China, Day 11.2 - Wangfujing Snack Street

Saturday, October 30, 2010

A fellow blogger and friend mentioned that a place we couldn't miss was Wangfujing Snack Street. And she was right. I haven't seen anything like it ever in my life. Virtually anything you wouldn't believe they'd serve as food, they do.





One of my fellow companions, PP, was determined to try scorpion. And he did. And then our other adventurous eater, KS, also tried one. Both tried further amazing items that the rest of us (AB and I) wouldn't touch. If I don't know what it is, I won't touch it and 95% of what I could identify, I didn't really want to get anywhere near.



I was, however, content to watch and take pictures. I don't recommend looking at these pictures while eating and/or if you have a weak stomach. What I didn't include is the video of the scorpions alive, wiggling on their sticks - pre-cooking.

For your viewing pleasure:

Scorpions (you can't see them waving here):



Bugs of unknown nature:



Seahorses:



Candied apples (relatively safe):



Unknown seafood creatures:

Yes, those are centipedes or millipedes:



LRK, don't look here - ewwww spiders? Really?



OMG, no:









This looks safe, but probably isn't:



We also visited a nearby silk mall…





and a tea shop (no pictures), and grabbed some green tea ice cream. And tried to hail a cab which was nearly impossible, even using their secret weapon (me, the token Asian). We encountered a Beijing mental health hospital, innumerable bikes and a Chinese Fire station.









And we capped off our final meal at a place with little English on the menu and near to the hotel. We again had our secret weapon, LKL, who helped us pick just the right dishes. Including an amazing tofu one that was like soft tofu (but consistency of polenta) in what seemed to be a sweet and sour sauce.



Then it was one last meet-up for a drink and off to bed for me. I had the oh-dark-thirty flight which I complained about at the time, but in retrospect was the lucky one. Three of my companions who also left on Halloween got stuck with travel delays for about a half day or so... I was home in St Louis before they were taking off from Beijing.

I have a handful of photos from the airport and a summary post to follow and I'll finally be caught up... almost a month later.