I’ve said a bit in various places about the food on our trip to Beijing. Short version: It was great. The best Chinese food I’ve ever had. (Not a surprise, right?) And I managed to feed myself with chopsticks, most of the time.
We ate at a Muslim restaurant, a Schezuan restaurant, had Peking duck and hot pot, went to a congee diner, two noodle shops, and a mall food court where I watched a guy making noodles from scratch, and got some fruit at the supermarket. At most places we had so many different dishes that I only tried a few bites of everything except the non-fish seafood.
 Notable items:
- Tofu skin. (Skin like on pudding, not skin like they skin it after they kill it.) Not bad, kind of like noodles.
- Really good tofu in general. Mine always ends up mushy even when I drain it well.
- Chrysanthemum greens, which were a bit peppery. I want to see if I can find them here.
- Taro-battered pork ribs from the Schezuan place. Mmm.
- Pork belly. Yummy, but wouldn’t want to eat it too often.
- Sea cucumber. Like eating a fishy soft mushroom-textured thing that disguises itself to unwary tourists as a spiky eggplant. Side note – the Wikipedia article links to a book of 1,000 translated Japanese haiku titled Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! Here is my contribution to this body of literature:
O sea cucumber,
I wish you were an eggplant.
It would taste better. - Durian. It was neither as horrid-smelling nor as wonderful-tasting as I’d heard. Got it at a dessert spot in a mall; it came with vanilla cream and green tea ice cream. Eating plain durian while breathing tasted like onions and garlic, while not breathing tasted like guacamole, and with the vanilla sauce just tasted sweet.
- Snakeskin fruit. Outside it looks like a pangolin. Inside it looks like and has the texture of garlic cloves (with big brown seeds in them). It tasted like slightly acidic fruit candy.
One more haiku:
Poor fishy sea slug.
Even chrysanthemum greens
won’t make you taste good.