After pausing briefly at the hotel, I needed lunch. I settled on De Yuan Roast Duck Restaurant, the best combo of “well regarded” and “nearby.”
I ordered a whole Peking duck. My eyes were larger than my stomach on this one. It came out in stages, first the fried skin, then the roast interior, and lastly the tastiest fatty chunks of skin and meat combined.
Add flour pancakes, plum sauce and other toppings for dressing the bird. Then, completely full long before polishing it off, they bring the
fourth course - the duck’s skeleton, complete with oodles of meats hanging from every bone.
Somehow the tiny Chinese girl nearby polished off an even larger meal all by herself!
Now, what to do for the day’s remainder? I settled on seeing the Drum Tower and the Ancient Observatory, as both are located further away from tomorrow’s sights.
Both of these choices were unsuccessful.
First it turns out there are several “Drum Towers.” The one I went to, out in the sleek modern commercial district, was actually a closed dance club.
Luckily next door to that was a genuine (if obscure) tourist site, Dongyue Temple. So inside I went. Turns out this was a still-active, highly-revered Taoist holy site, with silent worshippers in several corridors heavy with incense. For my part, I explored multiple courtyard alcoves containing these bizarre painted plaster figures. Some were of men, others of monsters, or of animal-headed humanoids, demons, all sorts of nightmarish craziness. Each alcove was a different “department” of hell, going by the descriptive placards. There were maybe 100 departments altogether, each with highly specific bureaucratic afterlife duties - underming fate, killing animals, things like that. Yikes!
Next I took the subway one stop south to the Ancient Observatory. At least this one I located correctly. Too bad it’s rooftop (its best feature) was closed, so I didn’t bother paying to enter the grounds. Would’ve liked seeing all the cool pre-telescope astronomical instruments.
Well, that didn’t take much time. Improvising, I headed a few stops west to the Wangfujing Snack Street. This is a narrow pedestrian corridor hidden within a bland boutique ritzy store area. Inside Wangfujing are dozens of tiny amazing food stands serving distinctive Beijing street food. Delicious!
First I ate the skewered scorpions. How could I refuse?! The vendor teased me and held a
living scorpion at my mouth.
They were nothing special, I’m afraid. Gimmick food. Little flavor or substance. The stinger tail still had a muscle reflex, which my lip discovered when I first bit into a thorax.
Next I had a mango drink. Somehow bars are hard to find in Beijing (though I’m writing this from a bar now).
Oh do I wish I’d been hungrier. I’d have snacked on tentacle broth, or layered cream parfaits, or unidentifiable pink skewers (it’s either squid or fruit). The kebabs of carmelized tomatoes, one of those I just chowed on back in my hotel neighborhood hours later.
Full from scorpion, I opted to walk back to Qianmen. A 6 kilometer walk, one which actually saw me prematurely wandering through Tiananmen Square. Along the way, a sexy Chinese girl tried to rope me into a common tourist scam. She’s a honeypot working for a local coffee shop. She flirted, she asked me out for coffee...I refused. Apparently it’s a scheme to charge foreigners $100 for a cup of coffee. Very common near Forbidden City.
Entry into Tiananmen was all security theater. Lucky (wisely) I had my passport on me. They inspected my travel visa and everything!
As for Tiananmen...I’ll be seeing it more fully tomorrow on the way to Forbidden City. It’s the world’s largest public square, and it is too big. Really oppressive and charmless, surrounded by communist monuments, mausoleums, and museums which resemble mausoleums. Plus military personnel everywhere. I just trudged through. One buddy who visited two years ago, he tells tale of some harrowing encounters he had here with the Chinese military. I had no similar mishaps
Eventually I returned to the hotel. There I rested and recaps. Right now I’m out exploring the hutong neighborhoods around my hotel - I’m more energized than I was yesterday, which is great - and the nightlife around here is pleasantly vibrant but not too wild.
Crowds have been pretty extreme most places today. Bikes and Vespas are always weaving between tightly packed masses. At once point, a van drove down the sidewalk! We’ll see if this craziness continues tomorrow as I explore the Forbidden City and additional attractions around it.
I ordered a simple seafood medley which was tasty, cheap, and still bubbling upon arrival. Used a point ‘n’ nod ordering style due to a total and complete language barrier. Should’ve gotten rice too.
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