Blue Sky and Peking Duck

My friend's favorite Peking Duck restaurant

They use a traditional stove

On my last day in China, Beijing gave me a present. The first blue sky I have seen in Beijing since I came here in July. It was as though the city wanted to say, "you see, we can do it too." I recall my relatives in Qingdao saying you can stay a month in Beijing and never see the sun; I had long given up on seeing the sky in Beijing, but here it was.

Last night, it had been too hard to get a table, so we decided to go get a massage and try again at a later time. In China, there are "blind massage" parlors. According to my friend, these are set up to help people with vision impairment find jobs. All of the masseuses are blind or vision impaired, and the establishments are subsidized by the government as part of their initiative to assist people with disabilities. My friend said that the services are not fancy, like most other spas, but she goes more for charity, to support their livelihoods. Supposedly, these masseuses are very good because they rely a lot more on their sense of touch than people who can see do. 

This was definitely one of the best massages I had have in my life. Already, the masseuses in China are better than the ones I have been to in the US. They are very good at acupressure. They press a point on your back, and the pain radiates through your hip. The masseuse was very skilled. He would touch a point and comment. "You sleep late?" I do. "The muscle in this area tends to be tight for people who sleep late."

"No," his colleague argued, "it's for people who don't get enough sleep." 

Apparently my spine is a little bent to the right, and I should do left side exercises to fix that. He also suggested I play badminton to fix stuff shoulders. It was a great massage, but I left feeling very concerned about the current state of my muscular and skeletal frameworks. 

After the massage, we got a table at a Beijjng style hot pot restaurant. At this type of hot pot, you do not mix your own sauce, which made me immediately skeptical because I am quite picky about my sauce. They give you some concoction made of sesame paste and cilantro. My friend's boyfriend was very excited about going to hot pot. She told me, "these restaurants are more targeted to men, that's why there aren't a lot of vegetables on the menu. Men like this type of hot pot because it's mostly meat, and the beer is cheap. That is what men look for in restaurants--beer and meat." It was very good, and I guess beer and meat usually is pretty good. 

Today, we went back to that famous Peking duck place, in the alley. We managed to get their last table right at opening time, 11:00 am. Apparently a lot of ambassadors have been there, and they have a wall of all the famous people who have visited. It is not a fancy establishment at all. To be honest, I don't think the Peking duck in Beijing is better than in the US. It is good, but I would still say the best Peking duck that I had in my life was at Chef Chang's Duck House in Boston, but they have closed down. That duck was so fat and juicy. Along with the duck at this restaurant, called Liqun, they had sautéed duck gizzard and liver. I like that for the most part, Chinese use every part of the animal. Americans may find it gross, but it makes sense--you've killed an animal, you really should waste as little as possible. My pet peeve, when cooking for picky eaters, is when people don't eat poultry skin. Not just that, but they don't eat the meat around the skin or the bone, so in the end, only a sliver of meat is consumed and so much is thrown away. I get that the skin is unhealthy, so I understand why people don't eat it--but I still hate seeing it thrown away. I had one of my favorite dishes at that restaurant--caramelized sweet potato. I have only had this once before. They serve the sweet potato covered with caramelized sugar sauce. You get a dish of cold water, which you dip the potato in, so the sugar around it becomes hardened. So good. I wish now that I had brought it on the plane with me, but my friend took it back home with her. 

I am now on the plane to San Francisco. I have to say, the Beijing airport is so nice. They offer free luggage trolleys, which made things a lot easier for me. If airports want to increase the money spent at duty free, they should provide these little trolleys. I would no have gone shopping at all, because I would have been tired carrying my bags, but since I had the trolley, I went to a few stores. But I behaved and didn't buy anything, having devoted all of my finances to Shanghai already. 

I only saw a small slice of China, and if I have time and the resources, I would really like to see more of it.