Experimenting with Chinese cuisine can be overwhelming, but it's still worth it.

Top 5 Dining Street Locations in Beijing:

1. Gui Street, near Dongzhimennei Dajie, in the Dongcheng District, is the largest and most famous food street in Beijing. Here you will find seafood specialties such as spicy lobster, spicy crab, pepper and chili prawns, and poached fish in pungent sauce.
2. Wangfujing Snack Street, is south of Haoyou Department Store, near Wangfujing Business Street, in the Dongcheng District. Snack on crossing bridge rice noodles, smelled bean curd, sticky fruit on bamboo skewers and Xinjiang lamb skewers. If you're really adventurous, sample the scorpion kebabs.
3. Donghuamen Market, north of Donganmen Street in Dongcheng District, appeals to the senses. Try stretched noodles, fish ball soup, smelly bean curds, muttons, prawns, silkworms skewered and grilled, boiled dumplings and caramelized fruits on sticks.
4. Longfusi Snack street, north of Dongsi Longfu Mansion, in the Dongcheng District is the place to try soymilk, fried dough rings, sausage or fried squid. Sweetened baked wheaten cake is a traditional treat here.

Top 5 Restaurant Recommendations in Beijing:

1. Laitai Food Street, located across from Lady's Street, is the newest food street in the city. Here you can sample foods from different regions and cultures: Cantonese, Sichuan, Japanese, Korean, Turkey, and Thai.
2. Fangshan Imperial Restaurant at 1 Wenjin Jie, serves Court Cuisine, based upon 600-year-old-plus recipes favored by China's former emperors in the Ming and King dynasties. This is a true dining experience, rich with ceremony, and with the option for an eight, 10, 12 or 36 course dinner.
3. Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, at 32 Qianmen Dajie, was founded in 1864, and is famous for its namesake dish. The chefs prepare roast duck on an open-door wood oven fueled by wood from fruit trees.
4. Donglaishun Restaurant, near Tian'anmen Square, has been in business 100 years. Its signature dish, the lamb hot pot, is a staple among the Muslim communities of northern China. The restaurant also offers a variety of fried dishes including quick-fried mutton, minced chicken meat, roasted gigot and roasted duck, as well as flavored snacks such as butter fried cake and sweet walnut soup.
5. Du Yi Chu Shao Mai on Qianmen Street, has been serving Beijing for 300 years and it is still a top spot among locals. The most popular dish is Shao Mai, steamed dumplings with the dough gathered at the top, and stuffed with vegetables or meat.
6. LAN, on the 4th Floor at LG Twin Towers, Jianguomenwai Avenue, Chaoyang District, is one of the hottest, trendiest spots in Beijing, complete with Philippe Stark decor and 35 private dining rooms. There is a selection of meals from around the world that will appeal to all tastes.

Technorati : cuisine, eating, food

Del.icio.us : cuisine, eating, food

Zooomr : cuisine, eating, food

Flickr : cuisine, eating, food

Help China's Earthquake Survivors

ADRA is assisting the survivors of Jiulong, in Sichuan Province. Shelter materials, food, water and medical aid is being distributed to approximately 12,000 people. More supplies are on the way. Help us continue to provide assistance to those who have lost their families and homes. Give

Donate to Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is working together with its long-time local partner, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), in emergency response efforts to the most devastated areas.

Donate to the Tsinghua Foundation

The 2008 Sichuan Earthquake Relief Committee by Oversea Chinese was formed by the Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network, Legal Immigration Association, and several other Chinese organizations.

Could you possibly imagine 3 billion plastic bags? These are the type of bags you get at the store to carry your purchases home in. Hard to wrap your head around the number. Now imagine roughly 90 billion plastic bags. Insane, 90 billion bags, that is a lot of plastic! Now, just to really make your head spin, imagine over a trillion of them. My head hurts. That is an estimated amount of free plastic bags consumed in China in one year. China is estimated to use 3 billion bags a day from its retail operations. To my shock and dismay China has now said it will force consumers to pay for these free bags and that it is banning them from public transportation and other public places. China is actually starting an initiative to help the environment, but is it going to be enforced?

The Chinese government claims that it will. However, other environmental laws are on the books, but rarely enforced. This program may actually be enforced, because the cost of this program is shifted to the consumer and not the businesses. Since China has essentially given businesses a way to charge the customer instead of absorbing the cost this may actually work. Even reducing consumption by a third would be over 300 billion bags a year. That is an impressive dent in consumer pollution. This initiative will encourage consumers to use fabric bags rather than pay for plastic ones (consumers will see it will save them money).

Imagine how fast a landfill is filled up with 3 billion bags a day being dumped. Worse yet, imagine how many of those 3 billion bags are just thrown away as litter in the streets or rivers. There are a lot of benefits to banning these types of bags. Most European countries already charge for plastic bags at stores. That is why you see most European shoppers using fabric bags or other more permanent means of transporting their purchases. This is one way of reducing the amount of trash entering landfills very easily.

Consumers will quickly realize that using fabric bags or another type of container saves them money. It is an initiative that should see dividends pretty rapidly. The big question is, should the United States do the same? Yes. It is pretty simple. We use large amounts of plastic too. Just visit almost any retail store. We buy a lot of stuff and we have to carry it home someway. I think the time is right to initiate the same ban in the United States , or just tax the use of plastic bags. Taxing the bags would give the government another source of revenue. That revenue should be used as a way to fund research into alternative fuels. That would give consumers what they want, cheap plastic bags, and fund a worthy cause. Just a cent a bag would generate millions of dollars a year. Good tax revenue! Consumers, even being charged a penny each, might start using fabric bags. It would be a win-win-win situation.

Geno A Bulzomi
http://www.bulzomi.com
Articles on International Affairs, Leadership and Business.