No Orange or General Tso's Chicken, Sorry

Ten pounds later, I somewhat regret my food experiences in China. Actually, I take that back. The delicious meals were well worth the excess chub. The Chinese love the banquet-style dining apparently, because that was pretty much all we came across while there. I thoroughly enjoyed the somewhat tacky, but communal setup.




The first night, we were taken to a restaurant by some westerners living in Beijing. No speaking for me, only eating:




Duck, pork, chicken, tofu, potatoes, an assortment of vegetables, it really doesn't get much better. I should also mention Baijo, the Chinese version of Soju...except 10x stronger. It tastes horrific and will do strange things to you. Oh, and costs like $0.50. Perfect for the new year.

The next day, when we were biking around Beijing, we went to a famous Peking duck restaurant. They cut the duck right in front of us:



It literally melted in my mouth. I'm salivating just thinking about this duck. They eat duck dishes similar to Korean bbq style; dip the duck in duck sauce, add some vegetables, and wrap everything in a thin rice pancake. Another opportunity to eat with my hands...yes.

That night we went to a restaurant where we were told we could get spicy dishes. The food in China is incredibly cheap, and the menus are endless, so it took us about 45 minutes to decide on what to get. In the end, we ordered 13 dishes (for 5 people mind you).




The above dish is actually a bull-frog stew. It was full of this strange seed-type substance that made your mouth really tingly and then almost go completely numb. It took a while to source what was actually making our mouths feel such a strange sensation, but once I ate the seed on it's own, it was like a shot of novocaine to my tongue.

Love the food in China, don't love the bathrooms. One upside is the fact that there are public bathrooms nearly every block, which is really convenient for someone with a bladder like my own. Although, considering the condition of the bathrooms, you may as well just go on the street. Toilet paper does not exist, not even in our hostel. Thankfully, some of the people I went with knew this little piece of information and brought some with. TP was definitely the least of my problems. Your typical Chinese bathroom:



This particular one was actually relatively clean. It's not hard to find a bathroom because you can smell one from 30 feet away. I think I mentioned earlier that it was freezing outside when I was there, and these are all outdoor. So the cold weather makes the experience that much more inviting. However, I cannot even imagine the stench in the summer...it's really a lose/lose situation.