Donghuamen Night Market, Beijing

After finally peeling myself away from that mess at Wangfujing, I made my way down the street to another night market, which fortunately was much bigger and spacious and hence less hectic. They tended to sell a lot of the same skewers and such, so I went to try to find something more unique, the first of which were these crab roe buns above. Unfortunately they didn't taste as good as they looked. I mean, there was nothing wrong with them per se, but they just weren't anything so mindblowing that I wanted to get more.



I moved on, trying out other little things like fishball soup or these soft shell crabs on a stick, which unfortunately didn't taste great either given that he slathered it in some kind of sweet sauce (and yes, I got some amusing looks from people watching me shove this three-crab-kebab into my face). I ate one and sadly threw the rest away, as well as a similarly sauced-up fish. Other stuff that I tried included some kind of beef and pig tripe, which again wasn't so interesting that I wanted to finish it, as well as some vegetarian stir fry, cold spicy noodles, and spring onion burrito-like thing, none of which were seasoned the way that I would have hoped.



After all of that sodium though, I needed a drink, and I found a bunch of people buying these little ceramic things. When I asked the guy what it was, he told me that it was "sour milk." At the risk of getting Alien Nation flashbacks, I tried one, only to realize that it was sweet and chunky...it was basically yogurt. Frankly, that was probably one of the best things I ended up getting out of the entire night, especially since that Beijing Beer was pretty nasty. OK there was one more thing that I liked: those candied haw fruit things on a skewer. I just wish there were a better way of spitting out the seeds.