I think of myself as an adventurous eater. I’ve had kangaroo in Australia, crocodile in Cambodia, deep-fried Mars bar in Scotland… but not much could have prepared me for my trip to China.
In the narrow, brightly lit streets of Beijing, street vendors start early, preparing the day’s delights: steamed buns filled with pork, prawns or vegetables (known as baozi); spicy lamb kebabs (chuan’r) cooked on roadside barbecues; and tanghulu, ‘fresh’ fruit on bamboo skewers covered in sugary syrup. The tanghulu sellers cycle their wares around the city, the fruit becoming steadily less fresh in the heavily polluted air, until by nightfall it’s best not to look too closely.
Wangfujing and Donghuamen night market is where you will find the more exotic menus. There’s shark fin, birds’ nest soup (made from the saliva of cave swifts), all manner of deep fried insects, donkey and dog meat.
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