Wheels of Addis

There’s something kind of yummy about Kowloon street food. I don’t know if it’s the atmosphere or the slightly we-shouldn’t-really-be-here vibe, but it’s good. Real good.

We ended up on some back alley late at night hunting out some serious dining. Diners lined the pavement, seated at greasy tables, puffing away at cigarettes and sucking on beer. Cars lined the street. When a cop came by, the restaurant staff were sure to warn everyone. It seemed friendly enough.

The kitchen was installed between cars on the road. Sweat pouring off the chefs; flames jumping out from under their woks.

We were seated indoors and offered a plastic bowl and a jug of tea with which to rinse our dishes. 

It didn’t take us long to order from the menu. Note the bin liner for a table cloth: this isn’t a sit-and-linger restaurant so much as a getting-down-to-the-business-of-eating establishment.

First up some crispy fried squid along with sweet and sour pork. Fatty, fast and dirty.

Then the real treat: salt and pepper mantis prawns. 

Huge and meaty: these are serious crustaceans. Check out the claws! 

Jean-Pierre spotted a cornflower blue guitar on the side of the road on our way home. But we were too full and our fingers were too greasy to pick it up.

Today’s first stop was the yak yoghurt shack. It’s about a ten minute walk from our hotel and seems to always have a queue outside. I had plain yoghurt and Jean-Pierre had his with mango. And when I say yoghurt, it was really more like a white custard. It looked horrible - a thick skin on top and a jelly-like consistency - but it tasted like heaven. I almost felt sad we hadn’t had any before now - what a wasted opportunity!

We scoffed our yoghurt right there on the street and then headed south to Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City.

Here I am on Tiananmen Square with a flag pole coming out of my hat:

A kid we met in the square, having a snack:

Me and Mao, a guard and a fire hydrant:

We had already decided to get a guide, so once we had gone through Tiananmen Square, we kept our eyes peeled for likely candidates. As it turned out, we were extremely fortunate to find an amazing, fun and hilarious guide: Xile. He’s 20, speaks fluent English with a sort of Mexican hip hop lilt, and regaled us with Sean Paul songs and Borat quotes. We ended up spending the whole day together, hanging out and laughing. By the end, we all agreed that we were the same kind of people and would try to stay in touch.

Here are Jean-Pierre and Xile, pals for life:

The Forbidden City is too vast to see in a single afternoon (or even a day) so we focused our attentions on the areas my cousin Michael had recommended - in particular the concubine’s living quarters. 

Xile took us through the city pointing out the most interesting sections and painting a picture of life as an Emperor - and a concubine. I think the Forbidden City is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been to. We really only scratched the surface, which intrigued me enough to want to come back one day.

It was bitterly cold. In fact, the coldest day since our arrival. So much so, that after a few hours of touring the palace compound, we were ready to move on to somewhere warm (although not before shaking hands with the last Emperor’s nephew who is a calligrapher. We spent some time having his calligraphy explained to us).

Our dinner the night before was pretty dire, so were keen for Xile to recommend somewhere for us to eat lunch. He took us to a nearby Hunan restaurant, which was a total dive. The table next to ours was filled with smoking, drinking, ashing-and-spitting-on-the-floor men. And yet, once again, we were surprised by the quality of the food. It was delicious.

We ate Mao’s favourite dish: a sweet pork belly with capsicum. A bubbling hot dish of sticky tofu with chilies. We also had a whole baked fish with shitake mushrooms, which everyone agreed was outstanding.

Xile then took us to the Pearl Market, which was much like the black market we had gone to the other day. It was hectic and mostly full of tacky clothes and bags. The sellers were more than keen to attract our attention: they would grab our arms, block our path, or pull us in different directions. We managed to find a few hidden gems, but decided to draw that episode to a close after an hour or so.

We had a quick Tsing Tao beer and peanuts with Xile at the ‘Leymo’ Cafe before saying our goodbyes and heading to the theatre to see the Shaolin Monks.

Buoyed by our experience at lunchtime, we braved another dive of a restaurant near our hutong for dinner. But it was a disappointment. The same kind of smoking, spitting men. The same sticky table tops and ash on the floor, but not the same calibre of food.

We had lamb with cumin, which was OK - a bit like naughty, fatty popcorn. Also a tiger salad (green pepper and cucumber) and a stringy beancurd salad. 

Utterly exhausted, we made our way back to our hotel and the warmth of our rooms. It was now bitterly cold and we each had more layers on than ever. 

We arrived at the lamasery after lunch. It was spectacular: shrine after shrine, each one housing a bigger, more impressive buddha than the last. Jaw-dropping paintings, decorative art, incense, sand sculptures; the place was awash with people and yet also peaceful.

From the peace of the temple to the throngs of the market place; we descended from Nirvana to the depths of the black market. 

Spread over multiple floors, we perused everything from trainers and handbags, to tea and gadgets. Sellers caterwauled from every stall. This was shopping at its most aggressive. Bartering was the order of the day with prices dropping from 800 Yuan to 100 Yuan on a single item. 

