We were all up pretty early, so we ventured out right away. Ben and I were excited to find Bread Talk, so we looked it up and started walking. It turned out to be a nice 2-3 mile walk in the brisk Beijing air to start our first day. When finally we reached out destination, it was closed, so we waited at McDonalds for Bread Talk to open. Joyfully, we chowed down on some long-lost favorites from our last stint in China.
Bread Talk, one of our favorite Chinese chains (it's actually Singaporean)
After leaving, we decided to head for the Silk Market (by subway this time), which is famous as one of the largest markets in China. Unfortunately, due to the Chinese New Year, the Silk Market was closed! Nearby, outside the subway station, there was a Starbucks. Inside we found the first westerners that we’d seen all day…in fact, it was almost filled with westerners. A tall Americano here actually costs about 50 cents more than in the US. Interestingly, instead of using xing ba ke Chinese naming for Starbucks, they have rebranded since the last time I was here and it just says “Starbucks” with the new logo.
From Starbucks we headed to Tian’an Men Square area to see the Forbidden City and Square. This is where all of the Chinese people who had seemingly cleared out had headed. Apparently it’s the place to be for the New Year. Interestingly, while we were there, we ran into one of the flight attendants from our flight over. What are the chances that in a city of 20 million we see him there.
The flight attendant gave us a recommendation for the local food stalls nearby, so we walked over and had an early dinner/late lunch. Ben and I had visited here on our last trip, but it seemed much more expansive this time (perhaps because we’d previously visited in the dark). There were all kinds of exotic foods…these are the kinds of food that people ask about when you say that you’ve been to China: “Oh, did you eat snake…did you eat __?” Here you can eat it all. We didn’t eat anything too exotic, but I had some excellent dumplings, chicken, fried bananas, noodles, and mango potato fries. For more than a block, all you can see are these food stalls, cooking up all kinds of exotic things, so the options are endless!
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- Smiling mango potato
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- …and MORE dumplings.
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- More dumplings
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- Baozi – delicious steamed dumplings with pork and cabbage inside
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- Tasty noodles!
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- Bread Talk, one of our favorite Chinese chains (it’s actually Singaporean)
We headed back via Subway and had planned on going back out for dinner, but we were all exhausted and retreated to the hotel restaurant. Most American food in China isn’t that great, and this was no exception…my club sandwich was sub-par and overpriced, but Ben and I split a bottle of Great Wall wine, which is apparently made of Chinese grapes. It was a decent wine (which was also grossly overpaid for at about $18/bottle — not bad for a restaurant-grade wine, but still expensive for China). The Dragon Seal wine didn’t have much body and the tannins were prevalent. After that, I was out…time for bed. Fireworks continued late into the night!