I’m on a plane again just two days after coming back from China. My colleagues were making fun of me yesterday about this. “You just got back last night, and you’re on a flight again tomorrow? You’re crazy!” Well, when work has to get done, work has to get done. And I’d like to say that I pride myself on being productive and getting crap done, which means I oftentimes need to travel to do this with customers. 

Traveling to see customers also takes me out of my usual day-to-day routine, which helps me keep my sanity, especially when yesterday’s snafu occurred. I don’t have to directly deal with the same politics, the same insipid nonsense of office life that makes me want to grind my teeth down. And, I also get the ability to have little luxuries like a hotel room that overlooks a manmade lake at a resort in Orlando, or enjoy lobster deviled eggs at a well-appointed bar at the JW Marriott in Grande Lakes. In this sense, I don’t have much to complain about and recognize that I am quite a lucky person. 

The last time I transited in Tokyo Narita International Airport was two years ago when Chris and I were passing through to and from Taiwan. I remember thinking that on our way back to New York, I wanted to stop by one of the duty-free shops, Akihabara, to pick up some Royce chocolate that I love. In Japan, these Royce Nama chocolates are only the equivalent of $4-5 USD, while at the duty-free shop at Narita, they are around $6 USD. However, if you want to buy them in the U.S. at an official Royce shop, like the ones that are in New York City, for the same box, you’d pay $18 USD, which is crazy! I understand why they would do this from a capitalistic, money-making perspective, but on the consumer side, there’s no way I would be that desperate to pay over three times as much for the same product, even if I only pass through Tokyo every few years. These are little luxuries I can live without.

Two years ago, though, I failed at my attempt to buy them because the line for checkout at this duty-free shop was far out of the store and snaking out. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing this with my own eyes; the wait would have been at least 45 minutes in line, not to mention all the aggressive Chinese tourists literally sweeping up shelves and shelves of products into their shopping carts. Others were running around chaotically, grabbing whatever was available and barely even looking at what they were snatching up to buy. I was really upset then and determined to make sure I actually came out successful this time. And I was successful this time at two different stores, one without even a minute’s wait. There was slightly less aggression from Chinese tourists, but this time, I noticed that some of the people buying multiple shopping carts-worth of Japanese chocolate and green-tea biscuits were not just Chinese this time, but white American and European tourists! More competition at duty-free now! It seems like everyone is discovering all these Japanese sweets and wanting to take them home, both for themselves and as well as their family and friends as gifts.

Chris’s commentary on food has certainly evolved over the course of our relationship. While he’s always enjoyed food, as the years have gone on together, he’s become far more vocal when it comes to flavors, textures, and presentation. This has even extended itself into foods he feels okay about, but doesn’t necessarily love or gravitate towards, such as bubble tea/tapioca tea/boba, and loose leaf tea, like the ones we’ve been tasting throughout this China trip. Before this trip, Chris never had a strong opinion about any bubble tea or loose leaf tea I’ve tasted or bought and had him try. He would just say they were fine or good and say it was my choice whether I liked them enough to buy them, and leave it at that.

As far as I can recall this trip, we’ve had about five different bubble tea drinks, and he’s declared the Yu Cha outside of our Chengdu hotel his favorite: in the taro milk tea, there was a very generous portion of minced and stewed taro — creamy, slightly sweet, and very rich. Then, in the egg pudding milk tea, the egg pudding was also creamy and rich, eggy and custardy. He disliked one of the ubiquitous chains we went to for their milk tea, insisting it wasn’t that sweet or unique, that the tea flavor felt watered down. And he’s not a huge fan of the “cheese” top with the salty-sweet milk foam, even though I love it. “That’s not good… I don’t want that,” he thought out loud. “That’s just tea with some milky thing on top, and that is not milk tea. Milk tea is tea with milk incorporated into it.”

