Lina in China

My friend Nan took me to the most famous Pecking Duck restaurant. It did look impressive and the food was for Chinese standards very expensive. Yet the two of us did not even pay 300 Yuan (30 €) for a complete high class menu.

Inside it looked very luxurious. Nan headed for the stairs but they send us to the elevator. China has this very nice way of blocking an entrance by putting a smiling woman all day in an entrance that is supposed to be blocked. And when you try to go that way she smiles and points the way that you are supposed to go. Sounds like a good way to solve some employment problems at home in Germany…

Upstairs the waitresses even helped us sit down. The menu was written in two languages and had large pictures of the food. Only problem was that the food we got later did not really look like the pictures.

Choosing from the menu was also very funny. Even though Nan is 100% Chinese she does not eat many things that I also would not eat. She said for example: This is duck tongue. I can order for you if you want but I am not trying. Seeing some scorpions offered as food she even turned her head disgusted.

Eating Pecking Duck in Beijing

In the end we settled for some mixed pickles that are very famous in some areas of China and are really almost as good as Spreewaldgurken. And then also ate something that was supposed to be salad with duck breast. But it neither looked like salad nor like chicken breast nor any like the picture. Nan even complained to them in Chinese but they told her important is what is in the words not what is in the picture of the menu…

Even going to the toilet was an experience. There was one employee just for the toilet and she was not like in Germany a cleaning woman. No, the toilet service woman walked me all the way to the right, western style toilet (I wanted to use the Chinese standing toilet as I find them cleaner but she insisted). Then she gave me a paper seat for cleanliness (The toilet did not look very clean though and even with a paper seat I would have preferred the Chinese toilet. But she insisted.) Then she waited right in front of the door. Afraid I would fall in the toilet? I got no idea. A little privacy …? But privacy is a foreign word in China anyway… I kept waiting in the hope she would go away but she just busied herself doing whatever right in front of the door. When I went to wash my hand she did not only show me how the soap-mashine worked, she even got the paper towels out of the supplier for me. Now that was a nice service! How often I have cursed the paper suppliers in Germany!

Tags: Good Food in Beijing, Pecking Duck in Beijing, Real chinese Food

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 20:17 and is filed under Beijing, Chinese Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.