Wangfujing

王府井（Wángfǔjǐng）

Recently I visited the snack street and night market at Wangfujing. I first visited the area last summer, when my parents came to visit. It is famous for selling a smorgasbord of strange and striking street food. It’s popular with Chinese tourists from outside of Beijing and there are usually a handful of foreigners meandering through the hungry crowds.




There is something about the market that appeals to my curious nature. Food that I would never consider trying in a restaurant, suddenly becomes intriguingly appetising when displayed on kebab sticks and presented to me by persuasive vendors. It is almost as if I have to accept the challenge of gorging on bizarre refreshments.



On a hot summer's day, my dad and I decided to try deep-fried scorpion(蝎子xiēzi) and seahorse (海马 hǎimǎ). From what I can recall, they tasted rather salty and crunchy. Mum did not want to try such exotic delicacies, so ended up eating candied fruit and tteokbokki.










On my latest visit to the market, it was time to finally try stinky tofu (臭豆腐chòu dòufu). I was pleasantly surprised that the taste was far less repulsive than the smell. Following that, I thought it was necessary for me to reward my adventurous culinary experiment, by trying deep-fried ice cream. It was rather sweet and after being deep-fried, the ice cream melted into a fruity, creamy substance. It wasn’t such a terrible ordeal. The best part of this edible escapade is not necessarily devouring the nibbles on offer. Just taking in the market atmosphere and viewing the wide variety of “treats” on offer is quite an experience.


                   Stinky tofu

          Deep-fried ice cream

Pineapple fried rice

Silk worm, squid and innards on sticks

Quail eggs

Too cute to eat?

Spiders and other creepy crawlies

After walking around the stalls, Liz and I ended up at the main street flanked with large shops and malls. We then stumbled across the Beijing Foreign Languages Bookstore. Since getting a Kindle, I have downloaded a rather large catalogue of ebooks to keep me busy. However, I had just read about the author Yu Hua (余华) and was unable to download his books. So I seized the opportunity and bought his novels “Brothers” and “To Live”.



Wangfujing is definitely a place that visitors should see and I will make sure to return there next time I am feeling adventurous and hungry.

Cuối tuần trước, tôi đã đi đến một chợ đêm. Ở chợ đêm này, tôi đã ăn bọ cạp, cá ngựa, kem chiên giòn, và đậu phụ thối. Thức ăn vặt ưa thích của bạn là gì?

Bai Gong Fang Museum

Last weekend, I went on an adventure to a strange yet fascinating museum. The 百工坊 (bǎi gōng fāng) museum is situated near to the Temple Of Heaven and roughly translates to “One Hundred Handicrafts Workshop”. The museum was set up in order to promote the traditional arts of Beijing and China; some of which are in danger of dying out. 

Liz and I started off the day, as every intrepid explorer should: with a thirst-quenching bubble tea. From speaking to locals, it seems that this museum is not very well known, so we were pleasantly surprised and slightly suspicious of how easy it was to stumble across the building from where our taxi left us. We were even more delighted that it was free entry.

The museum itself is spread out across three floors. Long corridors are dotted with doors and inside each room is a person demonstrating traditional Chinese arts. We saw many interesting handicrafts; including painted gourds, metalwork, pottery, dough sculptures, paper cutting and woodcarving. The workers were perhaps shy or nervous about speaking with foreigners; however, using the basic Chinese skills we came equipped with, some were more than happy to talk about their trade.

One particularly friendly craftsman, Mr Yao Fuying, was quite animated and passionate when talking about his job. He enthusiastically explained that from a young age, he started a special kind of embroidery work called Jingxiu. From what I could understand, Mr Yao said that Jingxiu is a skill that was passed down in his family and one piece of embroidery can take him about twenty days to complete. It is quite possible that he also told me the meaning of life, however my Chinese level is still not good enough to comprehend the technical language he used. So we thanked him and continued our journey around the museum.

On the second floor, we were incredibly intrigued (and perhaps a little perturbed) by the art of 毛猴 (máo hóu) “hairy monkeys”. It is a rather unique craft where small figures are created from the fluffy buds of magnolia flowers and the body parts of cicadas. These little models are then put into a variety of scenes depicting daily life. I felt compelled to buy a souvenir so I chose one that was wielding 糖葫芦 (tánghúlu), which is candied fruit on a kebab stick (Beijing’s version of a toffee apple).

I would definitely recommend a visit to this museum and would happily revisit at a later date - if only to buy some more máo hóu souvenirs!

On the third floor, there was a large workshop in which guests are invited to try some handicrafts in a “DIY” style. Unfortunately, there was nobody there to give us this opportunity. In fact, the entire museum was very quiet. I am not sure if this is because it was a Sunday or if it is often low on visitors. 

Munching on toast slice cigars after the museum visit.

Chủ nhật vừa rồi tôi đã đi một viện bảo tàng lạ. Tôi có thể tìm thấy nhiều món hàng thủ công đẹp ở đó. Rất thú vị nhưng kỳ quái!

再见2014年！

Goodbye 2014!

Happy New Year!

