World Foodie Guide

This is the eighth in a series of Postcards from the recent Hong Kong, Macau and Beijing traveleating trip. Rather than writing up each food experience in separate posts, which would have taken me up to Christmas, I thought it would be more fun to outline the trip in diary form, to include travel and sightseeing tips as well as food recommendations.

Day 9 highlights:

• Trek to Great Wall at Jiankou
• lunch at Noodle Loft
• Silk Street Market (Xiushuijie)
• Spin ceramics shop
• dinner at Bellagio

Trek to Great Wall at Jiankou:

Our friends have a weekend house in Huairou, close to the Jiankou section of the Great Wall, about 45km east of Badaling. The plan was for the husband and I to leave their Beijing home at 8am, drive to Jiankou and hike for 90 minutes. This meant we would still be back in central Beijing for lunch (I couldn’t miss another eating slot, considering the inauspicious start yesterday!).

I’ve been to various sections of the Wall in the past, including Badaling (horrendously touristy, with a phone booth from where you can call people to tell them you’re on the Wall), Simatai (so remote that my friend and I only encountered a few people the entire time we were there) and Jinshanling (where I watched a night performance of Hamlet in one of the towers, until the actor slipped and broke his leg and had to be carried down on a stretcher in the dark!).

Our friends’ driver picked us up at 8am. From beyond the Fifth Ring Road near the airport, it took about just over an hour to reach the village of Jiankou. This section of the Great Wall is so remote that only last year did they start charging an entrance fee (RMB20 per person), and I don’t think it’s strictly legal either. After paying this fee, you have to drive further to park in the village.

Then there is an overgrown trail to follow (above is the driver taking us to the start of the trail, so what you see is just the village. And the first tower on the left, that’s where the husband eventually made it to, after I collapsed on a rock!), which is a serious hike up a mountain through woods in order to reach the wall itself.

I never considered that we would have to walk uphill for nearly an hour before reaching the wall (not having had to do this at Simatai or Jinshanling), and there were times when I thought we would never get there as the wall always appeared impossibly far in the distance. Towards the latter part of the journey, it was also very steep and I had to use my hands as well to scramble up. I barely had time or the energy to appreciate the beautiful autumn scenery all around us, or the fact that we were completely alone…

When I had almost reached the point of giving up because the path was so steep and covered with loose stones, we suddenly heard Chinese voices in the distance, and soon came across two heavily equipped climbers, complete with hiking gear and cameras, on their way down. One assured me that we were ‘nearly there’, so we soldiered on, for almost another twenty minutes. They were the only two people we encountered on the entire trek, and it was a truly magical experience being alone on the wall. Even at Simatai, there were a few people around as I ate my home-made sandwich perched on a rock.

The views from the Great Wall at Jiankou are breathtaking and we were very fortunate to visit on a ‘blue sky day’ because apparently it’s usually very smoggy from the pollution. The wall itself was completely overgrown and it was difficult to walk along it for much of the way. The husband made it along to the next tower, while I sat and watched. But it was well worth the hike up and down again. Going down was just as tough, if not tougher, and we kept slipping on the loose rocks, so by the time we reached the car, we were exhausted, dirty and very hot.

Jiankou is highly recommended if you really want to be alone in the wilderness, and go during the week when you’re less likely to bump into someone else. If you do decide to visit, don’t take small children with you because you’ll need both hands free and you won’t be able to carry them and walk/climb at the same time, unless they are properly strapped to your back and not just holding on with their hands.

Also remember to wear hiking shoes or boots and take plenty of water with you, both of which we didn’t do! Allow more time than we did to reach the wall and rest up there before the descent. Tell your driver how many hours you will be, so that if anything happens, he will know to get help (hopefully). And finally, don’t give up. You’ll never forget the experience.

Thinking back to the trek, we were so unprepared, thinking that we would be driven very close to the wall. While the driver waited for us, he was chatting to a taxi driver who had been paid to wait 5 hours for his passengers, and apparently some people sleep for a few nights on the wall as they do an extended hike (the hudband found sleeping gear in the tower he visited). Perhaps next time! (click here to see the rest of the Great Wall photos in my Flickr photostream)

If you don’t have a driver, The Guardian tip is to ‘take fast bus 916 (60-90 mins) from Dongzhimen long-distance bus station to Huairou, then hire a minivan (one hour, RMB200 return) to the rear Jiankou section’ (‘After the gold rush: 20 ideas for your Beijing visit‘ – Aug 9 2008 article). You would have to haggle with the minivan or taxi driver, depending on how long you want him to wait, and it would definitely be a full day trip.

