January 30 part 5: Food Street (beware your stomach)

After returning to our hotel from the Hutong tour, we went right back out for more adventure.  I’d seen pictures of “Food/Snack Street” in other adoptive families’ blogs and wanted to see it in person and capture some images.  A couple other families wanted to see it as well, so we headed out on foot. We found the area but it wasn’t open, yet, so we split up and Kevin and I went into the mall nearby.

One thing China sure knows how to do is build UP!  I think there were 7 floors.

I think these figures throughout the mall were meant to uh... encourage "proper behavior." ;)

Whoa!  Who’s on the big screen?!  ;)  Okay, okay...everyone else was doing it!

After spending some time in the mall (we bought ONE thing), we decided to see if Snack Street was open and we were not disappointed!

This is an outdoor area with a long row of stalls all connected together.  We started at one end (be sure to click on the pics to enlarge them)...

Anything you can think of, including things you’d never think to eat... on a stick!  What surprised us the most was the smell.  Oh, was it AWFUL!  Many times I had to step away as my throat tightened.  I thought about stopping but no way was I going to miss capturing these special photos!  Luckily, the worst smell wasn’t constant.  It hit us every 5 stalls or so.  We think it might have been the squid cooking or something.  ::shudder::

Some of the people working in the stalls got a real kick out of us Americans taking pictures!  They would call us over and try to get us to buy something on a stick, telling us it was good and safe for us to eat, and then they would smile as they watched our expressions.  And, yes, there were actually local people lined up, buying these things and eating them!

One of the guys at this stand just had to point out his duck to me.

We saw people wearing these masks all over China.  Our rep in Beijing told us they originally gained popularity as a germ control method but now were mostly used for keeping warm.

After we’d seen it all, we walked back to our hotel.

Bikes, bikes, and more bikes- a major form of transportation in China.

The church right outside our hotel window.

Across the street.

We rested for 5 minutes and then met up with another family to go eat at the noodle place, again.  Honestly, I was so exhausted and had really lost my appetite on Snack Street, so I didn’t eat much.

When we got back to the hotel, I zonked out at 7:30pm but woke back up at 10:15 due to my phone going off with texting (ahem).  It was so much fun to be able to text friends and family back home but the 14-hour time difference made it a little challenging.