Out and about – Beijing

Peking ducks!

The China and Korea portion of my trip were part of a Field Seminar through school. It was 13 strangers (aka students), one professor, and one school representative…kind of sounds like a commercial for a season of the Real World! Hmmm, is that show still on or am I totally aging myself here?

Street meat

In China, the food is categorized by region, unlike the generic catch-all of “Chinese food” that we use in the U.S. It makes sense, China is a BIG country! The other thing that took a little getting used to is the shared food culture – the dishes are served family-style and everyone just dives in with their chopsticks. It is definitely not a place for germophobes!

Plate spinning acrobatics

One of the highlights of Beijing eating was the Peking duck, at the original Peking duck restaurant. I ate a lot of duck that night….I think they ordered five ducks for the group. And that was in addition to several other cold and hot dishes and a birthday cake for Sneha. I am glad that I stuffed myself with duck, because after that meal we walked through an outdoor food market where people were selling scorpion, goat balls, pigeon, and all sorts of creatures on sticks. I did not try anything, but I do think I would have been tempted if I was the least bit hungry. I managed to control myself around street food until later in the trip.

One evening we went to the Laoshe Teahouse for a performance of Peking opera, which included performances of comedy, oral mimicry, pot juggling, spinning plates, and Sichuan opera. We had a Bento box dinner and delicious tea.

Lenovo lunchbox

I also really enjoyed dining in the cafeterias of the companies we were visiting. I always like to see how the locals eat, so it was nice to experience that as well. My favorite “company lunch” was actually at a Korean restaurant, Bibigo, which is owned by the CJ Group. We had bulgogi (Korean barbecue beef). This made us all very excited about the food we would get to eat in Korea.

Dumplings!

The day we were in Tianjin we had the opportunity to go to lunch with Mr. Park of LG, to Gou Bu Li, one of the best restaurants in Tianjin. This was another multi-course meal with several cold and hot dishes and pork dumplings that were prepared tableside (I think that was more for show, but I dug it). I really liked the chicken with walnuts, the pork with egg and mushroom, and the whole fish. We were told that it is a tradition to end a meal with fish. We were also told that it’s bad luck to turn the fish over yourself, but then the server said it was ok. I’m pretty sure we dared someone at my table to eat the eyeball. We also had some yummy watermelon juice (and beer, of course).

A lot of our meals started with these strange and colorful gelatin cubes. I tried a few of them and just couldn’t get past the texture. Not my favorite.

I am told that Beijing food tends to be heavier and spicier than other regions…and I would agree, I felt a little heavier and spicier after spending a few days there.