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Gourmet Beijing

China Leg - November 2005

While deciding to write about my trips since I joined in January 2005 I am starting sort of in the middle, all my photos of New York, France, Italy, Finland, St Petersburg & Estonia are on a disc and thought I would start where my photos were easily accessable. My time in China was wonderful, I had only been to China once before and that was about 12 years ago, most of my time was spent in Hong Kong with a short trip to Guangzhou and I was really looking forward to this trip. We were staying in a hotel near the Temple of Heaven and while taking a walk came across a mother and son making these lovely snacks on the side of the road, you could choose one of 3 fillings, the one chosen had lots of parsley plus schallots and chopped boiled egg, there would have been a few other things as well. Each one was about the size of a saucer, I was able to make them understand that I would like to have it cut in half (we wanted to share) it was delicious and was sooooooooo cheap, about 15 or 20 cents AUS. We had quite a gallery while waiting for it to be cooked, the area where we were staying was not a tourist area.

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Xian

We caught the overnight train from Beijing to Xian, in the hotel where we were staying the only person who spoke english was Mr Rennie, (western version of his name) and his wife though she was not employed by the hotel, they were fantastic, organised our ticket for the overnight train to Xian, then when the time came Mrs Rennie came with us in the Taxi and saw us unto the train, when we saw Beijing station we were so glad that we took her offer of help, luckily she spoke quite good english. A soft sleeper had been book and were quite shocked to find we were sharing with 2 young men, they had gallantly taken the top bunks and my girlfriend and myself had the lower, Mrs Rennie spoke to them and asked them to look after us, I would be lying if I said I was just a little worried, however all went well.

When the train pulled into Xian at 8am we received a shock to find we had to get our suitcases up quite a few steps, then find a taxi - within 10 mins of loading the luggage we had found a lovely hotel. Our day was very busy, checked into the hotel, booked our flight for Shanghai the following morning, found a car and driver to take us to the Terracotta Worriers, back late that afternoon and went for a look at the shopping centre which was very large and busy, on the corner of a street was the mobile shop shown in the photo, he was doing quite a brisk trade.