Mara and I woke up the next morning and walked over to Tiennamen Square. The hotel where we stayed was a short walk from the square. The area was packed, especially down a small street that had a weekend market. The city was very much how I had expected. Somewhat like many areas of Hong Kong which had Chinese characters all along the sides of the stores. Unlike Hong Kong, the were thousands of people on bikes riding everywhere. What was amazing about that fact that so many people were riding bikes was that it was absolutely freezing. There was a bite like no other place I had been. The cold would really hit you.
For lunch, we walked around to find a place that was famous for it's Beijing Duck. I had order an incredible duck dish in Bangkok (which cost about four bucks) and I loved it so I was excited to try Beijing Duck, in Beijing.
We were helped by some lady who showed us how to order the duck and what came with it. What you would do is order a chunk of duck and it came with tortillas and sauce that you would pour over leeks in a small bowl. The duck came out pretty quick and we soon had our first experience with real Chinese food. From that point on, I looked forward to getting home for some American Chinese food. The Americans make Chinese food much better that the Chinese. Although it was quite good, I'm surprised that my heart didn't stop afterwards. Half of the meat was covered with skin which had been soaked in grease for hours. In fact, many of the pieces of meat were only pieces of skin.
Our stomachs didn't know what to think afterwards. We walked toward Tiennamen trying to forget how many fatty acids we had just consumed.