The worst tea tasting we had was of a few Sichuanese teas at a Tianfu tea shop in Beijing. I was unimpressed by all four of the teas we tried. Two of them tasted like vegetables in a cup. A third one tasted like… nothing. The fourth one was probably the most flavorful, but that was a sad comparison when holding it against the other three. Chris sat there, also unimpressed after sipping from his tasting cup, and insisted that two out of four of them were “grass in a bowl. This is like drinking grass. This is not good. But, you’re drinking it, so you decide.” Luckily, the shop assistant helping us knew zero English and understood nothing that Chris so vocally stated. When she asked our opinion, I simply said that we were not particularly fond of any of these, and left it at that. She seemed crushed knowing she wouldn’t get a commission off of us.

But while at Zhu Ye Qing and the tea tastings we did at the tea market in Shanghai and Beijing, Chris declared these tastings far, far superior to the one at Tianfu tea shop, which is a mid-tier tea chain throughout China. “Not even a single tea we tasted at this place (Tianfu) can compare to the quality of teas we had at these other places. They’re just charging you for grass,” he insisted.

Tastes evolve over time, even for things you don’t really think you like much. That’s why it’s good to keep an open mind when traveling to places you aren’t very familiar with and still tasting things when you previously thought you might not have enjoyed them. You might actually discover you like said food or drink because maybe, just maybe you will have a version of it that suits your tastes.

I’ve eaten quite a bit of Peking duck in my life. I’ve felt disappointed by duck experiences in cities other than San Francisco to date. In Boston, they were subpar. Here in New York, it took nearly ten years of living here before I was able to find a place that I could reliably go to and enjoy (and stomach the cost for, since here, it seems like you need to empty out your life savings just to have some version of a Peking duck… that isn’t even that great in the end). In Hong Kong, we had a delicious Peking duck experience, but for me, it was a bit tainted because the thin pancakes that were served seemed underdone and as though there was still flour on them… Were we being served raw pancakes…?

So when we were planning our trip to Beijing, I knew that we had to optimize our Peking duck experience, so I did pretty extensive research before I landed on one specific place that I knew we absolutely had to go to: Siji Minfu, which just happens to be a few blocks away from our hotel. They don’t seem to take reservations anymore, so after our half-day trip to the Great Wall, I asked our driver if he could drop us off there at around 1:30, which is considered “off-peak” hours for the place. I’d previously read that since they stopped taking reservations, diners, both local and tourist, can wait up to two hours for a table, and neither of us was interested in waiting that long for anything.

We were in luck: the hostess told us that only eight parties were ahead of us, and it would be anywhere from a 15-20-minute wait. I was already salivating, thinking about how glorious this meal could be that was just half an hour away.

Oftentimes, the uninitiated ask, what makes Peking duck different from the average roast duck? Isn’t duck just duck? Well, no, it isn’t, and it’s an extremely laborious and time intensive process that no average home cook with an average kitchen could replicate. Peking duck, from a historical standpoint, has existed for several hundred years, but it wasn’t until the mid 1800s when someone decided to open a restaurant here in Beijing that publicized this duck making process to the everyday Beijinger: chefs would hang the ducks upright in an oven heated with fruitwood fire. This hanging technique allows for more space for the duck’s endless rendered fat to properly drain, which results in a crispier, drier skin: the pride and joy of Peking duck. In a good Peking duck, the skin and the meat is fully and completely separated so that the skin can render out fat from both the top and the bottom, and also bastes the meat as it cooks.

We waited a long time for our duck after ordering.. it felt like at least an hour. It was so long that Chris started getting cranky as he saw other tables being served their ducks and having them butchered for them alongside their tables. Once the duck is taken out of the oven, it is hung and rested, then the chef wipes off any excess fat from the skin, and puts the duck on a serving tray and gives it to one of a handful of butchers who will present this glory to you, the diner. You have the option of ordering freshly made, paper-thin pancakes for wrapping, as well as little condiment trays that are filled with crushed garlic, various pickled vegetables, batons of thinly sliced cucumber and scallion, and the most savory and complex hoisin sauce I’d ever tasted in my life. It was very obviously fermented and made of beans… When I think about it now, maybe it wasn’t even “hoisin sauce” as I know it here. But regardless, it was the most delicious sauce I’ve ever had served with Peking duck. Chris was in love with this.