Lunch at Noodle Loft:

I first read about Noodle Loft on Diana Kuan’s blog Appetite for China, and having researched it a bit more, decided to eat there, as I love places where I can take photos of chefs in action (it was considered good enough for Anthony Bourdain’s ‘No Reservations’, not that I’m a big fan), and there would be options for the vegetarian husband too.

A search for the restaurant nearly turned out to be as unsuccessful as the search for last night’s non-existent dinner venue, but luckily we were in the car and didn’t have to trek about on foot on a very high pollution day (in central Beijing, but not out on the Great Wall). I’m glad that we persevered because lunch turned out to be superb. The husband is still talking about his noodles!

There is a bilingual menu with large, good quality photos of the food from Shanxi province and the prices are very reasonable (eg RMB12 for a large bowl of handmade noodles). There’s an open noodle-making area so that you can watch the chefs make the noodles by hand using various methods – single chopstick, knife-cut, noodles made by scissors, cat’s ear shaped noodles and hand-pulled noodles (so ordinary by comparison!). It was great fun to watch, though the few Chinese diners were more interested in talking very loudly than pay attention to their food being prepared.

We ordered:

• soft-fried wheat cake with oil and chives (RMB12/£1) – it was a little bit oily but very tasty nevertheless

• baked potato cake (RMB22) – again slightly oily but just what we needed after a trek to the Great Wall

• bean with fennel (RMB12) – soya beans with finely chopped fennel tops – refreshing and light. We never get to eat fennel tops in the UK, so this was great

• noodles made by one stick chopstick with vegetables (RMB20) – these were fried and turned out to be one of the best noodle dishes that the husband has ever had. The shape caught the sauce perfectly too

• sliced noodle by knife (RMB12) and I chose from a selection of sauces/soup bases the pickled Chinese cabbage with soya beans – although the noodles looked interesting, the sauce/soup I chose was probably not the right one. The noodles ended up being quite clumpy and hard to separate and pick up. Not my favourite, but I did enjoy watching the chef make the noodles.

• Chinese yam in sea-buckthorn sauce (RMB16) – an unusual but highly recommended dessert, beautifully presented. The yam is served hot, while the sauce is sweet. It was a huge portion and more than enough for three or four people to share after a large meal

The lunch feast came to RMB104 (about £9) for two people, and we did order a lot of food! (click here to see the rest of the Great Wall photos in my Flickr photostream)

Silk Street Market (Xiushuijie):

Silk Street Market has changed completely since I lived in Beijing and it was a series of clothes stalls on the street (two streets I seem to recall). Now all the stalls are housed in a five storey building, with far more products for sale (jewellery including pearls, watches, computer games, and what I call Chinese bric-a-brac) and the vendors wear a uniform. The only thing that hasn’t changed is their bizarre habit of shouting (and grabbing) at each potential buyer as they walk past each stall, to the point where the noise just makes you want to carry on walking. And if you want to buy anything, you have to bargain hard. The husband helped me buy two silk scarves for RMB60 in total, after an initial price of RMB65 per scarf. If the vendor thinks he or she can do better with another buyer, your offer will be turned down. It was not a pleasant experience overall and a true assault on the senses.

Spin ceramics shop:

Spin near the Lido Hotel on the other hand was an oasis of serenity (apart from the overly loud classical music blaring in the background). This was a shop I’d read about online, and which is also one of our friends’ favourite shops in Beijing. The ceramics are all created by a small group of designers and then made in Jingdezhen, one of China’s historically most famous areas for making ceramics. If you go to any antique ceramics museum collection around the world, you’ll find things made in Jingdezhen.

