It’s now day 2 in Beijing, and since it’s a Saturday, my aunt suggested to go to the Forbidden Palace.

I wanted to go back there and grab some photos, since the last time I visited was around 2008 and I didn’t have anything back then. The plan was to park the car at Xi Dan (西单), and bike over there with the public rental bikes that are littering the streets.

Xi Dan is interesting because it’s a district full of huge shopping malls, and these malls all have decent food, unlike the western styled shopping malls with fastfood.

We settled on Dao Xiao Man (刀小蛮), which is a rice noodle shop. I was always a fan of rice noodles, unfortunately we don’t have much of it in Canada. I ordered the spicy and sour fish stock, with some chicken wing skewers and a deep fried crab body.

Overall the flavors were quite good, but nothing too extraordinary, to be honest. I seem to have fonder memories of the rice noodles sold by the street vendors in Xi’an, I guess I’ll find out soon.

-Tao