Wangfujing Street Beijing China
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Walk with Cham in Wangfujing Street
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| Wangfujing Night Snack Market |
I love eating street foods and shopping for souvenirs! In Beijing the most famous street that has all the endless variety of street foods and souvenir trinkets is in Wangfujing Street. So I definitely scheduled a trip there on the very first day but unfortunately we weren't able to go as we were dead tired from all the walking but nonetheless we squeezed this in on our last day and that time we made sure to visit it.
Wangfujing District
It is one of the busiest shopping districts in Beijing that is home to several big shopping malls such as Oriental Plaza, Beijing Department Store etc which has all the modern fashion finds, electronics, entertainment and dining. It is also the only pedestrian street in Beijing.
How to go to Wangfujing
We took the Subway Line 1 then got off at Wangfujing then walked for around 6 minutes. Just follow the crowd, most of them are probably going there.
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| Pedestrian Street at Wangfujing |
It began raining when we first arrived so it was hard to roam as the area is open. But good thing it stopped after a few minutes. While we were looking for the actual Night Food Market, we saw the store that Uti (hotel staff) recommended where to find the best Peking Duck. So we thought it was a restaurant but we were wrong, it is a shop which sells packed Chinese snacks and one of those snacks was the packed Pecking duck - Nyek nyek!
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| Shop which sells packed Peking duck |
Wangfujing Street
Right across the store we then found a small, busy and colorful alley with hanging Chinese lanterns and archway, I immediately recognized it from the internet, the famous Wangfujing Street!
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| Wangfujing Street |
The Old-Beijing street is a long alleyway that sells all sorts of Chinese exotic snacks and souvenir items. The very first stall which welcomed us was a famous exotic street food, scorpions on sticks-yipes!!!
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| Scorpions! Anyone? |
A few meters on the right, our eyes widened as we were brought to a place filled with stores that sells different kinds of oriental items! Items such as chopsticks, chinese shirt, scarves, lucky charms, Mao Zedong souvenir items, brushes, terra-cotta warriors, masks, tea sets, artworks, brass sculptures, ink sticks (and the list goes on and on).
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| Souvenir items |
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| Oriental brushes & Chinese decorations |
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| items of Mao Zedong and other famous personalities |
Do not forget to BARGAIN BARGAIN!
Yes! Everything that you are probably looking for can be found in Wangfujing Street but don't fall for their dirty tricks. Most, If not all of the vendors will declare for a double [even triple] price from the actual price so DO NOT FORGET TO HAGGLE, you can do the walk-away trick my dad did when he was asking for a discount rate of the shirt. The vendor immediately dropped the price and hurriedly chased us. From 60 CNY (P440) it dropped to 23 CNY (P166)
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| Where we bought the T-shirt |
We also found a stall that sells chinese snacks and packed Pecking duck along the way. It was the same snack they sell at the first store we found but here their items were way cheaper. Good thing we haven't bought anything from that store yet, so we bought here some for pasalubong.
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| Snacks stall |
Packed Peking Duck
1 piece 49 CNY (P353)
2 pieces 80 CNY (P578)
You can eat it in 4 ways: straight from the pack, fry, oven or microwave
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| Packed Peking Duck |
Chinese assorted snacks
Small | 100 CNY (P723) for 6 pieces
Big | 100 CNY (P723) for 4 pieces
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| Chinese assorted snacks |
Street Foods
After a few walks, we again encountered a second archway.
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| Mama & Papa, are you ready to try the street food? |
Here we saw endless options of street foods!!! From the normal snacks such as chestnuts, yogurts, juices, fruit, potato sticks etc to the very strange like octopus tentacles, grilled grasshopper, worms and other creepy insects etc...
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| Food! Food! Food! |
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| Potato and berries on stick |
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| Tentacles!!! |
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| Fear Factor! |
And so we never left the area without trying some of their crispy scorpions!!!
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| Crispy Scorpions |
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| First! |
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| Second |
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| Third |
The crispy scorpion was actually good! It tasted like crispy crablets we order in restaurants. Daring you to eat the scorpions and tell me what you think :)
Restaurant
On the left side there are a number of restaurant stalls. From the very first day, we were looking for a restaurant that served good peking duck (just like in Shanghai- the Peking Duck in Nanjing Road is to die for!) and we thought that we can finally taste it here. But we were wrong. so wrong.
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| Restaurants |
Good thing I took a picture of the facade to serve as a warning to everyone reading this.
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| Do not go here!!! |
Their menu is pure chinese so we had a hard time ordering, but because this is the only restaurant we saw in the area that sells Pecking duck we had no choice but to dine here. The Pecking duck was priced at 58 CNY (P419) for 1/4 serving we ordered two. But when we saw the actual serving it was totally disappointing!
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| 1/4 of the duck?! seriously?! |
Not only that, the waiter kept on telling us what to order and because the menu is in Chinese we trusted him without even asking for the price. We ordered 3 dim sums (which is soooo not good!), 5 fried rice (but 1 rice is good for 2 persons already) and 2 other dishes. Our bill? P4,000++!!! SO NOT WORTH IT! It was Neal & April's treat for us pa naman :(
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| Happy Shopper |
Although the dining experience was a MAJOR FAIL, Wangfujing's other attractions didn't disappoint. We were able to buy Chinese shirts, packed snacks, packed Peking ducks and many other Chinese trinkets. If I were given another chance to go to Beijing I would love to explore the shopping malls in Wangfujing District more.
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2 comments
What's the name of the restaurant where you ate peking duck?
ReplyDeleteNo English name. But you can check the photo here
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