New Year and Duck...

Hi Everyone,

Last night after the marathon e-mail sess we went to a restaurant that
Daddy recommended which did amazing duck. We got a taxi there through some
new parts of Beijing that we had not yet seen. Beijing seems so vast and
has some many different parts to it. This area had a street that looked
like the vegas strip (I presume from CSI) followed by a very large
business area filled with sky scrapers. This area was a far cry from what
we're use to in the hoi hai, hutong areas that we've spent much of our
time in.

This restaurant was AMAZING!!! Rob spent about 10 years reading the menu!
I finally decided to have the duck (obviously) and lamb with spring onion,
which was amazing and fried pork dumplings. Rob had (in addition to the
duck) goose wings.

The whole duck was trolleyed out on a cart and cut up in front of us, we
were given the skin, head, breast and leg. This was accompanied by spinach
pancakes and assorted dressings including cucumber, carrot and onions. The
skin, I personally think although Rob disagreed tasted like popcorn! You
dipped it in sugar and jam like stuff. It was needless to say absolutely
delicious! Although I did not try the head and Rob was not sure about the
brain, it tasted a bit funny apparently. Amazingly the whole meal
including beer cost us 13 pounds each, not bad for a whole duck etc.

This morning we headed down into town to go and see chairman mao's
mausoleum. This was our first trip on the Beijing subway, literally my
first trip as I managed to fall up the stairs. I shouldn't really read a
book at the same time as walking! We were a bit late to see Mao so we
decided to grab lunch first. We headed to a shopping street with lots of
neon lights on it, this was probably the first proper shopping street
we've been too, we had dumplings (as its new year) in a place just off
this. This place was EXTREMELY accommodating, as is everywhere here. You
could watch the dumplings being made. The dumplings were lovely, and were
a mixture of meat vegetable (that tasted like tea) and seafood.

After this we headed to a food market style street. This had lots of
stalls selling seahorses on sticks and baby scorpions on sticks, the man
showed us that the scorpions were alive while he was sticking them, they
were then roasted. We did not try these, although I think Rob is regretful
of this.

After this we headed to a bookshop where I brought I chinese to english
phasebook, I plan to be able to say more than hello and thank you before
we leave which is pretty much the stage we're at now.

We then tried to see Mao but it was closed as its new years eve.

Tonight we are going to watch the receptionists make dumplings in the
lobby of the hotel. At new year dumplings are traditionally made. Then try
to go down to tian'anmen square for new year.

We've been 'treated' to small children and adults letting off fire
crackers outside our hotel for the past few days, setting off car alarms
in the process, I put this down as really annoying. However it turns out
that this is done to ward off evil spirits around new year, so is now less
annoying. This is going on all over Beijing today.

Tomorrow we plan to go to some new year markets.

Happy new year everyone!

Lots of Love,

Sarah xxx