Mutianyu Village is located in a ravine at the base of the Yanshan Mountains, approximately 70 kilometers to the northeast of Beijing. Two facts of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) history made this location particularly auspicious. The first was Ming enthusiasm for wall building, motivated in large part by a persistent fear that the Mongolians, whom the Ming had defeated in order to become the next ruling dynasty of China, remained a formidable threat to their grip on power. The physical space buffering the divide between the Han Chinese and Mongolian civilizations thus became prime building ground for defensive walls to keep the Mongols out.
The second fact was that in 1402, the Yongle Emperor usurped the Ming throne and subsequently returned the capital city from Nanjin in the south back to Beijing, This development elevated the strategic importance of Great Wall sites closest to the capital as a last line of defense against a Mongol invasion. The Village
Leaving the Great Wall site, the view of the village is framed on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled on both sides by mountains and hillsides that are sprinkled with ancient pines and sliced into bits of terrace just wide enough to accommodate a pair of apricot or chestnut trees. The main road that serves as the primary vein of village life snakes its way down into the ravine, as if someone started drawing an 's' and forgot to stop.
To the east of the main road, smaller dirt roads spread like fingers with houses at the end of their tips. To the west, the much flatter terrain permits a horizontal clustering of homes arranged in maze-like fashion. Some of the homes are coated with a thin layer of whitewash with bits of bare brick showing through in spots, and their facades are adorned with small garden patches fronted by doorways lined with long red strips of glossy paper whose bulbous gold-coloured "Good Fortune" characters become distorted as the corners start to peel away.
Last Thursday when my T. Dot fellow foodie Tudor came to town for a visit, I arranged for a meal at Beijing's revered modern duck institution, Da Dong. Of course, I asked Adlyn to accompany us on this holy grail of Peking duck journeys, enlightening us to the ways of imperial duck dining and of course, showing us the keys to the VIP by way of a visit to the famous back kitchen...
Da Dong has an impressive facade, a grand hall used as a waiting area with a bar and stools looking into the glass-encased kitchen. As most patrons have to wait for a table- yes, even us- the bar is a great idea because they can work on getting their guests slightly tipsy which makes ordering from the elaborate menus that much more interesting later... Another great idea is the free flow of house wine and juice to speed up the process of inebriation. Alriiiight.
The General Manager came out to greet us after a short wait and brought us to meet the Master Chef and the army of sous chefs standing in military rows in the kitchen. There were three large ovens in which ducks are hung exactly 1 meter away from the flame to ensure optimal succulence and crispiness. In the middle of the wall hung a large blackboard displaying in handwritten chalk the number of ducks on order that night. The kitchen was about 300 hundred degrees and my face melted in the heat of the flames.
We talked to the Chef and found out all his secrets, which I will now package up into a little ball of espionage and bring back to Toronto, where duck lovers are seriously missing out.
Here are some sous chefs at work, the Master chef giving us a lesson in Da Donging, and a happy family portrait.
The food was a feat of artistic gastronomy that I'm sure is the first to hit the Peking duck scene. The traditional components of duck are all there; the sesame rolls, the paper-thin pancakes, scallions, cucumbers, sweet sauce and minced garlic, but everything was just that much more haute because of the delicate presentation and showy setting. Duck is the focus, but the offerings do not end there, with page after shiny page of accompanying dishes from braised sea cucumber to mango-wrapped scallops. Some dishes are decidedly sexier with the markings of a well-traveled chef who understands the appeal of molecular gastronomy on the senses and palate. We ordered dishes like mushroom with beer foam, hoisin-glazed cod in a pumpkin, minced duck meat served in a "bird nest", and lotus root, although my less than inspiring descriptions do the menu no justice. Seriously, the mushroom with beer foam had a much more appealing name, which I forget... My favorite was the cod. What miso? Hoisin is the new it-glaze! I could sit there and eat 5 of those everyday for the rest of my life.
The highlight of my dinner though, was naturally the duck. That was when I realized the reason for the army of sous chefs in the kitchen. They are on call to roll each duck by trolley out to the hundreds of tables and perform the art of slicing the finest meat off the bones. Apparently, the marking of a top-tiered duck chef is the ability to cut the duck into 100 slices. No easy feat believe me, despite cheers and encouragement from our table, I think our chef was only able to slice it into 60. Booooo. A+ for effort though!