The skill with which the butcher exercised as he cut through this duck was so impressive; each cut was quick and swift, and not a single piece of skin or meat was wasted or left on the bone, unlike in the States, when I oftentimes am lamenting how much meat is left on the bone and sent back to the kitchen after slicing. I couldn’t believe how quickly he cut up this entire duck for us. When it arrived, beautifully laid out and presented on three different serving platters on our table, it was still hot and steamy. The duck was finally ready for us… even though we had been ready for the duck ages ago.

One bite of the skin and the meat, and I was in heaven: the meat, despite being fatty duck meat, was not even in the least bit fatty or greasy. It had the perfect soft texture and taste, and actually felt lean! And the skin is a completely different story: it was crispy without being crunchy, if that makes any sense. It literally just shattered in my mouth. And when I left it to linger on my tongue, it would dissolve within seconds, pretty much melting away. The flavor was so sweet, rich, savory, smoky, and deep; there’s truly no other duck experience I’ve had that is even a fraction of what this was to me.

When I’ve spoken with people who have traveled around China, most often say that Beijing is not one of their favorite places. Whether that is related to the food, the constant feeling of the government watching you everywhere given that it is China’s capital, to the sense of arrogance one can encounter from Beijingers, it seems to generally be agreed upon.

So, I wasn’t that surprised when we arrived, and I immediately felt irritated not only by the level of heat and humidity, but also by the constant stream of cabbies who either tried to lie and tell me that their meter wasn’t working and that they’d have to offer me a fixed fare, or they’d tell me that they’d only take me if I’d pay them 100 yuan (for a ride that probably shouldn’t cost more than 15-20). It was never like this in Shanghai, in 2006 or a few days ago. It was absolutely nothing like this in Chengdu or Leshan. So this was just infuriating. I would yell at them and tell them I wouldn’t accept it, that they were trying to cheat me and that they were con men. I’d then walk away in a huff. Chris, more aggressively, would yell at them, leave their cab doors open, and even kick their cars (to which they seemed genuinely frightened. I mean, he’s a brown man in a yellow country, after all… and they can never quite predict what the brown man would do, right?).

So, it was a welcome break to spend half a day with Zhang Feng, our driver, who took us to Huanghuacheng, or the “yellow flower” section of the Great Wall, about 90 minutes outside of Beijing. I’d read previously that this section of the Great Wall had previously been closed to the public, but two years ago, they’d opened it back up. It is not maintained and restored at all, and the section where you actually enter is technically on private land that is owned by some local people, who Feng paid via WeChat (seems sketchy, but I’m okay with that… but if you think about it, this is private land for a public landmark… what…?!). I asked him how much the admission was that these people were charging, and I think he said it was only 30 yuan, which is crazy to me.

Zhang was a bit relieved when he found out that I could speak some Chinese. I knew when I booked this that the company I was interfacing with had run out of English guides, but given I was desperate to a) go to a section of the wall that would be less crowded and more unpreserved and b) not do a big group tour, I told the person I was corresponding with that a driver who speaks limited English would be fine… since that was all that was available. If he was just our driver, he could just be that. And if he would be willing to chat, I could always translate to Chris. And through chatting with Feng, I realized “limited” English really just meant that he could say hello, goodbye, and thank you. But he was smart in that he used his mobile device’s translation app when he wanted to convey things he couldn’t do with language. In the end it was fine because it meant I could practice my Chinese and work on my listening skills. He was extremely chatty, asking about everything from our trip to what the U.S. was like to my family, even asking me when I was planning to have kids (I expected this when I told him how old I was. Chinese people don’t seem to think any topic is off limits, especially when they are talking to people of their “own kind”).

