So I Ate in China

Maranda was a vegetarian and had been having a lot of difficulty eating in Korea. I’m sure eating as a vegetarian in China is just as limited as eating as a vegetarian in Korea, but the options are totally different and therefore she fell in love with the culinary world of China which was great for Michele and I- as ravenous carnivores we really wanted to eat Peking Duck when actually in Peking (or what used to be called Peking.)- and we could all go to restaurants and all order great food off the menu. The very first restaurant we entered in Beijin was a vegetarian restaurant...that served duck. Or soy duck. But it looked like a duck, tasted like duck, and you know what they say about that...It was actually a very memorable meal due to a tricky noodle soup that consisted of one very long, thick, and slippery noodle that the very rounded Chinese chopsticks could not get a good grasp on. It ended up on the table...in my lap...nearly everyplace but my mouth. This restaurant is also notable because Maranda and I both ordered Cream and Mushroom Soup. Stupidly, we thought it would be cream of mushroom. We didn't realize the importance the "and" would play. Because this soup was literally cream. And mushroom. Very, very weird. The rest of the meal is a blur of squeals and giggles as none of us could really get past the soup that consisted of a single noodle and a soup with actual cream. We also got the opportunity to get a closer look at Chinese currency (called both the Yuan and the RMB) and every single unit has the same picture of Chairman Mao.

Our favorite places ended up being random holes in the walls we happened upon. Michele decided we should walk a different way back from Starbucks (…yes…we got coffee at Starbucks, but in our defense it was the only coffee/tea place opened on the holiday) and we found this fantastic tea house where we spent a good hour drinking tea (after coffee... which made me have to literally run home to pee because I was tired of using the public bathrooms that are located every 30 meters in China. Oh, I could write an entire blog on the bathrooms of China…) Later that day I begged the other two to forgo the bus and to walk to the park we were heading to. We came across this steamed dumpling shop where we ordered 3RMB (about 50 US cents) platters of dumplings. They were filled with scallions, pork, carrots, beef, mushrooms, eggs. They were fantastic. Later in our walk we found eggs on a stick, but the fascinating thing about them was that they were tiny little bird eggs, about a quarter of the size of a chicken egg. We couldn’t resist and had to try one. Who knows what little winged creature we ate… Later that same day, (I know!) we each ordered a pastry from another roadside stand and she was so thrilled at our presence (3 young white girls attracts a lot of stares and squeals and pointing in Asia) that she gave us a half a dozen extra and a cup of ginger tea at no extra cost.
And these pastries were good. Think of drinking a great latte, turn it into cream, and then transport that into a small little pastry puff. Mmmm.

We did go to a duck restaurant and had some great duck (it just melts in your mouth, mmmm) but the restaurant itself was kind of odd. Firstly, half the items on the menu (including water) were not available. The food was good, but because we didn’t want to order a whole duck we had to order a la carte and therefore got a 10% service charged added on. After we left, we went to the bathroom just outside of the restaurant and spent five minutes inside, tops. As soon as we exited and set out to leave the building we saw that the restaurant was black. Dead. Not a single person was inside of it. The doors were locked and the lights were off. We couldn’t help but wonder if we had imagined the entire experience. Was it an allusion? Had we really just eaten a meal there? Who knows, but it was really weird.

We seemed to eat at one restaurant a day and spent the rest of the day filling up on street food and snacks. Some of the street food we loved were corn on a cob, giant sweet potatoes, and sticks of candied fruit. The candied fruit vendor at one place took his art very seriously and literally screamed at us for taking his picture. We figured he overcharged us so it’s a wash.