A tasty trick from the imperial kitchen, which Da Dong practices but I have not seen in other duck kitchens, is to dip a crispy-thin layer of melt-in-your-mouth duck skin into sugar and placing it on your tongue. Holy mother of duck it was divine. I didn't even need to have the meat after that it was so good. I won't entertain you with the other details of the meal, you are either familiar with the components of a Peking duck dinner or you should read Fuchsia Dunlop's comprehensive foray into Da Dong for a better understanding. Without further ado, here are le fotos.
1. I love how a rainy day just puts everything on hold. Hutong tour, what tour? No more filming either. I guess my new Nikon lens can wait too. The mega camera mall will still be there tomorrow. Rainy days should just as well be called 'Shirk from your responsibility' days.
2. So I'm shirking from my responsibility to study, and will blog instead.
3. My diet in the last two days, in that particular order: pizza, fries, heavenly mozza sticks, mcnuggets, ice cream, pizza, powder soup, pizza, instant coffee, cookies, salted almonds, instant coffee, vitamin pills, calcium pills.
4. My obesity has reached a next level. Stop judging me with your eyes!!
5. Heavy D, you're gonna kill me. Or at least make me eat a tub of Greens+ in Thailand.
6. Does anyone else think the lyrics to Beyonce's Diva are a bit ridiculous?
7. The Momofuku sommelier, Christina Turley, is beyond sick. In fact the entire staff in the Momofukuverse is next levz, from David Chang himself (who has yet to find out he's my future husband) to Peter Serpico, the genius chef at Ko. But 24 year old Turley is a true diva, you know, the female version of a Hust-laaa. I'm immensely jealous of her job, but it was kind of written in the cards for her as well, having grown up playing in the grape vines of Frog's Leap Vineyard in Napa- incidentally owned by her dad. Full Stop. It's really true what Gladwell discusses in Outliers. 50% of one's success is based on circumstance, birth right, serendipity, whatever you call it. The 10,000 hours of practice, well you can't exactly practice sniffing new world wines growing up in the suburbs of Toronto can you? So I'm jealous. But just have to find my own way to be featured on the NYT Moment Blog.
I've been feeling under the weather last couple of days, which explains my going into hibernation and drowning myself in Joni Mitchell, emancipator and Justin Nozuka?? FTW? Now that I'm finally exposing my lifeless face to daylight, the gods decide to welcome me with thunder and rain. Oh and I have to do a 3 hour walking tour, and get filmed doing a night market tour for the Hias website tonight. If you go online and coil back in horror at a ragged face with bloodshot eyes jabbing a deep-fried scorpion in your face, trust me I've had better days.
The farthest I've gone since Sunday was to the front door this morning to pay the delivery guy for my opera ticket. Yea! I'm seeing Rigoletto on Saturday with my lovely Megzican, who is actually on a transatlantic flight right now over from Toronto! She comes bearing gifts of 1 unit of Diva Cup (if u don't know, now u know), 1 package Twix ( I need my fix!), and 1 jar Dulce de Leche (which I need to finish before I leave Beijing next Thursday).
O yea, I leave Beijing next Thursday??? This is way too effing weird. I still don't feel like I got my fix of this city. Now I still have a final exam looming in the near distance and I hate that it's distracting me from enjoying my last days in the city.
This is what I feel like today. A bit of sugar and some spice.
I woke up this morning with grand dreams of studying, exercising and other chore completion. It is now 5 in the afternoon, my grand dreams now scant, and I haven't done much of anything.
Lamenting the fact that my peers in Canada are done school and I'm still hanging on with one final exam, one that I cannot focus on because the text book is written by a chimpanzee. What do Chimpanzees know about macroeconomics? They can't even trade effectively.
I've done a few food tours this week, including a cool Shanlitun urbaneats one that explores the more upmarket offerings of Yunan and Sichuan cuisine. This weekend I'm heading up to the Wall at Mutianyu to do a gourmet picnic tour with a couple of clients in town. One of whom is an Ivey grad I hear and a managing director in a Canadian bank...small world indeed.