So he took us to this section of the wall, which is also known as being the only section of the 13,000+ mile-long wall that has a body of water. The wall stretches from Gansu province in the west all the way to Liaoning in the east — if you take a look at a map of the wall laid out over China — that’s pretty darn long. It was a bit ominous given that we could see that an entire section had broken off. He kept yelling from afar not to get too close to the break-off point at the end, otherwise we’d literally fall into the lake. And it was even more ominous given that it was grey and raining, so it was extremely wet and slippery everywhere. In many sections of the wall, there are no steps; it’s just a steep incline that you’re supposed to navigate on your own. Going up is fine… coming down might be a concern. With the slippery surfaces, many times, we were forced to use our hands to actually climb up. I understand why now, the description on their website suggested that anyone who is elderly or pregnant not visit this section.

The greatest part of coming here, though, was that there was almost no one there. At most, we probably saw 16-20 other people total, but most of the time, we were together for a few minutes in passing, and they’d leave. The rain eventually stopped, and given the heat and humidity, the bricks from the wall started slowly but surely drying up, so when it was time for us to climb back down, it wasn’t so bad. We kept looking out into this endlessly long wall and fortress that would keep going and going, and see absolutely no one. It was the eeriest feeling standing along the wall and looking out to see no one. There were many moments when I didn’t take any photos and just kept looking out into the mountains and the zigzagging wall, wondering… how strange it is to literally be standing in the most populous country on earth… in what feels like its most deserted area, all by ourselves. We’re alone here, and no one else is here. It almost felt like an echo in my head. It was a very strange feeling, but so peaceful and calm. I smiled to myself. This is really amazing.

Feng was extremely enthusiastic and took endless photos of us in all different angles. He got worried about my photo quality, especially when I was wearing the poncho he gave me to stay dry. “That won’t look good in your photos at home when you frame them and show them to family and friends!” he kept saying. And as we passed through for him to pay the locals our entrance fare, the women fussed over Chris, insisting he either use an umbrella or buy a poncho, otherwise he’d catch a cold and get really sick. Chris was unamused by the mothering.

This was Chris’s second time visiting the Great Wall, and he said that the last section he visited definitely had far more people, and this was an altogether very different experience from his first time.

It felt so strange to be at a tiny section of the Great Wall today, something that was put into production beginning in the seventh century; it’s hard to even fathom anything still standing from them. I was standing on the longest man-made construction in the world, of all time. How crazy, I kept thinking. And it’s far more beautiful in person than I’d imagined from the photos I’d seen before. It’s so famous, something that everyone knows and recognizes, yet not everyone actually goes to see. But then if you think about it, given how long it is, no one ever really goes to see the very beginning or the very end of the wall; the majority of the people who come to see it are like us, visiting from Beijing and doing a half-day or day trip there. I would really love to see what this wall is like at the ends, whether it is in Gansu or in Liaoning.

Last night after we got back from Leshan, we decided to jump right into a must-do on our list, which was having the infamous hot pot in Chengdu. We went to one of the many branches of Lao Ma Tou and ordered some lamb, beef, vegetables, and mushrooms, along with the spicy hot pot. While reviewing the menu on our server’s mobile phone (since we didn’t have WeChat), I went over the different hot pot options. All the prices were the same across the hot pots for the same sizes, but the main difference seemed to be that some options offered a plain broth pot plus a spicy hot pot, while the others offered just the spicy hot pot. I told Chris that we might want to consider the dual option, but he insisted, “Yeah, but we came here for the spicy one, so let’s just get that.” I hesitated when he said this, unsure of exactly how hot this would be, but I thought.. oh, what the heck. Let’s just get the spicy pot!

The server came by to double check on the order after retrieving her phone, and she looked at both of us and gestured to me, speaking in Chinese. “Are you sure you want this spicy pot? It’s really, really hot,” she said to me, skeptically.

“Yes, we’re sure. We like spicy,” I said to her, smiling.

Our server didn’t believe me and nodded over to Chris. “Is he going to be able to handle it?”

