Crossing the street in Beijing can be challenging for a traveler coming from the Western world. Such a traveler may make the simple mistake of assuming that because an intersection looks little different from an intersection back home that the traffic will also behave as it does back home. This is certainly not the case. All traffic signs, signals, and other guiding paraphernalia meant to protect motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians as well as maximize the flow of traffic, are in Beijing—and throughout China, for that matter—nothing more than suggestions. If a traveler merely stands at an intersection for five minutes he will know this to be true.

So, without further delay, here are some guidelines to successfully crossing the street:

1. Use a sky bridge when available, this will put you far out of reach of all the traffic.
2. Stand on the corner and patiently wait for the traffic signal to indicate you can proceed.
3. When you are allowed to walk look both ways, as bicycles and electric bikes will be your first obstacle.
4. As you walk across the street continue to look both ways. In fact, don’t ever stop looking both ways.
5. Once you are roughly a quarter of the way into the street it will be prudent to keep a close watch over your shoulder, watching for cars and busses making left-hand turns. Remember, the cars and busses have the right-of-way. They are bigger than you, after all.
6. Once you are past the halfway point, you can—for the most part—feel safe that no left-turning traffic is going to hit you. Now it is time to concentrate on the traffic making right-hand turns coming towards you.
7. You may at this point be caught between left-hand turning traffic from behind and right-hand turning traffic from the front. Don’t panic. The cars are unlikely to hit you. Patiently wait until there is a gap in the oncoming traffic and proceed.
8. Continue to be mindful of bicycles and electric bikes as you approach and step onto the sidewalk. The drivers of these vehicles do not feel constrained by the flow of traffic and may come from any direction at any time.

There, you’ve done it. You’re on the other side of the street, whole and hearty. Have a great day!

When I talk to my friends and family from back home, I often get asked the same question. “Don’t you get tired of eating Chinese food?” After all, how many times can someone eat fried rice and chow mien before it gets boring? It might be easy to think this way when every airport and late-night college Chinese restaurant in America seems to be serving from the same menu, but the truth is the food in China is much more diverse. There’s so much food to try, and I’ve made it my mission to try it all.

There are so many restaurants, stands, and street carts around Beijing that good food is easy to find and is very affordable. I hardly cook at home with so much food available to buy. When I go to a restaurant, I usually order a plate of jiaozi-dumplings filled with meat, egg, or vegetables that are steamed or boiled. If not that, a bowl of noodles with braised pork belly and cabbage always satisfies. Or, baozi, steamed buns filled with meat and vegetables, always make a great snack. When, I’m eating with friends, we often share plates of chicken, fish, shrimp, lamb, tofu, and of course, rice. If there’s a special occasion, it’s always nice to celebrate with a Beijing duck, the city’s most famous dish. Crisp slices of roast duck are served with onions, cucumber, and a sweet sauce. Put them together and wrap them in a thin pancake to enjoy. It’s a tasty dish, but one you will want to have friends to help you with.

Being in Beijing, there are so many cultures from around China that all come together, and with them come their food. There’s the Sichuan style from the southwest of China, which features plenty of spicy red peppers. Dishes like Kung Pao chicken and Mapo tofu are always popular with those who enjoy their food very hot. Another favorite of mine is the food of the Shaanxi province from the west of China. The region is known for its noodles, which are often cut very thick and long. I often order the biangbiang noodles, a dish that’s just as famous for its difficult-to-write character (seriously, look it up) as it is for its taste. One of Shaanxi’s most prevalent snacks, called roujiamo (or, “Roger Moore” as we like to call it), has become popular amongst many of the teachers here. Essentially a Chinese hamburger, roujiamo is a small sandwich filled with stewed meat. It’s a snack that tastes good at just about any time of the day.

Then, there’s the Xinjiang style food, a style I wasn’t ever aware of until I came to China. After one trip to a Xinjiang restaurant, I was hooked on it. It’s a style of food that comes from a region in the far west of China called Xinjiang, which is home to a large Muslim population. Many of the dishes use lamb as the main meat, sometimes mixed with noodles or vegetables, served on kebabs or baked into a special flatbread called nan. Before coming here, I would never have considered this to be Chinese food, but now it’s always what comes to my mind when I think of my favorite dishes.

