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Home » Beijing 2008, Snapshots

Chinese Food (中国菜)

Written by on September 10, 2008 – 9:30 am23 Comments | 8 Read this
Eating 包子 (Baozi)

Eat­ing 包子 (Baozi)

Oh, Chi­nese food!

These are my per­sonal favorite: Bāozi (包子) and Bei­jing Duck (北京烤鸭). These two dishes are rel­a­tively unknown over­seas, where “Chi­nese food” is often a syn­o­mym of “Fried Rice”, “Chow Mien” and “Egg Foo Yung”… and other dishes that cater to West­ern taste and are every­thing but Chinese!

Bāozi (steamed filled buns) can be found in pretty much any restau­rant or food stall. It can be filled with veg­etable, meat, broth etc. We ate the best bāozi at a restau­rant called Goubuli (狗不理包子): the name lit­er­ally means, “Baozi that dogs ignore”! This is where I took the pictures.

The Baozi Kitchen

The Baozi Kitchen

Making Baozi

Mak­ing Baozi

Eating Out At Goubuli

Eat­ing Out At Goubuli

Two Baskets of Baozi, the Sauce and An Egg Soup

Two Bas­kets of Baozi, the Sauce and An Egg Soup

Duck Kitchen

Duck Kitchen

This is of course Beijing’s most famous dish: Bei­jing Duck (北京烤鸭). We ate ours at Quan­jude (全聚德), a famous local restaurant.

The duck was sliced in front of us. We ate the meat with steamed pan­cakes, onions and plum sauce.

Tea, Plum Sauce, Ginger and Onion

Tea, Plum Sauce, Gin­ger and Onion

Cutting The Duck

Cut­ting The Duck

Duck Skin and Sugar

Duck Skin and Sugar

Some Duck, Sauce, Onion on a Pancake

Some Duck, Sauce, Onion on a Pancake

Related arti­cles:

  1. Wang­fu­jing (王府井)
  2. Night And Day In Toronto’s Chinatown
  3. Above Ground
  4. Chi­na­town In Ottawa
  5. Bei­jing By Night

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23 Comments »

  • Hmm­mmm! I totally agree with what you said regard­ing “Chi­nese” food here in the West­ern world. There is one such joint in cam­pus, and yes, there’s Lo Mein, there’s Gen­eral Tso’s Chicken, but as you said, it isn’t Chinese.

    Sad to say but the last time I really ate real Chi­nese food was in a Japan­ese shop­ping street. I got those steamed buns filled with meat, and then they had deep-fried chicken bits as well. Read­ing your entry made me crave.

    Linguist-in-Waitings last great read…Phases

  • Celine says:

    Pan­cakes, duck meat, onions, plum sauce..interesting!

    Baozi so fit the descrip­tion of momos. Momos are like steamed dumplings with dif­fer­ent kinds of fill­ings in them and I had eaten it first in the State of Sikkim. Loved it.

    Celines last great read…Mon­soon Magic

  • Zhu says:

    @Khengsiong — Chi­nese has a Mus­lim minor­ity too (the Hui) and I believe it’s quite easy to find ‘halal’ baozi. I really have to taste Malaysian food!

    @Bluefish — Lucky you! I can’t find a proper Bei­jing Duck restau­rant in Ottawa…

    @Seraphine — To be fair, not all kitchens are that clean. In big and famous places yes, any­where else… you just eat on the street, and they cook on the street too! :lol: Thanks for the photo praise ;-) I sure hope the ducks don’t come alive though.

    @durano lawayan — Thank you so much for the award! I’m going to check this out right now.

    @beaverboosh — I believe it’s the same thing… just a dif­fer­ent name.

    @RennyBA — I found some great Chi­nese food around the world but I must say that Bei­jing duck always tastes bet­ter in Bei­jing for me!

    @Linguist-in-Waiting — It’s really really hard to find some “real” Chi­nese food. Even in Chinatown…

    @Celine — From the com­ments, I gather every cul­ture seems to have an equiv­a­lent to baozi. Funny! Now I wanna taste them all of course ;-)

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