“Yes, we’ll be good! Thanks!” I said back.

Huge mistake. And she certainly ended up calling my bluff. The food was so hot and spicy after just the first few bites of dipping in to cook some basic celtus leaves, beef, and lamb, that we were downing soy milk faster than we ever imagined. And the more that red hot pot bubbled and gurgled, the spicier and more ferocious the broth became. I alternated between water and soy milk. I was definitely hitting my heat limit. And Chris finally got to a point where he was sweating so much that he said that he couldn’t eat anymore unless we got a hot water pot to cook the rest of the meat and vegetables.

I sheepishly asked the server if we could get a plain broth pot, and she smiled knowingly at me, remembering our previous exchange, and said she’d take care of it. She ended up bringing over not a plain broth pot, but instead multiple bowls of boiling hot water. I didn’t fully understand why she did this, so we both started adding raw meat to the hot water and eating it. She came by and chuckled a little bit when she saw what we were doing. She then demonstrated to me that she wanted us to add the food to the spicy pot to cook, and then to dunk and soak them in the hot water to remove the excess spice and peppers. “You don’t want to get your stomach sick; don’t just add the meat to the hot water!” she said. She was so empathetic to how ridiculous and overly confident we originally were.

In the end, we survived. We didn’t eat as much of our food as we would have liked since our taste buds got scorched, even after our server brought over the hot water to help us. But we certainly had a memorable Chengdu hot pot experience. And just in case, we both took antacids before going to sleep.

I read that while most tourists who come to Chengdu do a day-trip to Leshan to see the famous Leshan Giant Buddha, locals tend to do a day-trip to Leshan to eat. So, we went to Leshan today to see the giant buddha… and to eat!

The Leshan Giant Buddha is supposedly the largest carved stone Buddha in the world, built sometime between 713 and 803 during the Tang Dynasty, and carved out of a cliff face along the Min and Dadu Rivers. The Buddha faces Mount Emei, famous for its tea and strenuous hike (which we didn’t have time to do).

When you first arrive at the top of the Buddha after a short walk, you don’t really get a sense of exactly how big it is until you decide a lot of stairs and get to its feet at the very bottom where the river is, and you look up. It’s kind of amazing to think that so long ago, people worked so hard (and very likely died) trying to carve this buddha out of a cliff face along a river. We are literally just tiny dots in comparison to this crazy structure.

Afterwards, we took a quick cab ride into the town, where we ate at a place known for its hot pot, though we only got a non-spicy pot and a hot side dish.. of some part of the cow stomach. This area is also known for eating all parts of the animal, and while I wasn’t 100 percent certain what I was ordering, we were pretty much eating all parts of the cow stomach during this meal. The server was really friendly, explaining to me how important it is not to waste any part of the animal and to eat everything, and also served us a special side soup. “This is a very, very special soup,” she said to me, smiling. “It’s very good for your health and we spend hours and hours simmering it!”

I had one sip of the soup and was sold immediately. That was probably one of the richest and most complex clear Chinese soups I’ve ever had. And I’ve had endless delicious herbal/medicinal Cantonese soups in my life made by both family and family friends.

So far, getting around Chengdu and Leshan has been really enjoyable. Even though our Didi app still isn’t working, all the people we’ve interacted with have been so kind and friendly, and the cab drivers have been friendly, chatting me up about where we are visiting from, what we’ve seen and done in China, and asking me about the U.S. and my family. Not even once have I felt like anyone has wanted or tried to rip us off or cheat us in any way. I know times have changed quite a bit since the ’90s when Fuchsia Dunlop lived in Chengdu and studied at the local culinary academy, but I can completely understand why someone would learn to love this general city and area as much as she did. Chengdu is certainly a large city, but it is small when compared to places like Shanghai and Chengdu, and people are just all around kind, friendly, laid-back, and honest: no assumptions, no stereotypes. Things move slower here, and people just go with the flow. I love it here.