The meal was to die for!....everything was just excellent and I am definitely a fan of roasted duck. Further, and as always seems to be the case, you learn something new about China everyday. Peking Duck, Beijing Duck and Roasted Duck are all the same thing. I guess the city of "Beijing" is also called the city of "Peking" in several countries...which is why you will hear this meal called Peking Duck in some restaurants and Beijing Duck (or Roasted Duck) in others!
The original, and most famous Beijing Duck restaurant is located in Beijing (I guess no surprise there?) and it has been around for almost 600 years. This has become a "chain" and there are now numerous locations all over Beijing (and elsewhere). The branch in Qinhuangdao was opened in 1985, and is absolutely huge. It is 6 stories high and a VERY busy place.....plus like all "fancy" restaurants in China, it has many little individual rooms that are booked and used by groups. For this restaurant, this was true even for our small group of 3 people.
In addition to the great food, David and Tracy are really nice people and so it was a very nice evening! (pictures enclosed).The duck comes (deboned) and you put some meat in a quesadilla type thing with some onion and sauce. Believe me, this was VERY tasty! As you can see this was a very fancy meal/restaurant, and so I had budgeted 400RMB to cover the cost.....I was a bit surprised when the bill came, it was a whopping 179RM!....for 3 people and drinks. This is CRAZY cheap, and I now think I should have eaten here every single night I was in Qinhuangdao. (NB: David did say that the exact same meal in Beijing (at the original restaurant) would likely run about 1200RMB - quite a difference!)
The other pictures are (of course) of another EXCELLENT meal...a traditional BBQ with Ranier, his friend and his uncle. We had this on Wednesday night (again refer below) but for these types of BBQ'd meals, they bring in these carbon type pieces that are RED hot and place them in a little trough in the table. You then BBQ everything on a little grill that sits over top of these. In our case we had lamb/fish/beef/eggplant/everything you can think of.
At this meal, I inadvertently ate some beef ligaments (I thought they said tenderloin)....it tasted pretty bad for tenderloin and I had some trouble not gagging once I actually knew what it was.....I also passed on the starfish, octopus and anything else that I felt might make me throw up right at the table (Bijou kind of falls into this category...but I love that stuff and so it is definitely not included on my "do not eat or drink list"!)
Having said all this, there were tons of different dishes to try, and I have to admit that I was never really a big fan of lamb until I tasted it here (it is also fantastic).
The other sets of pictures are of going out for lunch with some students. These were three of my favorites, and Thursday they took me to their favourite restaurant on crazy street for a send-off lunch. The one in particular (Turning) is a very cool kid, he is into Taoism.....and is just really interesting to visit with. We almost always talked for 5 or 10 minutes after each class, and I would sure like to check back in with him in 10 years to see where he is at?
The pictures of the empty apartment are an example of how the Chinese buy their houses. They are basically just a cement cube...that they then arrange and decorate however they want. In this case this is Ranier's (the sand goes down under the hardwood floor)
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