Only 12 more days until I go to Tokyo! I’m pretty excited. In fact, I’ll probably write a post detailing my excitement later. But in the meantime, I have these leftover photos I forgot to post from China. (Which seems like a lifetime ago now.)
I remember being half-asleep in the cab from the airport as we drove into downtown Beijing, and staring dreamily out the window at all the red lanterns. It was pretty much exactly like the opening of Lost in Translation, except replace Bill Murray with me and Tokyo with Beijing.
The red lanterns line the street called Guijie, or “Ghost Street.” Here is an explanation I stole from Wikipedia:
West of Dongzhimen is Guijie, or “Food vessel street,” extremely well known to locals as a food street. The character for Gui (簋) refers to a round-mouthed bamboo container for food. The name is frequently mistaken for a similar sounding word, meaning “ghost,” so some refer to the street as “Ghost Street.”
Basically, it’s a street that’s wall-to-wall restaurants.
Anyway, on one of our last days in Beijing, we decided to get some hotpot for lunch on Ghost Street. Can’t leave Beijing without trying hotpot, right?
Waiting for the broth to heat! We had regular broth and spicy broth.
Lots of lamb. Basically you just order whatever ingredients you want and then cook them in the hotpot. There was no English menu, but luckily the menu had pictures!
The spicy broth was the best!
We had lamb and potatoes and mushrooms and tofu and noodles and I can’t remember what else. But everything was delicious and it came to something like $16 total (including two bottles of beer) which again, mostly made me depressed because it costs more than that for two people to eat lunch at McDonalds here.
This was Ghost Street during the day.
The end!