Part of exploring Chinese cuisine requires a sense of adventure, as the food can get bizarre, at least by Western standards. For instance, if you’re not comfortable with chicken served with its head still on the plate, you may find some dishes to avoid. In the few months I’ve been here, I’ve tried chicken hearts, pig intestine, and lamb kidney, and some of them have turned out to be among my favorite dishes.  Then, there’s the barbequed scorpions from the Wangfujing snack street which are a must try (at least once). I haven’t tried it all yet, the infamous durian fruit has still eluded me, but I plan to keep on tasting as much as I can while I’m here.

So, when it comes to Chinese food, my best advice is to keep an open mind. Sure, you can find a pizza or McDonald’s if you really crave it, but there’s so much food to explore in China. You may not like everything you try, but you will find something to love beyond your ordinary Chinese take-out menu. Oh, and learn to use chopsticks.

Before you come to China, it’s hard to know what kind of food to expect. The first thing you realize when you arrive is that it’s nothing like the Chinese food you get at home and that it’s much, much better! There are a vast number of Chinese dishes and types of cuisine to try and, lucky for us, most of them can be found in Beijing. Each province has its own specialty, its own cooking methods and ingredient preferences. Chinese people tend to divide the country into four areas of cuisine; North, South, East and West. Cooking from cities within each area is said to share similar characteristics but the food from different areas (North and South, for example) are quite different. In practice, it can be quite hard to pigeon hole Chinese food in this way but there are some general differences. For example, food from the South of China tends to be sweeter whereas food from the West (e.g. Sichuan) is often spicy. Some provinces and cities are more famous for their cuisine than others and this is especially the case when certain dishes have made it onto western menus. ‘Kung Pao’ chicken is a good example of such a dish. The Chinese version (Gong Bao Ji Ding 宫保鸡丁) is from Sichuan province and tends to be more strongly flavored, less sweet and less gloopy than the western counterpart. Other types of food have become famous as ‘symbols’ of Chinese food, such as hot pot. The best thing to do is be adventurous, try new restaurants in your area and go to ‘The Beijinger’ or ‘City weekend’ to find recommended restaurants that specialize in certain regional or ethnic cuisines. In the meantime, I’ve included some of my favorite dishes that I’ve never got tired of eating!

‘Dry spicy pot’ Malaxiangguo 麻辣香锅 (Sichuan province) This is a ‘must try’ dish for anyone who likes spicier food. You can pick the level of spiciness and also some different ‘flavors’ of your ‘pot’. I find this dish to have more of a ‘dry spice’ so don’t be alarmed by the huge number of chilies that come with it. You can entirely customize what goes into your dish as the menu is essentially one long ingredient list. It can be difficult to judge how much to order at first but, for two people, two kinds of meat and maybe 6 other things should be enough. If in doubt, you can ask the waitress if it’s enough or sometimes they’ll tell you it’s not enough. The menus always have pictures.

‘Hand pulled noodles’ la mian 拉面 (Gansu province, Lanzhou city) These hand pulled noodles are increasingly popular all over China and originate from the Muslim Autonomous Region of Gansu. It can be interesting to watch the noodles being made and marvel at the effortlessness skill of the chefs as they turn a mound of dough into these elastic noodles. One way to tell the more ‘authentic’ restaurants is to look at the staff working there (for example, the waitresses often wear headscarves) and you can also usually find Halal certification on the walls.

You Po Mian 油泼面 and Rou Jia Mo 肉夹馍 (Shaanxi province) These delicious noodles are from the home of the Terracotta Warriors (Shaanxi province). They are handmade, cooked quickly then tossed in an appetizing concoction of garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, crunchy bean sprouts and some greens (usually Bok Choi). Stir the noodles thoroughly until they’re well covered. If you ever make it to Xi’an or Shaanxi you’ll find ‘Rou jia mo’ on almost every street, in every restaurant. The name essentially means ‘meat between bread’ and it’s is sometimes translated as a ‘Chinese hamburger’. However, it’s essentially a Chinese pulled pork sandwich with slow braised meat in between a plain flat bread.

Zha Jiang Mian 炸酱面 (Beijing) Zha Jiang Mian is a northern Chinese noodle dish with a sauce comprised of a thick, sweet, salty soy bean paste and minced meat. That may sound a bit strange but when it’s done well it tastes fantastic. The noodles are usually served with shredded cucumber to give the dish some ‘bite’. You can find this dish in many places but it’s worth seeking out somewhere with good reviews to make sure you’re tasting the real deal. Either that or make a local friend who knows how to make it!

