One Year on Earth

In virtually every guidebook you’ll read about China and other developing countries, there is a section describing the dos and don’ts (well, mostly the don’ts) of eating.   Cardinal sin number one in many books is eating the street food – that is, food sold by vendors that you can find on virtually every street in Beijing.  If you haven’t already guessed it, I don’t follow their advice.

Street food is the essence of a city’s cuisine.  If you ask New Yorkers what their favorite dining memories are in NYC, a surprising number will tell you about a hot dog vendor on the Upper East Side or a gyro stand in Midtown.  I’m sure there are ongoing debates among the Hispanic immigrants in Nashville as to which taco truck on Nolenseville Road dishes out the best tacos (in my non-Hispanic opinion, the taco truck parked in a parking lot on the right side of Nolenseville Road just north of 1-440 is the best).    

A substantial number of a city’s residents rely on these vendors to fill their belly on their way to work in the morning, to provide a much-needed snack during the afternoon or to provide a quick and cheap dinner after a hard day’s work.  If you love food, avoiding street food in a city is akin to an artist visiting Paris and skipping the Louvre. 

There are, of course, a few guidelines to follow.  You can’t just dive into the first beef skewer that’s being cooked on a makeshift grill on a side street because the downside of bad street food (especially in Asia, where the “facilities” are not quite 5-star in most places) can be so bad as to require professional counseling upon your return home.

Without further adieu, I present to you the Hughey Street Food Guidelines:

1. Follow the Crowds.  If the locals are lining up to sample the offerings, you should be fine.  Not only do you have the natives’ seal of approval that the food is not poisonous and is probably delicious, you have better assurance that the food hasn’t been sitting around for hours (or days…).
2. Is it Clean?  If the vendor takes pride in keeping his stall or cart clean, there is a better chance that he cares about the safety of the food.  Many people have an assumption that the kitchen at a restaurant is always better than street food, but you usually can’t see the kitchen at a restaurant.  For all you know, there is a local colony of rats residing behind the kitchen door.  With street food, it’s all out in the open.
3. Do Your Research.  Try to find out the local delicacies of a city before you get there.  Not only will you get to sample the best the region has to offer, you’re more likely to get sanitary food because you’re eating what the locals eat (and not something the street vendor has cooked for an unknowing tourist).
4. Know Your Limits.  Not everyone’s stomach has superpower bacteria-fighting abilities.  Even though Johnny is calling you a sissy while he downs a grilled seahorse (as we saw in Beijing the other day), you may want to stick to the fried noodles with vegetables.
5. Small Doses.  The beauty of eating street food is that you can sample lots of different items because, in many cases, the street vendors huddle in groups.  If you pig out on one item, you may not leave room for that delicious fried caterpillar right down the street.
6. Relax.  If you’ve traveled across the globe to visit an exotic land, don’t dampen the experience by always playing it safe by eating in the tourist restaurants or the local McDonald’s.  You’ll miss out on some great food and even better stories.

According to Mao Zedong, “he who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.”  I’m not sure what this means for me, but Derek, at least, now qualifies.  We hiked a relatively rugged 10 km of the Wall yesterday, from a small town called Jinshanling to another one named Simatai.  I didn’t know what to expect before we arrived: Would it be overrun with tourists? Even more beautiful than we’d seen in pictures? Once we finally stepped onto its rocky surface, I was overcome by its majesty.  The structure alone is amazing, but its true beauty emerged for us when we saw it in the context of the barren, rolling hills that surrounded it.

Construction of the Great Wall began over 2000 years ago, when emperor Qin Shi Huang organized (some would say conscripted) hundreds of thousands of workers to connect a series of separate walls that had been built by independent kingdoms.  While the Wall never really functioned as the impenetrable line of defense against northern invaders that it was intended to be, it ultimately worked very well as an elevated highway.  Legend has it that one of the building materials used in the Wall was the bones of deceased workers, earning it the gruesome nickname “the longest cemetery in the world.”  Oh, and you can’t actually see it from the moon (although astronauts have reported seeing it, as well as highways and railroads, from a low orbit of earth).

The section of the Wall that we visited was fairly steep in parts, so it made for a great hike.  Although we encountered some other tourists and a handful of vendors (thanks, but no, we don’t want to buy shirts that say “I climbed the Great Wall…”), we were still able to explore the Wall and its watchtowers, where soldiers used to burn wolf dung to signal enemy movements, in relative privacy.  Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience…which is not to say that we won’t come back as soon as possible!

[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”450″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1tatUiR” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/KxZeDhakBQ8?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=KxZeDhakBQ8&width=450&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep2342″ /]

Standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square a few days ago, I looked up at a monstrously huge portrait of Mao and finally began to understand that, although Beijing often feels a lot like New York, China and the US, in some ways, are still a world a part.  The sharp elbow to my ribs delivered by the elderly Chinese woman next to me only reinforced this point.   I don’t know if it’s simply tradition or if it’s a custom born of being in a country with so many other people (1.3 billion!), but Chinese people seem to have a very different concept of personal space than what I’m used to…i.e., they don’t seem to really believe in it.  My tiny assailant was trying to get by me in order to have a better view of the military guards who were lowering the Chinese flag in the square, as they do at every sundown.  I stood my ground, in part because we onlookers were packed so tightly together that I had nowhere to move, and she adapted by reaching around me and snapping  few pictures.  The ceremony itself was well worth the jostling, if only for the opportunity to photograph the Chinese military in action.

The next day, we walked under Mao’s glaring countenance, through the Gate of Heavenly Peace and into the Forbidden City.  Looking around the clusters of ancient buildings, which once housed two dynasties of emperors and was off-limits to the public for some 500 years (hence its name), it all felt a little surreal.  Although we soon discovered that the largest and most important structure, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, was completely obscured by a web of scaffolding–sad!–nearly everything else was on full display.  Despite the cold (Beijing in late fall feels a lot like Michigan: crisp and chilly), we spent a happy few hours wandering the complex and learning as much as we could from our audio guides.  (Hey, no one ever said we were cool…)

Later, after some fierce bargaining over the fare, we boarded a trishaw and journeyed into the narrow alleyways of Beijing’s hutong.  Hutong are warren-like clusters of ramshackle, one-storey houses that are scattered throughout the city.  Although 1/4 of Beijing’s residents currently live in them, a lot of hutong are facing demolition as part of the city’s pre-Olympic gentrification.  They’re run-down, but full of character; we quickly fell in love with them.  (In fact, as I write this, I’m tucked into a corner of a cozy coffee shop in our favorite hutong.)  I think pictures probably explain their beauty a lot better than my words can…

A dearth of train tickets means that we’ll be in Beijing for a bit longer than we’d planned.  Frankly, I couldn’t be happier.  We could be here for months and still not take it all in.

[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”450″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1tauhds” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/5IXCO41GpKw?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=5IXCO41GpKw&width=450&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep6862″ /]