Each piece is modern and yet classical at the same time. There are no patterns on any of the pieces except the coffee cups. You’ll find decorative pieces such as unusual vases and gigantic platters (probably nearly a metre in diameter), as well as functional items such as bowls, cups and plates. We ended up buying a cube-shaped tea caddy made from Jingdezhen purple clay (RMB300), a water bottle with a lid that also serves as a cup (RMB160) and a set of five tea cups in a bamboo container (RMB280), but it would have been very easy to buy up half the shop. Spin opened a branch in Melbourne last year, where I’m sure the items are much more expensive!

Dinner at Bellagio:

Dinner with my cousin and her husband at Taiwanese eaterie Bellagio was a hit. It’s loud, hip and popular with younger people especially late at night after a clubbing session. We went around 8ish, to avoid the post-clubbing crowd. I’d read that the service wasn’t the best, but our waitresses were perfectly polite and helpful, so perhaps it depends on whom you get on the night, and which branch you eat at. The menu is bilingual with good quality photos, and the prices pretty reasonable too. Between the four of us, we had:

• dragon beans stir-fried with garlic (RMB28) – the discovery of the trip must be these dragon beans, which were called fried asparagus peas in another restaurant. In Chinese, they are called ‘four corner beans’ because of their angular shape. Stir-fried in garlic, they were tender and crunchy.

• eggplant with spicy sour sauce in clay pot (vegetarian) – (RMB38)

• Taiwanese fried bean curd (vegetarian) – (RMB37)

• three cup chicken (san bei ji) - (RMB46) – a house special, the sauce is particularly tasty and this was one of my favourites. The chicken pieces are small but come with bones, so they’re slightly fiddly for those who don’t like bones

• steamed sliced perch (RMB62) – very delicate pieces of white fish on a small platter, which was kept hot with a plate warmer. Recommended by my cousin

• smoked cumin spare ribs (RMB52) – these are quite strong-tasting, but if you like spare ribs, you’ll like this. There are about 6 or 8 ribs per portion

• barbecue beef stir-fried noodles (RMB33)

I also had tapioca pearl bubble milk tea (RMB24), which you can get in many places these days, but it’s still nice to have it in a Taiwanese restaurant. I love sucking up the tapioca with the fat straw! But we were too full to try any of the desserts which I’d read about online…

Incidentally, the only unpleasant incident on the entire trip occurred when we were leaving Bellagio and crossing the road. Crossing roads in Beijing is already far easier than it used to be (I remember lane hopping across five or six lanes of traffic in order to get to the other side), but it still involves dodging cars and bicycles that are turning left or right when you’re crossing at traffic lights. A car wouldn’t stop when my cousin’s husband tried to cross the road and the driver actually tried to run him over. He banged the back of the car with his hand in anger, and the car pulled to a halt in the middle of the busy road. The altercation that followed was surreal.

My cousin’s husband is French and the man who got out of the car also spoke French, so they were yelling at each other in French in the middle of Beijing. The man was incredibly large and aggressive and could have knocked my cousin’s husband down with little more than a light punch. It was very tense. Then we noticed he was driving a diplomatic car (179 004, from the Moroccan embassy) and threatened to make a formal complaint. In the end, both sides walked away, but I’m sure that the man thought he could get away with any hit-and-run incident in China because of his diplomatic status, and only stopped because my cousin’s husband banged on the back of his car. A dramatic way to end a long day!

N.B You’ll find all the China Postcards under Restaurant Reviews – China, and the entire set of food photos on Flickr.

CONTACT DETAILS:

Noodle Loft (there is another branch at 3 Heping Xijie)
20 Xidawang Lu
Chaoyang District
Beijing 100022
Tel: +86 (0)10 6774 9950
Opening: 11am-10pm daily

Spin (there are also branches in Shanghai and Melbourne)
6 Fangyuan Xilu (near Lido Holiday Inn)
Chaoyang District
Beijing
Tel: +86 (0)10 6437 8649
Open 11:00-21:00 daily

Bellagio (there are several other branches, including at Shin Kong Place and Gongti Lu)
35 Xiao Yun Lu
Chaoyang District
Beijing
Tel: +86 (0)10 8448 0520

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

Tags: Beijing, Bellagio, China, dining out, food, Great Wall at Jiankou, Noodle Loft, restaurant review, restaurants, Spin ceramics, travel, traveleating, vegetarian