China 2012: Great Food and Street Markets

One of the best parts about traveling is experiencing the local cuisine, and this is exactly where China shines as one of my favorite places in the world. The food is tasty and cheap. On our first trip to China, I gained 5 pounds in 11 days...no joke! It is just too good to pass up on seconds... and thirds.

If you go to Beijing, you must order Peking Duck, as it is the national food, and it originated there centuries ago. The chef prepares Peking Duck right at your table - his skill is evident in how fast and precise he carves the bird.

The perfectly carved pieces of Peking Duck fit together on the platter in a herring bone pattern; the crispy skin literally melts in your mouth. My advice: take small bites and spend time to savor the experience....because there is nowhere else in the world that they do Peking Duck this well.

crispy rolls in edible baskets

Of course, even in China, Emily found a Starbucks! Her resolve is unweilding.

We hit up a few local street markets to get some unique culinary experiences. The variety of food is so tempting, yet you need to be careful of what you eat due to differing tolerances of microfauna when traveling to new regions. I was untrusting of anything that could have been washed with tap water, so I figured that the high temperatures employed in deep frying would make these items OK for me to eat. Besides, deep fried foods are what street vendors are famous for!

a crowded local street market: one of my favorite stops where ever I go

lizards, centipedes, locusts, grubs, scorpions....now were talkin'! Yeah, I'm getting pretty excited to try some new foods here.

My choice for an afternoon snack: 3 scorpions on a stick. I grabbed the stick and was ready to chop down on it, then the vendor motioned for me to give the stick back to him. Apparently he still had yet to deep fry and season them!
Rule number 1: raw scorpions look exactly like fried scorpions.
They didn't have much substance to them, just really crunchy, but I'm glad I can say I tried it.

OK, on to some more "normal" foods at the street market:

bao and dumplings of every type you could imagine

...more dumplings and several kinds of tofu, including my favorite, "stinky tofu" (fermented tofu whose stench can be smelled blocks away, but it tastes amazing). It is very hard to find stinky tofu in the USA (a few places in San Francisco sell it), so I had to jump on every opportunity to enjoy this culinary delight while in China.

roasted birds of all types

and for dessert: sugar glazed fruit kabobs
...however, as good as they looked, we were too afraid to eat the fruit, fearing it was washed with unclean water :(