Scorpion on a stick anyone?

In the centre of Beijing is a Street Food market called Donghuamen Night Food Street (东华门美食坊夜市). I'm not convinced that locals ever eat anything there. Maybe if you're on a date or something? But mostly it's tourists, foreign or Chinese, looking for something weird to eat and a good photo opportunity. The theme is food on a stick. Strawberries, kiwi fruit, chicken, fish, pork, lamb, snake, centipede, squid, crab, prawns, silk worm larvae, star fish, scorpions, grasshoppers, sea urchins – you name it, they've got it.

We weren't brave enough to try a scorpion, so instead we went for some squid and a Beijing Burger. The squid was pretty good, tasted like squid you'd get anywhere, with a good spicy sauce added after it was grilled over charcoal.

A Beijing burger is basically like a hamburger – bread, kind of like an English muffin but a bit softer, split in two and containing some minced meat. It was hot and reasonably tasty if you ignored the grease. Thoroughly uninspiring really. I guess it would be a good 3am post clubbing fix, but otherwise I wouldn't bother. Go for the centipede instead.

Long live the great unity of the people of the world!

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was visiting Beijing the day we went to Tian'anmen Square. Hence all the Australian flags proudly flapping in the breeze. The title of this entry is one of the two inscriptions next to Mao's picture: "世界人民大团结万岁 Long live the great unity of the people of the world". Rather fitting I thought!

Tian'anmen square was modelled on the Red Square in Moscow, however Chinese architects managed to make it five times bigger than the Red Square. You can certainly fit many matching hat wearing tour groups into the square on a Tuesday afternoon.

For most Chinese people, if they only ever make one visit to Beijing in their life, Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City are the two places they will go and see. Tian'anmen Square symbolises the power and success of the Communist Party through its stark Stalinist architecture, completed in record time by hard working and committed patriots, and its massive scale. The Forbidden City represents China's glorious imperial history. Most of the younger generation do not know anything about other event's that occurred at Tian'anmen (literally 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace'). It's interesting that Westerner's have such different ideas associated with these places.

I wonder, if you could look inside someones imagination as they gazed awestruck at the vastness of this concrete square, what would a Chinese person be imagining and what would a Western person be imagining?

My advice – bring a hat. It's hot and there are no trees. Security risk, you know.

Dim Sum Beijing Style

Apologies for the two week silence. I have been inundated with guests, and playing host requires a lot of time and effort and eating out. So now I have lots of material and hopefully, a little time on my hands to regale you all with it!

All my guests get taken to a Cantonese restaurant near Ditan Park called Jin Ding Xuan. It's in a fantastic old Chinese style building that is garishly lit up at night, with loud Chinese pop music piped outside presumably to please the waiting customers. There is always a queue. They do dim sum (or yum cha) and they also have an a la carte menu. We pondered both and excitedly ordered a large selection of dim sum and some soft shell crab.

The food is excellent, on a par with the best dim sum places I've been to in Sydney and Singapore. The sichuan dumplings are something I have not come across before. Pork dumplings in a wonderful spicy sichuan sauce – which goes with absolutely everything! We also had sichuan noodles, which again are very spicy and have a great texture with the crunch of peanuts.

By the time the soft shell crab arrived we were quite full. But we decided we had ordered it, we would have to find the space to eat it! The crab, deep fried in a light batter, was juicy on the inside with a nice crisp texture to the batter. It was served with a sweet chilli sauce – but also worked well with the sichuan sauce from the dumplings!

Those of you who are aware of my teapot obsession can admire the final photograph – the restaurants teapots. I want one. Such a lovely shape and colour. I think we had about 6 refills of hot water!! Conveniently, the bathrooms there are quite clean so you can drink tea to your hearts content!!