So I was taking a family of four around the hutongs of Houhai yesterday when the mother told me she found out about Hias Gourmet through tripadvisor, which had the Hutong Eats tour ranked on the 3rd of 179 activities to do in Beijing! Jiggawhaat? I couldn't believe it so I googled it myself, and lo and behold it really is. Now all the reviews have me worried, because I don't think I'm nearly as charming and fun as Adlyn, and am probably giving the hard-earned fruits of her labour a bad name!
I found some incredible pictures of Nanluoguxiang, a gentrified hutong that I walk through during my food tour and wanted to share them with you.
The neighbourhood is the perfect place to observe the juxtaposition of new and ancient that is Beijing, with some of the courtyards more than 800 years old. With the eradication of hutongs over the past fifty years, the government has forced multiple families to move in together in what used to be single-family compounds. Today, walking through any alley, you can count the number of electric meters outside to discover how many families live in the cramped space. I've gotten to as many as fifty. This is a must-see when you visit Beijing, and no wonder the culinary/cultural tour is No. 3 on Tripadvisor. No thanks to me. No, seriously.
In other news, I need a new camera. My Nikon has failed me for reasons undisclosable, yes that's a word. I wantnoneed the Canon 50D with wide-angle lens. I would also like a Leica. Lika-leica, get it?? The Holga with which I shot the SH/HZ pics is a dream, but sadly, remains borrowed. I want a vintage twin lens reflex from the antique market also. But alas, my problem remains a rather stubby cashflow, and it doesn't seem to be growing anytime soon. fml.
So I may go to Chengdu sooner than I thought. Another client- incidentally also in the fashion industry- is requesting a Sichuan food tour as he is in town for the next couple days. So I may be leaving tonight rather than Saturday morning for the LVMH tea ceremony.
You may have noticed that I sorta stopped working at the hotel. That kind of got old fast. Oops.
My new project now is figuring out what I'm doing in the summer. School is about to end here, and as much as I love Beijing and could probably stay helping out with Hias Gourmet, I keep reminding myself I have 2 months before REAL LIFE starts. Life as corporate brand manager is not often conducive to South East Asian beach holidays with good friends. Reading my Lonely Planet is only making me long for the food and locales of the south east. Right now I have the option of traveling for the month of July, hitting the Full Moon party in Thailand on July 9th (any takers out there?), and either continuing to backpack in August or settle down in a sleepy town somewhere and working in a restaurant, sleeping on hammocks, reading books and sipping coconut juice. Doesn't sound too awful.
Alright I'm off to lead a Hutong lunch tour, mmm food coma commences!
so I'm browsing through the wonderous world of google analytics for this blog, which is rad to the power of 4 by the way- I can see in colourful graph form my traffic sources, map overlays of my international page hits, and best of all, search engine key words that lead to my website-
...when I saw that someone had googled "people getting beat with a stick" and somehow ended up on my site.
I'm flattered?
Oh and in the last month, I've had visits from Canada, China, US, Germany, Kenya, Hong Kong, France, Costa Rica, Spain, and United Arab Emirates.
jiggawhaaaa? shoutouts to my Kenyan brothers and sisters.
Google earth also shows me an aerial map of the location where you accessed my blog.
Just kidding.
You know you just shut your blinds though. Lookin' goooooood !
is the root of all evil, and all ridiculousness that one writes about in a half-delirious state after a loooong week where sleep was only optional.
I managed to hurdle past the economics exam from hell on Wednesday, and was rewarded by poutine (!!) that night curtesy of Cat, who's parents kindly brought us authentic cheese curds and packets of gravy during their visit from Canada because that's just how much we missed poutine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you are not Canadian and do not know what I'm talking about, you should be booking your flight into Montreal quicktimes for a tasting of Canada's finest. You can say it is a staple food. Like rice to the Chinese, or naan to the Indian. Or maybe it's just mine...
Thursday- my chill day, it was raining farm animals from the sky and I didn't feel like going to work, so I called in sick with food poisoning. Teehee. Yes I'm a terrible employee, but trussssst, I was in desperate need of some R&R. Lounged in bed and caught up with my gossip girl episodes. Can we just talk about the reDONKness of the Nate and Blair reunion?? There is about as much spark between them as Brad and Jen. It's OVER palllll....
