren't really expecting to like it very much... but in fact, it was really good. The meat was lean and tender, and not gamey at all... if you hadn't told me it was donkey, I may have thought it was a lean cut of beef. I was actually hoping for it to be a bit gamey-er so I'd know I was eating donkey... and that bread was so good you could have basically put anything on it and it would have been tasty.

As is typical, we start getting really tired pretty early on the first day (especially with all the walking we did!) so we wanted to go for dinner somewhere close to our hotel. Unfortunately, there are not very many good local food options in that neighborhood, but there are quite a few malls. As I've said before, food in malls in the US should usually be avoided at all costs, but not so in Asia... there is actually some very good food to be had in malls there. In a mall a few blocks from our hotel were 2 floors of dining - tons of restaurants. Everything from Taiwanese chain Din Tai Fung (known for their soup dumplings and fried rice), to Thai food, sushi, you name it... I didn't see any western options though. We went to a local jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant - since jiaozi are a very popular Beijing thing. None of the staff spoke English, but they did have a copy of their menu translated into English, but there were no pictures. Boiled... these were pork and coriander Fried: I thought I had ordered mutton and scallion, but they turned out to be mutton and carrot. Gailan (chinese broccoli) sauteed with garlic A decent oolong tea Prices here were moderately inexpensive. The boiled jiaozi were 20 Yuan and the fried ones were 35.

After breakfast, we visited the Forbidden City, which looks small on the map of Beijing... but the map of Beijing is very deceptive... Beijing is HUGE. What looks like 1 NYC block on the Beijing map is really like 10 NYC blocks. The FC is really a city - it takes hours to walk around (and you walk miles doing it) and is virtually impossible to photograph well to really get the scale of it. It is also crazy crowded with mostly Chinese tourists from all over China. We saw very few western tourists the whole time we were there. This is just the front entrance, after going through the security line: Here's a panoramic shot of a courtyard area taken after going through the first couple of gates - this is the beginning of the FC: We finished with the FC around lunch time, so we made our way here: The locals affectionately call this place Fatty Wang's... it's a small chain of donkey meat restaurants. Practically everything here is donkey meat - sandwiches, hotpot, casseroles, they have a pretty large menu - but the good thing is that the menu has some pictures. But, I am very glad I downloaded the Waygo translation app - it did a very good job translating menus and signs. It's free to translate 10 phrases per day, or you can pay like $7 to get the unlimited version. I'm glad I did because they had 2 types of sandwiches - one with donkey meat, and one with intestines which I'd prefer not to get. The meat has been seemingly braised in a liquid with star anise and other stuff (maybe 5 spice?) and was very tender and flavorful. It was not nearly as gamey as I thought it would be. It was actually really tasty - if we had it in NY, I would get it on a pretty regular basis. The bread was awesome - crispy and flaky. This was some kind of raw greens (I have no idea what they were, but it didn't seem to be lettuce that I recognized) with a very garlicky dressing with chiles and something else I couldn't describe... it was awesome.

Breakfast was included with our hotel room... usually, I'm not a fan of hotel breakfasts as they usually have a decent selection of western options, but the local options are limited... This hotel's breakfast buffet was excellent by comparison - sure, there were lots of western options, but they also had a made to order noodle soup and fried noodle/fried rice station, and a dim sum station, as well as lots of good fresh fruit. Really good fruit. These were probably the best dragon fruit (white and pink) that I've ever had, and the pineapple was sweet, juicy and very ripe - a huge difference from the pineapple we typically get at home. It reminded me of some of the fantastic pineapple I've had in Thailand and Hawaii. Fried yi fun noodles with chicken Fried rice noodles with beef Dim sum assortment (clockwise from top): some sort of pork and mushroom siu mai, baozi with pork (savory), steamed black sesame in glutinous rice, baozi with mushroom filling

And we're back!!!! So, I'm going to start over from the beginning to give a more comprehensive story and more photos! As I said before, we took Air Canada from NY's LaGuardia to Beijing, connecting in Toronto... There were pluses and minuses doing this, rather than our standard way of connecting through Taipei. The good part is that since the flight left at 11:30AM, we were able to get a good night's sleep at home before leaving - as opposed to leaving at around 1AM and sleeping (as best you can in Economy) on the plane enroute to Taipei. Also, the total flight time was about 14 hours as opposed to 20, and the layover was short (we had to walk fast to make the connection). The bad news is that since the main flight left Toronto around 3PM, there is almost no chance of getting some sleep on that flight (except for maybe a nap for a few hours just prior to landing at 4AM NY time), so by the time you land, you have been up for at least 24 hours straight - so we felt worse when we landed on this trip than we have on more recent trips connecting through Taipei. Also, the flight lands around 4:30-5PM, so you get stuck in rush hour traffic getting from the airport to the city center, so we didn't wind up checking in until around 7PM, as opposed to the other way where we'd land around noon or so... The final part of this rant is a criticism of Air Canada - well, not the airline specifically, but flying in and out of Toronto. The Air Canada check-in area that morning was a mad-house. The reason for this is that there were some storms the night before which delayed some flights - the biggest problem is that, evidently, Toronto has some kind of curfew as to how late planes can take off and land - so if your flight gets delayed enough, they wind up cancelling it completely since they aren't allowed to land in Toronto after a certain time. There were storms in the NY area around 8PM, and a few of the flights were delayed enough so that they were cancelled - so there were several plane-worths of people waiting to get on flights from the night before. We got to LaGuardia 3 hours early, and were barely able to get to the counter to check our bags in on time to make the flight. What a pita. Plus, because of scheduling issues, when we got to Toronto, our departing flight was delayed for about an hour and a half, so we landed later than expected. BTW, I gather a similar thing happened yesterday when we were coming home - we heard over the loudspeaker at Toronto that several flights were being cancelled because some minor weather delays would have put them past the curfew time.... so long story short, even though AC itself was a decent experience, I wouldn't want to risk getting stuck in Toronto because of some minor delays... OK, end of rant... now, onto the trip! Since we got in so late, it was impossible to walk around a bit to get a lay of the land around the hotel and start eating some good local food... so we opted for eating at the Chinese restaurant in our hotel. I have to say, for hotel food, it was pretty good... albeit expensive. But the restaurant was beautiful and the service was just fine - especially since we were basically the only ones in the restaurant. But we had our first language snafu when I was ordering, and asked for Gailan (or Kailan)... they had no idea what I wanted, because, as it turns out, Gailan is the Cantonese pronunciation, and the Mandarin way is Jie-lan (jee-eh lan)... in any case, it took a bit of effor but we finally got a good result. Intro snack... some kind of nuts that were soaked and sugared/oiled and a fruit leather. Crispy pigeon - very tasty - tasted like it was rubbed/marinated with 5 spice and soy. Hot stone chicken - dark meat chicken on the bone, seasoned, fried, then served in the hot stone bowl with big chunks of ginger and garlic chives. Aforementioned gailan Beautiful (if rather empty) ambiance.