Bejing - great chinese food, but Maccy D's is the recommended breakfast.

Welcome to Bejing ... hold on, where are all the tall buildings? For some reason I was expecting a high rise or two, I am stood in the centre of Bejing and there is nothing taller than 4 or 5 stories. Part of this may be the smog which is circling overhead, obscuring my view and meaning that taking photographs is a little tricky, but I am fairly certain that most of the reason is apparently nothing in the centre of Bejing can overlook the forbidden city, which is where the Emperors used to reside.

The second thing I noticed is that although the hotel has wifi it does not have access to facebook or instagram, the Great Firewall of China appears to have seen to that. Now don't get me wrong, this is not a total disaster, I am not addicted to facebook (honest) but I do like to be able to boast to all my friends about how nice the places I have been are and how great all of the food I have been eating is.

That is not to say that the city is stuck in the past. Many things in Bejing are uber modern, for starters there is an amazing underground rail system which, for around 20 pence, you can travel all over the city in comfort and style. If you look hard enough you can also find Bejing's business district, which is around 20 blocks from the centre of the city (we found getting a cab out there as a tourist can be an expensive hobby, make sure they take you on the meter). There is a hotel bar on the 23rd floor of World trade hotel which has breathtaking views of the city (smog permitting) which I would highly recommend, it has a pretty good selection of wine (very little of which is Chinese) and beer, although as you would expect, the price tag is a touch on the punchy side.

While in Bejing I would also recommend a trip out to the Summer Palace not only is this a pretty good way to get away from the smog, but it is a great piece of history and a good way to relax wandering around the huge lake enjoying the views of grandiose buildings.

 Oh, right, this is supposed to be a food blog, so, how is eating in the Chinese capital? Well for a start I had to brake one of my golden rules for eating out, which is that I really try and avoid any restaurant where there are pictures in the menu, however in China I found this was  a massive risk as literally anything could turn up. Once you have pointed at a picture and smiled at the waitress the food in Bejing was a lot healthier than I was expecting given my exposure to the occasional "dirty Chinese" which I have to say that I was occasionally partial to in the UK.

There were a lot of really tasty vegetable dishes and the sauces we had were certainly healthier and contained a lot less sugar and additives than the take away variety. There were a couple of things we did find were a bit of an issue, the quality of the meat was not exactly what you would call brilliant. In fact quite often is was very much second rate. We found that ordering chicken as part of your dish was always something of a lucky dip, in the cheaper, more local friendly places "chicken" seemed to include everything but the beak and feet (which were in a separate dish). I didn't have too much of a problem with this but my wife, who tends to stay away from gristle and fatty cuts found it was less to her taste.

Pictured right is one meal we had which seemed to be a very popular way to dine in the Chinese capital, it is basically a cook your own soup, the chimney in the middle of this is a heat source which provides heat to the water and stock which surrounds it. You add chilli, herbs, vegetables and meat to the water and it cooks while you wait, to be honest this for me was like Korean barbeque in that it is not really my thing to pay for dinner and then cook my own meal, but there we go.

The other thing we had a problem with was breakfast, mainly because it looks like lunch and dinner! Unless I am hungover I don't usually fancy sweet and sour or noodles first thing in the morning, we did go to try our hotel breakfast on the first day, however I am sad to say that having looked around and found nothing I wanted to eat we ended up in Macdonalds. I was assured by our tour guide a lot of Chinese people now get breakfast there, however it definitely felt like cheating!

It is not just the standard Chinese food that is available in Bejing, The are all manner of strange things you can eat if the mood takes you. The market style strip of food kiosks pictured on the left sit close to the main shopping pedestrian zone in the centre of the city. You can buy everything there from fried spiders and locusts to chinese cheese (this was horrible, I'd stick to the insects). Our tour guide did try and talk us out of eating too much from these stalls saying the oil etc. was unclean but I think you probably should try these things once.