I have spent most of the Christmas holidays resting and reflecting on 2014. I enjoyed many things about last year. High on my list of happy memories has to be meeting my sister in Taipei, Taiwan and welcoming my parents to Beijing. I also travelled to old and new places and attended a special wedding ceremony.

Taipei, March 2014

Mutianyu Great Wall, June 2014

December was a whirlwind of a month with end of term festivities and an increased workload. I did however, have a weekend trip to Seoul in order to celebrate my friend Kate’s 30^th birthday. It was great to be back and although it was a short visit, getting away from Beijing and seeing some familiar sights in Seoul reminded me of the adventures I had during my summer holiday. We had a walk around the city, munched on mandu (Korean dumplings) visited the N Seoul Tower, ate Korean barbecue and enjoyed the nightlife in a few bars.

Feeling scared in a cable car

Before leaving, we stumbled across a cake shop and I couldn’t contain my excitement when spying lemon meringue pies. It had been an incredibly long time since I devoured a lemon meringue pie. In pie years, I feel that probably 16 had passed since my sweet tooth was coated in the sweet, tangy gloop that only a lemon meringue pie can truly provide. I merrily took the pie (safely in a bag) back to the hotel where our taxi awaited.

Once we collected our luggage, we bundled our belongings into the taxi and were amazed/astonished/slightly scared to see that the interior of the taxi was plastered with images of our taxi driver and many of his previous customers. His entire taxi was festooned with tinsel, photographs and flashing lights. 

As I gathered my bearings and took in the surroundings, the taxi driver then declared, “I am a magician”. This is not something you would expect or even hope for on a journey to the airport. Reacting to this statement, I turned my gaze towards him, only to find that he had magically produced a winged beast out of thin air.

I wanted to pinch myself, but my massive duck-down coat prevented me from reaching any skin. Was it a real bird? The yellow monstrosity appeared to read my mind and hopped around the taxi driver’s fingers and eventually on to a little perch in order to prove there was a real-life bird inside our taxi.

“Does it poo in here?” I asked in bewilderment. I don’t know why this was the first thing to come out of my mouth, but I was carrying a precious lemon meringue pie and did not want it coming to any danger. My fears of being at the receiving end of a canary poop-attack were not allayed as the taxi driver merely laughed when I repeated my question.

Kate wanted to touch the bird, which in turn caused it to flutter its wings. I was rather worried this could encourage bowel movements and noticing my uneasy expression, the taxi driver used his magic in order for the bird to disappear (he placed it into the little bird bag he stashed by his side).

The taxi driver then proudly let me leaf through two photo albums and showed a video on his mobile phone of his appearance on Korean television. It seemed his main trick is transforming string into edible noodles. He also prided himself on the fact that during his magic show, he would become a Chinese, Japanese and American magician with a swift change of costume and using his rather impressive language skills. 

Truthfully, I was quite relieved he was focusing his concentration on driving while he let us watch his 20-minute video. The hour drive to the airport was a hilarious 60 minutes of constant laughing (except for Kate who was fast asleep - possibly due to the sensory overload). When we got out of the taxi, the driver asked to have his photograph with us. I can only hope that our faces now adorn his glove compartment by now. It was the perfect end to our weekend getaway.

However, behind the smiles in this photograph, there is a sad ending to this story. Somewhere during the journey to the airport, the lemon meringue pie got squashed in transit. From this harrowing experience I have learned that you can have your cake and eat it; as long as you eat it instantly.

New Year Goals

I don’t really want to create any New Year resolutions; promises which I am likely to forget or neglect and consequently feel bad about failing. Instead, I have decided to compile a “To-Do” list of things I want to achieve this year. That way, I will have some goals to work towards and if I don’t do them in 2015, I can aim to accomplish them in 2016!

• Visit more places in Beijing. If visiting the China National Watermelon Museum last year taught me anything, it was that there are so many interesting places that I have yet to see in this gargantuan city. It is fun, sometimes educational and definitely makes long school terms more bearable! I sincerely hope that I will have visited the Summer Palace and The Peking Man Museum by the time I am counting down the seconds to 2016.

• Visit more places outside of Beijing. In 2014, I was lucky to visit Taiwan, South Korea, Shanghai, Suzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu and Hanoi. The flights to these destinations were not too long and showed me that I can easily escape the smogfest of Beijing and have adventures in new places whilst giving my lungs a well-earned break.

• Try new food. Not only dishes but even the snacks that can be found on the side of the street and at markets. 2014 was my first time to taste scorpion and seahorse. I feel that there is a whole menu of weird and semi-digestible treats to experience.

• Eat more fruit. Nobody’s got time for scurvy.

• Improve my Chinese language level. My current Chinese skills allow me to have a fairly comfortable life in Beijing but I want to build on speaking, reading, and listening. I will try to acquire HSK vocabulary lists and prepare for a test this year or next year. I reckon I will improve if I set myself these targets. For now, I will continue to write Chinese electronically, which is a great deal easier than attempting handwritten characters. I may take up Chinese calligraphy during retirement…haha.

Cho phép tôi chúc mừng bạn nhân dịp năm mới đến và xin gửi đến bạn những lời chúc tốt đẹp: Dồi dào sức khỏe và thịnh vượng.