Dinner at Wangfujing 王府井

Barbequed Lamb at Donghuamen Night Market

After visiting the food streets, I couldn’t possible leave without eating there. After all, this is part of the Beijing experience. I was trying to dig up the courage to try one of the more exotic ones. The scorpion was a nice challenge but I wussed out and didn’t try it. The first one I tried at Donghuamen Night market was three sticks of barbequed lamb meat. The portions were quite generous and so was the spice but somehow I would prefer the one I had near the hostel.

Don't Bother with the Baodu 爆肚

I kept running into these so-called Old Beijing 老北京 snacks and I was really curious about them. One which aroused my curiousity was something called Baodu, literally exploded stomach or 爆肚. It is made up of lamb innards, typically stomach. The slivers of stomach were boiled in this unappetizing broth from which it is scooped up for you. I was expecting the stomach to be quite chewy, but it seemed like it was too tough for me. The taste wasn’t that agreeable either as it was a bit bitter. Now I’m starting to wonder why it was called that name. I might not like the answer I get.

Fried Snake at Donghuameng Night Market

I finally got the nerve to try something different. Although I wasn’t quite up to it for bugs, I managed to get some nerve to try some snake. I managed to haggle the price down a little just to make me feel better about eating it. I wasn’t sure what part of the snake they were giving me, nor did I want to know. The snake was on a stick but it needed to be fried some sauce was added on it probably to mask some unpleasant taste. The snake was a bit chewy and a little gooey. The texture reminded me of eating sea cucumber which is quite common in Cantonese restaurants. I probably won’t try it again though.

Candied Hawthorne 糖葫芦

Finally, dessert was something a little less adventurous. One of the more famous Beijing snacks is candied hawthorne or 糖葫芦. The hawthorne fruit is a sourish berry like fruit which is put on a stick. The entire stick is then dunked in sweet syrup which crystalizes effectively turning it into candy. I was used to eating the processed version of the fruit which is called Haw Flakes, so this would be the first time I would eat the actual fruit. Unfortunately, the fruit itself contains a lot of seeds so I spent a lot of time beside a rubbish bin spitting out the seeds. Other than that the meat itself was the sourish sweet that I have come to know and love. If you want to try this, you need to look for hawthorne on a stick which is sliced horizontally, this would indicate that the seeds have already been removed.

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