Dining in Beijing

By Stephanie Davis Goad
Project Coordinator
Missouri Multicultural Network

Peking roast duck is one of the most prevelant dishes in China. Here at the Bejing Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, a chef comes to the banquet room to carve a roast duck.

What was interesting was discovering how that because of the cultural barrier that exists between the U.S. and China, members of our spy plane crew groused at being fed chicken feet while being held captive on Hainan Island, when in all actuality, they were being well fed. Chicken feet are considered a delicacy in China, and it wasn't until we were served this unusual dish that we knew to appreciate it.

When dining in Beijing, don't expect an eat-and-run situation. The meals typically last between an hour and an hour and a half. The Chinese take time to savor each dish, and eating with chopsticks is commonplace. Of course, if they noticed one struggling to manipulate these foreign utensils, they would offer a fork. We had only one taker in our group, but the rest of us used chopsticks for the entire five days we were in Beijing.

Banquet-style dining is the most popular style of dining in Beijing. Another style is buffet. Our dining experiences while there were nothing short of regal. We were treated to five or six elegant banquet-type meals, given by several different hosts from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, where we stayed throughout the conference. Our first night in Beijing, our hosts took us to the Beijing Quanjude Roast Duck, the nicest restaurant in the city, we were told.

We dined on Peking roast duck, which is carved into 90 parts. No part of the duck goes to waste. We ate the duck's tongue and kidneys, along with the leg meat and other parts we didn't care to inquire about. They even used the bones to make our duck soup!

Banquet-style dining is one of the most popular types of dining in Beijing. Often, more than 20 dishes are served atop a giant Lazy Susan. Duck, fish, chicken, and pork are some of the more common meat dishes found in Mandarin cuisine.

Typically the banquet room was small, having only one round table to accommodate eight to 10 people. The table, covered with a heavy, floor-length velvet or linen tablecloth and trimmed with traditional Chinese place settings, was topped with a giant "Lazy Susan," on which the servers placed each dish. To sample a dish, guests and the host would swivel the Lazy Susan, stopping at the selected dish and using their chopsticks to snag a serving. It was common to taste more than 20 dishes in one sitting. We learned to take minimal portions of each one, so as not to wax miserable before the fruit was served. Fruit, strangely enough, is served after dessert. And, their desserts, typically cream-filled pastries, aren't the sweet that most of us know. Little sugar is used, so to an American who's used to the icky-sweet taste of chocolate cake, cream-filled donuts and apple pie, dessert in Beijing would taste rather bland.

At the banquet table, the distinguished male guest, when asked his preferred beverage, sets the beverage precedence for the entire table. For instance, if the guest selects beer as his beverage of choice, everyone is served beer. And their beer mugs are not small!

Toasting is common at the Chinese banquet table, we noticed. The host will make a toast and clink the glass of each guest, sometimes shouting "Ganbei!" which means "bottoms up," at which point guests feel obligated to tip their glasses, downing their beverage all at once.

Usually a formal affair in Beijing, banquet-style dining requires an elegant, but traditional Chinese banquet-style place setting, complete with chopsticks, soup bowl and tea cup.

Hot, wet towels were provided on a tiny porcelain holder next to each place setting. Guests used those to wash their hands before, during and after the meal. It's customary in China to depart the banquet 10 minutes after the towels have been passed and the tea has been served, but in our case, the towels were handed out before the meal, and the host announced the end of the banquet. Lingering in the banquet room or in a restaurant is not appreciated.

Sure, to satisfy our hunger we could have hit the fast-food restaurants while in Beijing. The city boasted several universal restaurants such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we can get that type of food at home. This was our opportunity to try real Chinese food on the other side of the world, not the American version of it.

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