‘Big Plate Chicken’ Da pan ji 大盘鸡 (Xingjiang Province) A famous Xingjiang dish comprising of chicken pieces, potatoes, chilies, garlic and onions in a really fragrant, smoky sauce with star anise, cardamom and Sichuan pepper. Despite the pepper and chili it’s usually a mildly spicy dish. You might also find noodles buried beneath the mound of chicken and potatoes. This dish tends to come in different sizes to cater for large parties, however, if there is just one size assume that it’s quite large (enough for two or three). Da pan ji is a good example of ‘fusion food’ in that the star anise and black cardamom have strong links with Central Asia while other ingredients like black vinegar and broad bean paste are Chinese. The Silk Road did connect China to Central Asia via Xingjiang so it seems to make sense that the food from this region would take on characteristics of both regions.

This is just a small glimpse into the food that Beijing has to offer but I hope it’s sufficiently wet your appetite! Please feel free to let me know what you think of my recommendations when you get here.

Hey, my name is Evan and I hail from Galway, Ireland. I have been living and working in Beijing for the past ten months, and have been thoroughly enjoying my experience here. Before making the move to the Big Smoke, I had my worries as everyone does, about how different life would be compared to back home. How could I ever get used to those throngs of people all the time, being the peaceful country lad I am? How would I ever manage to learn some Chinese, when I still couldn’t speak a lick of Irish after fourteen years of it in school? And worst of all where would I get my daily allowance of potatoes?! Continue reading →

If you are thinking of getting out of your comfort zone, Beijing is it! This experience is challenging me in every possible way in becoming the person I was meant to be.

I’ve been in Beijing, China since February 2015. Up to now, it has been a rollercoaster ride – which makes for a fun and thrilling experience. Everything is different, the food the culture and the language. After a while you learn to love your new environment and you get some insight on how things work around here. Continue reading →

I arrived in China in August 2014. I have always enjoyed running and wanted to continue this pursuit in China. Of course, air pollution is a very real problem but there are many apps that you can get on your smart phone to tell you how high the PM2.5 is. On the days when it is high, running with a mask is advisable. There are lots of different types of masks available and it might take trying a few different ones before you find a good one for running with. Continue reading →

I should probably start this piece by admitting I’m a big fan of the Pogues and that one of their most famous songs is also one of my favorites: Dirty Old Town. It was written about a Northern English city called Salford, not far from where I was born and a place where I lived and worked for a few years earlier in my life. It paints a grim picture of Salford. A place of industry, canals, factories and docks and while this isn’t true of the greater part of modern Salford, where the factories are now apartment buildings and the canals pleasant walkways, it is an accurate portrayal of industrial era and post war Salford, filled with dirt, soot and smog. It is only when you take a longer look at the lyrics of the song and listen to the way it is performed that you realise that the song is actually a love letter to the city, with the writer (Ewan MacColl) conjuring powerful images and memories of his hometown, which would also go on to be the hometown of the Pogues.

It’s with this song in mind that I write about Beijing. Continue reading →

After living and teaching English in Spain for a year, I was looking for a change. Luckily, a friend of mine who was looking for a job at home found a link to a teaching job in Beijing and before I knew it I had applied and had an interview with Aihua.

After speaking with Rob during the interview, any fears I had about moving half way round the world had evaporated and I booked my ticket to a place I knew next to nothing about, except for what I knew from Jackie Chan films, and there isn’t any mention of ‘squatties’ in those.

Arriving in Beijing on a warm and humid August afternoon, I was tired and worried that I would land and there wouldn’t be anyone at the airport to meet me. However, once I saw the westerner with the blond hair I knew everything was fine. The first week is a blur of training and getting set up with what you need to survive life in Beijing. The school have a great support staff to help us with any issues we have for day to day living in Beijing, which is great because at times Beijing can be a minefield! Continue reading →

Hi! My name is Max, I’ve been working for Aihua since August 2014. This post is about a message in bottle that travelled from China to the UK, but probably not in the way that you think…

I was teaching a story called ‘Message in a Bottle’ and I thought a nice activity to finish the class off would be to write our own messages and put them in a bottle. Continue reading →

Moving to Beijing is a daunting task for anybody, there are any number of small anxieties which can cause you to pause and consider the magnitude of the move you’re making. One such thought that I had, was the worry that in Beijing it would be more difficult, in fact almost impossible to continue my hobby. Most people’s hobbies are relatively straight forward, they like reading, hiking, painting etc. Mine is a little different; I like brewing. For the past number of years I have been brewing all manner of different beers, from dry Irish stouts to super hoppy double IPA’s and everything in between. The one constant during this time has been the steady supply of cheap good quality ingredients from my local homebrew supply shop; moving to Beijing would put an end to this. Continue reading →