王府井- Wangfu Jing is one of China's most busiest streets. It's filled with lots of modern day shopping malls as well as alleys filled with bizarre food eats. It's a must go touristy place, but has a bunch of local joints as well. If you want to pull off being a local, just add a crap load of -err sounds to end of everything you say. They'll like you just for doing that.It's ridiculous how non-standard Beijing people's Chinese are. They are times where I just don't understand what the hell they are saying.
The street looked relatively normal from the outside. They were filled with food stands and shops on both sides.
There were loads of crap to buy or as my mom likes to call them "handy craps"- short for handicrafts.
I thought the hand made paper kites were cool. Things started to get a little weird though. Then I realized I was having deja vu. This was the same exact alleyway Andrew Zimmerman went to on his show Bizarre Foods. How did I know that?
Because I saw these "kabobs" hanging around. The sad part was t hat those scorpion-like things were actually still alive while pierced through the stick. You choose your stick and then the worker marinates them in some seasoning before roasting them to a crispy "delight".
But worry not. If those insect creatures weren't your taste, there were a ton of different choices to choose from.
Maybe you're more into the whole tarantula thing?
Thankfully, they had more normal things too like candied fruits, chestnuts, etc.
Here's some yummy meat! They carve it right there for you. It's really good. I just had some yesterday!
But fortunately and unfortunately I did not try any of those crazy kabobs. Just yesterday, the program director recounted the story of how his friend tried one of those kabobs a few years ago and almost lost his life. Apparently his kabob wasn't fully cooked and the poison from the scorpion got to him, which made his neck swell up to the size of 2 tennis balls. So, this time I'll pass. I'll choose life over death by uncooked creature since I always imagined my death would be by blowfish or choking on a boba. I am rather intrigued by the starfish and seahorse on a stick though, but that may be because I see them used in traditional chinese herbal medicine all the time.
Happy Eatings!