Friday- took Clare on a culinary hutong walking tour, the same one I was trained for earlier this week. The two of us together is bad news, we shop, and we eat, with no apologies. I took her to my favorite shopping area in Beijing, the vintage punk rock chic boutiques at Nanluoguxiang and its surrounding hutongs. Think Queen W.W. but half the price. Purchased a sickkkk one piece shorts suit reminiscent of my blue jumpsuit in the summer with the panda pin. A leopard print ballerina tutu, so grunge, so sick! I am also debating on getting nerd glasses in either red or black. It's all the rage now to sport these clear non prescription glasses with thick nerd rim. It's sooo next levz to look like you had have no social calendar and suffer from severe stigmatism. All the cool kids are doing it!
The Glass Table and Bleeding Butt Cheek Episode - Later that afternoon, I stepped into a tiny cafe in Houhai with Clare, I was having massive bbt cravings and I was going to take a hit of hk milk tea. I placed my order and turned around to rest gently on a glass surface that was about the height of a bar stool. Naturally, I deduce that it is a bar stool, placed next to the counter, for guests to rest as they patiently await their beverages. So I lowered my bum with my usual grace and levity, ONLY TO HAVE THE GLASS SHATTER IN 400 PIECES UPON CONTACT WITH SAID ASS. !!!!!. No, it was more like an implosion, a detonation, with a thunderous roar that made everyone in the cafe stop. turn. and gawk at me as if I were some kind of barbaric moron who needs to lose a few or thirty pounds off the hips. So of course the glass slashed through my leggings, my underwear, my shirt over top and scratched me bum as well. It was a good look. And it made going to the washroom a lot easier, I can finally identify with the split pant fashion trend on all the Chinese babies! Just squat, and go.
Saturday- I got paid to read French out loud. I do not know French. Oui oui!
Sunday- went on my second culinary tour tonight through the night market at Wangfujin. I met with the owner of the culinary tour company/cooking school along with three American clients and hit the wild and wonderful tourist trap known as Wangfujin snack street. Instead of showing the laowai an accurate roundup of Chinese food, I think I succeeded in frightening them out of the country with the wild items I force fed them. Snake, baby shark, silkworm, tripe and fried milk anyone?
Inner Mongolia tomorrow morning yeaa ahhhh! Yurts, yak milk, grasslands, horseback and sand dunes say hiiiiiiiiii
be back soontimes with pics.
meanwhile, peace on tha streets and in the middle east!
It's 1:30pm and I'm T minus 1.5 hours from getting off work, booyakasha. The good thing about the recession is that there are no guests on the executive club. So I check my email instead, and blooooog.
I worked the morning shift today, woke up at an ungodly hour to set up the buffet breakfast. Plates and pots of bacon, eggs, saussages, veggies, pastries, fruits, seafood, sushi, juice, and exactly three guests who showed up. Not gonna lie, I pulled some stealth snacking moves and ended up filling my daily caloric intake before 11am. Oye. Free food is not my friend.
Since I had to study for my exam and was NOT about to commute last night and back again this morning, I got the manager to hold to his promise of giving me a hotel room when I worked overtime. There's nothing worse than sitting in a five star hotel room with free HBO and a jacuzzi tub and have to get down and dirty with a macro economics text book instead. FMLEH. Yes, extra hard.
I want cookies.
Oh, I am training to become a culinary walking tour guide! I go on my first tour this afternoon through the city's hutongs and will be helping a gourmet cooking school set up its first operating studio and food store over the next months.
Woke up this morning to the bleakest, most depressing sky I've ever seen. I guess spring has arrived, because it rained for the first time last night since I arrived. The rain hit my face as I was eating ma la tang, these hot pot style veggies and meat on a stick, the best street food on this side of the wall. It was 2 am and we had been celebrating the birthday of a friend in Shanlitun, a concentrated stretch of laid back bars where drinks are cheaper than water, people spill onto the streets, and chaos is the order of the night. We started the night in style at the grand opening of The Emperor bar, the rooftop terrace of a boutique hotel located in a hutong overlooking the forbidden city. BAAAM. It's as sick as it sounds. Atmosphere was Malibu meets Tang dynasty, people just stepped out of vanity fair. There was a free flow of champagne, wine, and martinis, with delicious canapes that I could barely keep up with. But I did. And I would have done better if every time I had a drink in my hand, the birthday boy hadn't taken it from me and pounded it back in the blink of an eye. I'll let it slide for the occasion, but you all know better than to steal blinis out of my hand!
