Day 7 – Hutongs and the Food Tour

Temple of Confucius

Before I begin, let me just say that DoubleTree is treating us very well in Beijing. They upgraded us to a Penthouse suite on the 25th floor and access to the Executive Lounge, both of which has been really nice.

Today, October 2, is a continuation of the National Holiday. All the subways and roads are open again but some of the major sites still haven’t reopened and so we took a food tour which turned out to be a lot of fun. The tour didn’t start until 4:30 pm so it gave us a chance to sleep late and rest.

We left a little early to do some sightseeing on the way to our meeting point for the tour. Our traveling today was all by subway and it is basically straightforward once you have done it once. We did hit a couple of wrinkles but the Chinese have been very quick to help us even if they didn’t speak any English. You can select English when you buy your tickets, but paying was a problem at one point. The Chinese all pay via the WeChat app but it doesn’t work for us so we have to pay in cash. We were at one stop when our fee was 8 yuan (about 60 cents each) and I tried to pay with a 20. The machine kept rejecting it and finally a Chinese guy pointed out to us that it only takes 5 and 10s. There was no change machine but finally a worker called over a guy who made change for us. We thought we were going to have to sleep there that night!

Emma and Jeanne at a Hutong Entrance

We stopped at the Temple of Confucius on the north side of Beijing. It was initially built in 1302 during the Yuan Dynasty and expanded by later dynasties. The grounds were shady and peaceful in spite of a large amount of tourists. Confucius was an ancient Chinese philosopher (551 to 471 BC) and founder of Confucianism which is kind of a combined religion/philosophy of life.

Emma was our guide for the food tour and it turned out that we were the only people on the tour so the three of us just visited a street market and walked around one of the Hutong areas. A Hutong is a narrow alley of one-story courtyard style residences which are basically public housing in central Beijing. Families can live there for free and their children can inherit the right to live there as well. They only pay the utilities but the government owns the physical building. There were Hutongs in use in the 13th century but most of the hutongs we saw were much newer, probably from the 40s and 50s.

Jianbing Being Made

Here is the list of the foods we tried on the tour:

1) Skewers of meat, mushrooms and bread cooked in a spicy hotpot.

2) Jianbing. These are a kind of crepe with egg, bean paste, spices and a crunchy center that is the normal breakfast eaten in Beijing. We liked it a lot. Unfortunately they don’t serve it in our hotel or we would have it again.

3. Candies. Emma bought us a variety of these but the only one I recognized was Hawthorne gelatin, which is similar in taste to cranberry.

4. Dumpling. We shared a local Beijing beer and a plate of dumplings filled with pork and green vegetables of some kind. Very good.

Emma, Jeanne and I Sharing a Donkey Burger

5. Donkey Burger. I know what it sounds like but it was actually very good. Donkey, which is a specialty in Beijing, is a lean meat without a strong taste. Kind of like a good quality of beef. We both finished our portions.

Ancient Drum Tower

We talked quite a bit about life in ancient Beijing and also about current Beijing. She showed us the Bell and Drum towers which used to announce the opening and closing of the bridge across the moat that let people in and out of the old walled city. We also talked about President Xi’s newly announced initiative called the “China Dream” which is a version of the “American Dream.” They still have 1% poverty that they want to reduce to zero. China is also a growing capitalist country where everyone can own their own home but today it isn’t very practical as the cost of an apartment is very expensive and most people have to rent.

We walked along a lake lined with bars and live rock music and it was crowded with young people. Definitely modern China. They she dropped us at a subway station and we started our trip home. That station wasn’t very convenient to our hotel so we had about a 1:15 ride with three changes but all things considered, it was a pleasant evening which was made better by Emma’s excellent English and happy personality.