As it’s been said many times before, with the new year comes new beginnings. This rings true especially for me and this magazine this January. My two-and-a-half years in Beijing and almost two-year stint at beijingkids is up, and I’m headed down south – to Australia.
As expats, most of us know that we will eventually bid goodbye to our fair city. This issue, our annual family-friendly restaurant guide, speaks to one of the aspects that is hardest to leave behind – the exceptional food, rich in both variety and flavor.
When my friends back in the US inevitably make some joke about Chinese food (“In China, they just call it food”), they also assume that the cuisine here is a generic mish-mash of the fast-food Chinese joints in airports or malls – greasy noodles and plain chicken fried rice. I must confess that I, too, initially didn’t know what to expect. As a child, I’d eaten dim sum in restaurants in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and had squirmed away from the food because it was gooey (red bean paste buns), slippery (jellyfish tentacles), or just plain weird (shark fin soup).
But how wrong I was …
When I leave Beijing, one of the things I’ll miss most is the diverse flavor that each different Chinese province offers. I have discovered taste bud receptors for tastes I never even knew existed – the numbing spicy pepper in Sichuan food, the aromatic Xinjiang meat, sweet, salty Beijing duck, and fragrant Yunnan food.
Every morning when I pop outside my apartment, I stroll down my tree-lined street and see people huddled around a cloud of steam emitted from piping hot baozi sold on the corner. Street food in Beijing has its own special place in my heart – the jian bing, skewered caramelized fruits, and chuan’r will be sorely missed.
In this double issue of beijingkids, we highlight 53 restaurants with delicious food, good ambiance, and clean environs; all have been evaluated with our kid-friendly checklist: high chairs, playrooms, and healthy options that the kids won’t scoff at. We hope that you’ll use our guide to find the perfect locale for a meal with your family – whether it be for a birthday, a relaxing dinner, a quick bite, a social outing, or even date night.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with me, and for reading. If you’ve enjoyed reading beijingkids even half as much as I’ve enjoyed working at this magazine, then my work here is done.