The night got progressively sloppy as we ended up wolfing down fries and 15 kuai mojitos on the street in Shanlitun. Then we danced obnoxiously on stage at a seedy joint called Bar Blu and when our exchange theme song "I will survive" the final fantasy edition came on, the noise we made was next levz.
Yeeaaaaaaahhhh.
Some time later I got hungry and tired and that's how I ended up sitting on a wobbly stool in the rain dousing hot sauce on my skewers. I'm pretty sure everything tastes better on a stick. And when it's spicy TOFUUU and soysauce eggggggg its just stupid good. Like, honestly... you're blowing some serious mind in my mouth right now good. After I got my fill, I was sufficiently wet from the first rainfall of the year that I smelled like dog and smoke. Then I found Cat and we made the obligatory Bellagio stop to round out our evening with delicious Taiwanese shaved ice dessert goodness. Mmmm tower of finely shaved ice doused in condensed milk and showered with red beans, tapioca, and candied pineapples. Best and surest way to brain freeze.
Earlier this week I started my job at the hotel. First day was intimidating as hell, as I was passed off from manager to manager until finally I found my place in the executive club, where I was to do my first rotation. The manager looked visibly annoyed at the prospect of babysitting me and sighed extra loud as he brought me to get my uniform (Yes I wear an outfit that looks like memoirs of a geisha as a sanitation worker) and sign my forms at HR. But I worked my charms and spewed some brilliance in our conversations and he realized that I wasn't some freeloading brat who got away with 3 days at work each week just because I knew the CEO. By the end of the week he was practicing English on me, taking me on his smoke breaks, which were every thirty minutes, to ask me about management advice and getting me to interview new candidates for the job. Not a bad job, but definitely showed me some subtle and not so subtle nuances about working in China versus the west. Such as the rigid hierarchies, and the implied rather than the vocalized.
Wednesday night I went to the 2nd annual Beijing Contemporary Dance festival held by the school where I'm taking classes. It was the most spectacular display of expressive dance I've ever seen in my life, and the best part was they were all Chinese dancers. That's what I mean about this city being world-class, none of these dancers are famous on the international sphere, but they are the top class in China, and number and calibre of them blow my mind. Contemporary dance in China is also interesting because it is so emotional, and in a country where communication is supressed more than encouraged, watching the dancers express such raw emotions with fluid grace really stuck out for me. Then on the way home I met up with friends Dan and Henri for drinks at a bar for Henri's birthday, which quickly moved to a seedy student club downstairs that is infamous for being the mother of all evil hangovers this side of the student ghettos. Wednesday nights are open bar nights with a five dollar admission for girls and about 15 for guys, and no joke the booze they serve is more or less lethal. Clearly second grade stuff poured into the real bottles, but ask any of the hundreds of people mauling the bar on Wednesday nights if they care and the answer is helllls no. Somehow stumbled home and relished my glorious morning of NO WORK the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.
Now I sit here on Sunday night, with my macroeconomic book opened to page one, thinking that I should study for my exam on Wednesday, blogging instead, and dreading the thought of WORK IN THE MORNING.
In other news, I made me a delicious meal of mung bean clear noodles, dried tofu, and pickled vegetables in a sweet and spicy black bean chili sauce today. All in five minutes and without turning on the stove. I'm such a cordon bleu chef in training. The food network is already lining up a show. It will be called The Naked Szechuan Contessa. Pay per view only. byaaaahhhhhh.
1. It is warm in Beijing. I thought I'd never say those words. It was last week that a thin blanket of snow covered the dull landscape just outside the city, last week that I stayed in bed for three days nursing a cold as vicious as the wind outside my bedroom window. Big brother shut off the central heat in the entire city three weeks ago, and our alternative to freezing in our own home was to turn on these electric heaters that suck up the energy bill like hideous energy goblins. Electricity is pay-as-you-go here and more than a few times we have been rudely awoken by sudden pitch blackness, cold water, and no wi-fi. Oh the things we take for granted back home. In China, everything is pay-as-you-go, and if you don't pay, the service gets cut off. Just like that. I guess that's the only way to make sure 1.3 billion people pay their bills.
