Have I died and gone to roast duck heaven?? I think I must have. Tucked into an old hutong alley in Beijing is a true gem – Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant. Yes, it’s in various guide books so it’s no longer a secret, but that doesn’t make it any less good. This is truly fabulous food. And exactly what makes this truly fabulous food?
Firstly, the location – just follow the ducks painted on the walls to get to this old house down a small lane. The restaurant entrance is a red door leading down a dark hallway. At the end of this you can see the flames from the duck roasting oven straight ahead, with five fat ducks hanging inside. I can already tell that this is going to be a memorable meal. Walk past the fireplace into the covered courtyard, where the elderly owner is having a bowl of duck soup before the busy night ahead, and chatting with the waitresses. Doorways lead off the courtyard to various ‘dining rooms’ which were presumably once living areas and bedrooms. The walls are painted a cheery imperial yellow and there is geometric patterned lino on the floors. If you imagine your grandmother decided to convert her old weatherboard cottage in Spring Hill to a char-grilled steak joint, you’ll get the picture. It’s very home style.
Month: April 2010
Beijing Hand Made Shoes

Beijing TianHai Dumplings
Peach Blossom Snow
The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu
Great Outfit for the Great Wall
Chinese women sometimes have a knack for wearing the most incredibly impractical outfits. Every time I have been on top of a mountain in China, there is always someone in skyscraper heels, wobbling over uneven paths and being steadied by the hand of a boyfriend, girlfriend or husband in more sensible shoes. The outfit usually also involves at least one piece of completely weather-inappropriate attire – think sable-trimmed coat in summer, or sparkly miniskirt in winter. Why be practical when you can be outrageous?
(To be completely fair, I have my own wardrobe full of impractical outfits, and shoes – how I love them. But I never wear them to climb a mountain.)
The Great Wall at Mutianyu
Shanghai Expo Starts in One Week! Oh no!
Shanghai International Expo begins in exactly a week. I haven’t been ignoring it, it’s just more like a state of denial. Expo has become such a pervasive influence on my daily life, I kind of hate it before it’s even started. The endless Expo topiary, building construction, roadworks, repainting and disruption has gone on so long it’s become part of the fabric of Shanghai life for me. And now it’s nearly here.
Now, all intersections are patrolled by two policemen and four traffic guards, plus or minus four Expo volunteers with small red flags and fluorescent armbands. Now everyone will be made to observe the road rules as they are written down.
And the result? Chaos. Everyone is totally confused. What are those red light for? Are you serious officer? I have to actually stop and wait?? Intersections have become places where policemen argue with scooter riders all day about why they can’t get around a red light by driving on the footpath. And the poor pedestrians, accustomed to crossing when there is a break in the traffic, are being held back at corners until the little green Walk man appears. Emotions are running high.
3. Whenever I go on the subway, I have to pass through a security check, including a bag X-ray. A friend had a highly dangerous bottle of red glitter nail-polish confiscated, yet another walked through with a recently purchased kitchen cleaver, unstopped. Perhaps there’s a gang of nail-polish wielding graffiti artists roaming the subway painting small but subversive slogans on the walls. Who knows?
4. On a positive note, there are now five thousand Expo taxis. They’re clean, they’re cute, and they have seatbelts in the back seats. All the rest of Shanghai’s taxis have no seatbelts in the back seats, although sometimes there is a seatbelt but nothing to plug it into, or a plug but no seatbelt. Intriguing. Of course, in the Expo taxis, you don’t have to actually buckle up. It’s not illegal to not wear a seatbelt. But they’re there. And they look good to foreign visitors, even if nobody actually uses them. And that’s what counts.
I’ll be in Beijing for the next few days. Catch up soon on all the news from the North.
The Good Oil
The Chinese are great recyclers and they put us to shame in many respects. But sometimes there has to come a point where recycling goes too far. This week I was out walking and was drawn to a lively and packed Chinese restaurant. Everyone inside looked like they were enjoying themselves, certainly, they were all eating. I was starving, and was about to walk in when I noticed the adjoining kitchen, above.
Through the grimy windows and smoke blackened walls I could see five cooks crammed into a space the size of a bathroom. Steam billowed out through the windows whenever the lid was taken off a big pot, and the roar of four wok burners going full bore all at once could be heard above the din of orders being shouted by the waitresses.
Then the extractor fan pipe caught my eye. Coming directly out from the kitchen wall, it was covered in a patina of grease and dirt. Hanging from it, if you look carefully below, were two plastic bottles positioned to catch all the cooking oil as it condensed along the inside of the pipe. Now, you might say that this was just to prevent the pipe from getting blocked, and was going to be thrown out later. But I’ve seen and heard enough in Shanghai’s backstreets to know that this cooking oil was going right back where it came from – the kitchen.
Oil recycling, albeit not like this, is apparently common in Chinese restaurants – big restaurants sell used oil to small restaurants, who use it again and on-sell it to ever smaller restaurants. At the bottom of the food chain, literally, are the myriad street stalls who make some of the tastiest food in town. Rumour has it that even congealed oil from inside street grease-traps is retrieved, heated, strained and resold. I’m both disgusted and fascinated by this – on the one hand, it’s totally revolting, on the other, oil is heated to 240 degrees for deep frying, which should be hot enough to kill anything really, even cockroaches.
Pop-up Shop, Changle Lu
This little shop, if you could really call it a shop, cuts keys and that’s about it. As you can see, it’s also configured for night-time trading. The shop owner wheels it out on a small trolley from his doorway onto the footpath each morning, and wheels it away again at the end of the night.
Every single street in Shanghai has a pop-up key cutter like this, as well as a pop-up mending shop (a treadle sewing machine on a trolley) and a pop-up bicycle repair shop. Usually there are also two or three pop-up cigarette sellers and a few random pop-ups, like the lady outside the entrance to Fuxing Park who sells batteries on odd days and slippers on even days. It’s so convenient to be able to get my batteries and slippers on the way home from the park.
They all represent a kind of street-level micro-commerce that used to be common in the west until it was regulated out of existence. Bring back the street vendors! They give the city so much life and character. Can you imagine never having to walk more than fifty metres to get your keys cut or your trousers re-hemmed?