It was exhausting, fun and probably quite vile. I felt like I had slipped from a higher consciousness to a lack of conscience. And yet my new gold converse feel rather comforting on my tired feet. 

By dinner time, we were still shopping and really still quite full from lunch, so it wasn’t until very late that we started looking for a restaurant in earnest. The place we found was on a tiny hutong, east of the drum tower called Mr Shi (pronounced ‘sher’). It was really not the most salubrious location but having had a good experience with our lunchtime restaurant, we felt it was worth a go.

Inside was chaotic and frankly filthy (motorcycles parked next to tables, sticky tables and chairs etc),  but that wasn’t going to stop us. Mr Shi is famous for his dumplings, so we ordered three kinds: pork and pepper, beef and carrot, egg and leek. 

Mr Shi invited me to come into the kitchen and have a go at making some of the fried dumplings. I obliged, of course.

On the side, we ordered 1000 year old eggs, cucumber and garlic salad, and crispy fried green beans with Sezchuan pepper. Absolutely, utterly scrumptious.

As well as the delicious food, Mr Shi was hilarious. We laughed and giggled all the way through our meal and didn’t stop over the long walk back.

Isabel is 95 and sharp as a tack. She was born in Szechuan and lived most of her life in Beijing. Her son Michael’s English drifts in and out of Mandarin without, it would seem, him noticing. Raised in China, Mandarin is very much his first language. 

Both my cousins are wonderful, welcoming, fascinating people. (To find out more about my cousins in China, there are plenty of articles and books to read about their experience of living in Beijing through the Cultural Revolution. Start here and read on)

Michael guided us through a small shrine to a former prime minister of the Song Dynasty (late 13th Century), Wen Tianxiang. This great ‘scholar-general’ was imprisoned, tortured and later executed by the Mongols during Kublai Khan’s invasion of Beijing. Michael’s wife also happens to be a direct descendent of his - so naturally, Michael explained, he’s our ancestor, too.

Wen was imprisoned for several years within the compound where the shrine now sits. A tree within one of its inner courtyards is said to have been planted by Wen himself. It’s a jujube tree and we were able to taste its fruit which, when dry, tastes just like a date.

We then made our way to a local restaurant on the corner of two hutongs. The exterior looked none too promising, but once inside it was rather charming.

Of course there were no loos in the building, which seems to be the case in most places in hutongs. I therefore braved the public toilets, which are situated at regular intervals throughout the area. There were no doors and no cubicles. It was freezing (only a curtain in the main doorway protecting me from the elements) and what Jean-Pierre later termed a ‘squat and talk’ situation. I didn’t mind really, but I shouldn’t want to repeat the experience every day.

Meanwhile, lunch was outstanding. The food was Yunnan-style and utterly moreish. We ate tofu with pork, juicy Szechuan aubergines, a whole fished served in bubbling chili sauce, beef with mint, buttery Chinese leaves and fried rice with olive tips.

The conversation was equally engaging as Isabel recounted the time she spent living with remote tribes in Northern China and Tibet in the ’30s and ’40s. She was documenting their way of life and the photographs she took at the time are set to be published in a book this Spring.

The meal, though ridiculously inexpensive, was far too much for four people. Valiant though our efforts to polish off every dish may have been, there were still plenty of leftovers for Isabel and Michael to take home. 

Happy, warm and very full, we bade farewell to our cousins and made our way to our afternoon destination. Next stop: Beijing’s sprawling, spectacular Lamasery.

We arrived at our hotel in Beijing at about mid-day. We’re staying at a beautiful, traditional inn called the Lu Song Yuan, which is situated on an old hutong in the city centre. My room has a four-poster bed and views out onto one of many courtyards around which the hotel unfolds. It’s cold outside and Jean-Pierre and I can’t seem to get our layers right - no matter how many jumpers we put on, it never feels like quite enough. 

Today was all about exploring. We set off down our hutong on foot just to start getting the feel of the place. Shops and cafes line the hutong at right angles to ours.

It’s Sunday and everyone seems to be out for a casual stroll and a snack.

We ate lunch at a Tibetan cafe - blanketed by Tibetan chanting music. We feasted on beef momos (dumplings) and a ‘fred’ noodle dish with vegetables. Jean-Pierre had a barley soup that was regrettably bland, but the rest was warming and delicious.

Having then walked through the rest of the afternoon - losing ourselves down alleyways, dipping in and out of shops selling everything from high-end fashion to traditional instruments and kitsch Communist trinkets - we slinked back to the warmth of our hotel for a nap.

Dinner was a stone’s throw away in the complex next door. Red lanterns at the lacquer door welcomed us into the building. Indoors, exposed beams, gold silk wallpaper, tiled floors and latticed windows overlooking an inner courtyard.

We feasted on roast duck with fermented beans and chili, beef stew with water chestnuts and dish after dish of tantalising side orders, amuses-bouches and desserts. I was so engrossed in eating, I forgot to photograph any of the dishes, which is a shame as this was certainly the best food I’ve had on this trip so far. Undoubtedly more to follow, however.