2. Beggars. Panhandlers. The homeless. There are so many it's dizzying. At Wudaoko, the highly saturated student neighbourhood where I live, there are no less than ten, shaking the coins inside their tin containers with vigour at your side. The first week we got here, an American we met told us not to give these guys money because they were involved with the mafia and were being punished for wronging someone in the gang. The most creative excuse I've heard for not being charitable, but nevertheless I have not given away any change to date. Then I noticed that they all looked very similar and dressed the same. Duh you say, they're in rags, not a fashion spread, but no joke they look like they are in uniform. Second, I never see them all at the same time, some are there in the day, some at night, I'm not saying they're taking shifts but uh, it's like they're taking shifts.
Then there's the variation of old blind man and singing woman or vice versa on the subway. I encounter these duos at least every other time I ride and it is an uncomfortable 5 minutes while they sing and wail their way to the next car. I am against giving money to the poor/homeless in general as it is a unsustainable and damaging sort of charity that perpetuates poverty, but today I looked up from my book to see how other people were reacting. In three minutes, the duo had picked up about 10RMB and were moving on to the next car. Quick math in my head predicted that in the time it takes them to move from one side of the train to the other, they'd could pocket 150-200RMB. For less than hour of work, and considering how many trains they could transfer to on a one-way fare (2RMB) in a day, this is hustling at its finest.
I read on the web that Beijing's beggars are part of a large ring called the Beggars Federation, and 85% of them are professionals who live very comfortably off their earnings. Kind of like the shaky lady in Toronto. But I'm still undecided, when is it right to give to a beggar? Why do people prefer to give food over money? Does that not still encourage dependency and keep people on the streets? People use age and disability as factors when giving, but 5 dollars later, the kids and the disabled are still destined for the same life. I worked at the Scott Mission once upon a time in Toronto and can guarantee that a dollar donated towards outreach programs like that makes a much larger ripple in the pool of charity than a coin in their hats ever will.
3. I went to work today at the hotel I told you about. The CEO was the one who brought me in the company and he introduced me to the head of the Sales department, with whom I'm doing my first of many rotations to get to know the hotel. In China, everything is political, everything is about who you know, not what you know, and that scares me a little. I will be watched like a hawk, because CEO brought me in. The older people will look at me and say whothefuck are you, whatchuknowaboutthat and I will stammer to find the words in Chinese. CEO is also one of the scariest Chinese men I've ever met. He mumbles his words like he got shot in the mouth 8 times, sort of a cross between Fitty and Al Pacino multiplied by Bruce Lee. I realize I am going to get served a steaming rice bowl of whoopass, but it's too late to turn back.
4. I discovered today that I am a lump and about as graceful as Herbert the pig pictured below in the post about Green Cow Farms. I went to a dance class tonight taught by one of Beijing's most regarded contemporary dancers, and was a massive hazard unto myself and my surroundings. Granted I have never taken a single dance class in my life (other than the one time I was four and my mom spotted me in the back of the room distributing candy and distracting other girls around me- she promptly removed me from that class) and tonight's class was "Advanced Contemporary Technique". Apparently the body can move in wonderous ways that I am yet unfamiliar with, and it was a great course in human anatomy 101. But there is no excuse for the excess area codes my body is currently inhabiting, and I am newly inspired to get in shape and D.A.N.C.E! I love D.A.N.C.E! I will be pliéing and reverse turning the next time you see me.
This was at the Opposite House in Shanlitun, the most interesting designer hotel I've ever been in. That's me and in a glass corridor looking down onto the pool. This is at Li-Space, my favorite gallery in Chaochangdi. The most avant garde contemporary Chinese artists moved out to this rural land in unassuming farm houses and simple red brick facades when the original 798 art district got too comercial for their liking. This piece is called "Man on Fire". Here I am trying to blow Obama out. I paid an average Chinese person's monthly salary for a decadent meal at Maison Boulud, the restaurant making the most noise in the Beijing dining scene. Meal left my mind dissapointingly intact but wallet markedly lighter. Art pushing boundaries at 798 Buy a candle, and maybe your ancestors will grant your wish I almost tatooed branches of blossoms spiraling up my back this summer. I will just admire them on trees for now.
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