White Girl in China: Fine Dining

Eating scorpion on Snack Street, a famous tourist spot in Beijing

  (To catch up on the other posts in this series, click here)

The food in China was amazing! We ate each breakfast at our hotel, which had everything from traditional bacon and eggs to a noodle bar and sushi. Lunches and dinners were eaten mostly at restaurants like the above pics, with 8-10 of us sharing a round table and eating family-style. There was usually an egg dish, several noodle dishes, plenty of rice, and lots of veggies.

I took pics of our last full day's meals in China, just to give you an idea of what it was like:
 

 Breakfast: Omelet bar, fried rice, dumplings, dragon fruit, bacon, muesli, and a noodle bar. (That would normally feed us for the whole day!)

For lunch, we were on our own because it was a shopping day in the local flea markets. There were several American chains in the city - Starbucks, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Subway, but KFC is the biggest American food chain there. After 8 days of only Chinese food, we were ready for some fries!

Dinner was a bit more adventurous that last night, as we all told the tour guide we wanted to eat like  locals. The meat in the background was a big hit, as it was the most meat we had gotten at once since our arrival. The guide wisely waited until after we had all eaten it to tell us it was donkey! Also pictured: century egg, boiled peanuts, and noodles that looked too much like jellyfish tentacles. That night we also had shrimp, chicken, mushrooms, and of course, rice :)

After dinner, we went to Snack Street, a long strip of outdoor booths that have everything from dragonflies and dumplings to shark and tarantulas to eat. They get more than 100,000 tourists daily - it was intense!

 

                Mr. Shark            

Ms. Seahorse

 Tom and I were fairly adventurous, we tried scorpion, dragonfly, and shark. Others in our group had sea horse and snake too, but I was shopping by then... I can only take so much adventure!